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Today there is a tree in our lives.  Not just any tree, but the Christmas tree.  That beautiful evergreen is standing in the corner, decorated with reminders of Christmases past , with a pile of presents under its lowest boughs. Ever wonder how that tree got there?

            Let’s start with a little—a very little—history of the Christmas tree.  People have been cutting down evergreens and displaying them indoors for a very long time.  Ancient Egyptians, Romans, Hebrews and Chinese brought in evergreen trees to represent longevity.   Since then, decorated and undecorated trees have popped up in all sorts of cultures, most notably in Scandinavia.  Sorting out which came first is a fool’s errand, so I’ll not take it.

But the unofficial start of the modern Christmas tree comes out of Germany, where medieval homes sported “paradise trees” on December 24, the Christian feast day of Adam and Eve (and, hence, why I chose this date to discuss Christmas trees).  They decorated the trees with apples to represent the one plucked by Eve in the Garden of Eden.           

Christmas trees “went viral,” however, because of England’s royal family.  In the mid-1800s, Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, set up evergreens on tables, one for each member of his family.  He decorated them with all sorts of ornaments and placed presents under each tree. Because Queen Victoria was so popular, British families adopted the practice with enthusiasm, and a new Christmas tradition swept the continent.

            The Christmas-tree tradition followed along rapidly in the U.S.  German immigrants had brought the Christmas-tree idea with them to America, and by about 1850, they were all the rage on the eastern seaboard.  President Franklin Pierce put up the first tree in the White House in 1856. The first Christmas tree lot appeared in New York in 1851, and the first Christmas tree farm was planted in Mercer County, New Jersey, in 1901.  Its trees hit the market in 1908, selling for $1 each.

            The Christmas tree industry has grown like a fertilized balsam seedling since then.  In the U.S., virtually all commercially available trees now come from Christmas tree farms.  Tree farms occur in all 50 states, numbering as many as 4,000.  Oregon grows the most trees, followed closely by North Carolina, with Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin completing the list of the top five producing states.  Most tree farms are small, family-run operations.  The approximately one million acres under cultivation contain about 350 million trees.

            The most popular species is the Fraser fir, which is North Carolina’s primary Christmas-tree crop and serves the eastern U.S.  Second is the Noble fir, grown mostly in Oregon and decorating Christmas homes in the West.  About 32.8 million living trees were sold in 2018, a record number.  The average price was about $75, making the total live tree market worth about $2.5 billion.

            However, most Americans today have an artificial Christmas tree.  A whopping 80% of all fake trees come from China. About 23.6 million were sold in 2018 (also a record).  Because artificial trees last on average about 5 years, the math means about 80% of American homes put their presents under fake trees.  Artificial trees are more convenient, of course, but which is more environmentally sustainable—live or artificial?

            The live Christmas tree industry wants us to believe that living trees are the best choice, for several reasons.  First, live trees aren’t made from plastic and shipped halfway across the world.  A representative of the National Christmas Tree Association said it was “fall-off-your-horse simple that a tree made out of oil, turned into PVC plastic in China and shipped over on a boat, cannot be better than growing a real tree.”

            Second, live trees are grown on farms, just like other crops.  So, no natural forests are harmed by their harvest. For the 5-7 years between planting and harvest, those trees absorb carbon dioxide and give off oxygen.  When the trees are harvested, growers re-plant new trees, beginning the process over again.  Christmas-tree farms stay in business, absorbing carbon dioxide, because people buy them.  A North Carolina grower encourages folks to buy real trees “so we keep the local economy strong and we don’t have to sell the land to rich people from New York City to make condos.”

            Third, discarded trees have many uses that keep them out of landfills.  Ground up, old Christmas trees make great mulch; New York City features a “mulchfest” every year, using the resulting mulch in the city’s parks.  Trees sunk in lakes and ponds provide habitat for fish and other aquatic organisms.  Trees are also used to stabilize eroded lands, especially along lake shores or river banks.  And while they are growing, the trees improve local water quality and provide wildlife habitat.

            And finally, there is something truly magical about putting a live tree in your home for the holidays.  Said a representative of live tree growers, “There’s this wonderful family experience that’s just not parallel to dragging a dusty box out of the attic.” (we’ll forget that we drag dusty boxes full of ornaments out of the attic anyhow…).

            So, Merry Christmas, whatever your taste in trees.  Spruce or fir, plastic or aluminum, enjoy your tree with all the love and good-tidings of the season. 

References:

Encyclopedia Britannica.  Christmas tree.  Available at:  https://www.britannica.com/plant/Christmas-tree.  Accessed January 7, 2020.

Pick Your Own Christmas Tree.  2020 Christmas Tree Statistics, Facts and Trends.  Available at:  http://www.pickyourownchristmastree.org/christmas_tree_statistics.php.  Accessed January 7, 2020.

Pick Your Own Christmas Tree.  The History of the Christmas Tree and Other Christmas traditions.  Available at:  http://www.pickyourownchristmastree.org/traditions.php.  Accessed January 7, 2020.

Statista.  Christmas trees sold in the United States from 2004 to 2018.  Available at:  https://www.statista.com/statistics/209249/purchase-figures-for-real-and-fake-christmas-trees-in-the-us/.,  Accessed January 7, 2020.

Zraick, Karen.  2018.  Reavl vs. Artificial Christmas Trees:  Which Is the Greener Choice?  The New York Times, Nov. 26, 2018.  Available at:  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/26/business/energy-environment/fake-christmas-tree-vs-real-tree.html.  Accessed January 7, 2020.

Bad news is never welcome.  But at Christmastime, bad news is particularly dreadful.  On December 23, 1982, the town of Times Beach, Missouri, got the worst kind of bad news:  The entire city was contaminated by a highly toxic chemical—dioxin.  In a few years, the city was wiped off the map.

            Times Beach, Missouri, was designed to be a recreational paradise.  The site is just a few miles southeast of St. Louis, along the route of the  historic “Route 66.”  The St. Louis Times newspaper owned a small tract of land on the shore of the Meramec River, and they decided in 1925, as an advertising gimmick, to sell small lots for a negligible price ($67.50) to new six-month subscribers.  Soon after, the new land owners formed the town of Times Beach.  It never developed as a major recreational destination, but it did become a modest middle-class town, with 2,500 residents living in about 800 homes.

            The town never had much money, so when the dusty roads became an issue, they turned to a low-cost solution.  They hired a nearby company to spray used crankcase oil on the roads, a common practice in rural communities.  For four years, from 1972 to 1976, the company sprayed the used oil on Times Beach’s roads.  Unknown to the town and its residents, however, the company had mixed other industrial waste into the oil.  That industrial waste contained one specific chemical in high concentrations—2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzodioxin, also known as TCDD, or simply as “dioxin.”

            This particular species of dioxin is one of hundreds of forms of the chemical.  Dioxin is found in nature, and all of us have some dioxin in our bodies, just from being alive.  But in the post-WW2 era, dioxins were manufactured in large quantities for use in new products.  Today we known that dioxin is a highly dangerous compound, capable of causing cancer, diabetes, heart disease, developmental problems, reproductive problems and others.  TCDD is the deadliest of the various formulations.

            People around the Times Beach area began to notice health problems in the late 1970s, along with other communities, farms and livestock arenas sprayed with the used oil.  As news of the problems began to leak out, the federal government began testing soils.  The EPA took samples in Times Beach in 1979 and again in early December, 1982.  A few days later, on December 5, a massive flood hit the area, inundating Times Beach (flood stage on the Meramec River was 18.5 feet—the river crested at nearly 43 feet).  Townspeople fled the flood waters, and they were just moving back into town as Christmas approached.

            Then the hammer came down.  The Centers for Disease Control issued a report on December 23.  Samples from Times Beach contained 100 parts per billion of dioxin, a hundred times higher than the level considered hazardous.  The CDC’s recommendations were catastrophic:

“Non-emergency cleanup activities in the Times Beach area should cease….Residents who have been temporarily relocated are discouraged from moving back into the area. Resident who have already begun to move back into the area are encouraged to leave. It is recommended that these measures be observed until more extensive post-flood soil sampling and analysis are completed.”

Warning signs went up around the area, and government agents blocked the river bridge that was the main road into town.

            Further samples and analyses confirmed the story.  Times Beach was horribly contaminated by dioxin, to the extent that the town was no longer habitable.  In February, 1983, The EPA director came to Times Beach to announce a buyout.  Over the next decade, the U.S. government relocated all residents, buying their homes and subsidizing new homes elsewhere.  At Times Beach and another 26 sites around Missouri, the EPA destroyed all structures and dug up and burned the contaminated soil, 265,000 tons in all.  The total cost reached $250 million.

            Times Beach is now gone, a victim to an era of unregulated use of new, untested chemicals that promised great benefit but instead caused great harm.  Every cloud has its silver lining, however.  The tragedy of Times Beach was a primary stimulus to the creation of EPA’s Superfund Program, that identifies and rehabilitates the worst contaminated sites in the nation.  And where Times Beach used to be, you’ll now find “Route 66 State Park.”  And in one corner of the visitors’ center, you’ll find a display dedicated to the town that once was and is no more.

References:

History.com.  Chemical contamination prompts evacuation of Missouri town.  History.com, Nov 13, 2009.  Available at:  https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/road-contamination-prompts-evacuation-of-town.  Accessed January 6, 2020.

National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.  Dioxins.  Available at:  https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/dioxins/.  Accessed January 6, 2020.

Powell, William.  2012.  Remember Times Beach:  The Dioxin Disaster, 30 Years Later.  St Louis Magazine, December 3, 2012.  Available at:  https://www.stlmag.com/Remember-Times-Beach-The-Dioxin-Disaster-30-Years-Later/.  Accessed January 6, 2020.

Reko, H. Karl.  1984.  Not An Act of God—The Story of Times Beach.  Available at:  https://books.google.com/books?id=7oAVAAAAIAAJ&dq=dece+23,+1982+CDC+statement+on+times+beach&source=gbs_navlinks_s.  Accessed January 6, 2020.

History credits Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and, perhaps, Richard Nixon as America’s great conservation presidents.  But what about the other predominant member of a president’s team—his wife.  Without question, the most important conservation presidential wife was Lady Bird Johnson.  Known as the country’s “environmental first lady,” Mrs. Johnson (as her organization’s website refers to her) was the impetus for much of the modern environmental movement.

            Claudia Alta Taylor was born in Karnack, Texas, on December 22, 1912 (died 2007).  A friend said she was “as purty as a lady bird,” and she was known from then on as Lady Bird.  She grew up roaming the woods, fields and waters of eastern Texas.  “My heart found its home long ago,” she wrote, “in the beauty, mystery, order and disorder of the flowering earth.”

            She earned a journalism degree from the University of Austin, Texas.  Soon after, she met a young politician, Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ, as we know him), and soon became Lady Bird Johnson.  She bought a failing radio station in Austin and built it—doing everything from planning the programming to cleaning the floors—into a thriving broadcasting enterprise that included radio and television stations and a cable television system.  As the wife of an influential Texas congressman and senator and then vice-president, she became a part of the Washington, DC establishment.

            Her life changed on November 22, 1963, when President Kennedy’s assassination vaulted her husband into the presidency and her into the role of first lady.  She decided that she would be a “doer” as first lady, and the things she sought to do mostly involved the environment.  Her work took on the moniker of “beautification,” but her idea was not just to make the world pretty.  She said, “Though the word beautification makes the concept sound merely cosmetic, it involves much more: clean water, clean air, clean roadsides, safe waste disposal and preservation of valued old landmarks as well as great parks and wilderness areas. To me…beautification means our total concern for the physical and human quality we pass on to our children and the future.”

            She worked closely with the president to move environmental matters to the top of the political and societal agenda.  Together, they pushed for—and accomplished—legislation that protected the landscape of federal interstate highways (the 1965 Highway Beautification Act is commonly known as “Lady Bird’s Bill”), created scores of national park units, provided permanent funding for protecting high priority conservation sites, and rejuvenated the city of Washington, DC.  Lady Bird’s Bill is why interstate highways have wide rights-of-way and are not littered with billboards, junkyards and other scars of the industrial age.  At the end of his presidency, LBJ gave his wife a large plaque which held 50 pens he had used to sign 50 environmental measures into law.  The plaque read, “To Lady Bird, who has inspired me and millions of Americans to try to preserve our land and beautify our nation.  With love from Lyndon.”

            She found many ways to inspire others.  She led excursions to many national parks, usually with politicians and national media in tow, to demonstrate the importance of natural places to the nation’s physical and mental health.  Back in Texas, she led the drive to build a 10-mile trail around a lake in Austin—the lake is now named for her.  On her 70^th birthday, she founded what is now called the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.  Just outside Austin, the center covers 279 acres and displays more than 650 native plant species. 

            Speaking to an audience of architects in 1968, Johnson summarized her philosophy.: “Too often we have sacrificed human values to commercial values under the bright guise of progress. And in our unconcern, we have let a crisis gather which threatens health and even life itself … Today, environmental questions are matters for architects and laymans alike. They are questions, literally, of life and death. Can we have a building boom and beauty too? Must progress inevitably mean a shabbier environment? Must success spoil nature’s bounty? Insistently and with growing volume, citizens demand that we turn our building to a sensible, human purpose. They are asking, literally, for a breath of fresh air.”

            When you breath that fresh air, one of the folks you should thank is Lady Bird Johnson, our Environmental First Lady.

References:

Benepe, Adrian.  2015.  How the White House Went Green:  The Environmental Legacy of President Lyndon B. Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson.  The nature of cities, 1 November 2015.  Available at:  https://www.thenatureofcities.com/2015/11/01/how-the-white-house-went-green-the-environmental-legacy-of-president-lyndon-b-johnson-and-lady-bird-johnson/.  Accessed December 12, 2019.

Gould, Lewis L.  2012.  The environ;mental legacy of Lady Bird Johnson.  Houston Chronicale, August 3, 2012.  Available at:  https://www.chron.com/opinion/outlook/article/The-environmental-legacy-of-Lady-Bird-Johnson-3761366.php.  Accessed December 12, 2019.

Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.  The Environmental First Lady.  Available at:  http://www.ladybirdjohnson.org/biography.  Accessed December 12, 2019.

December 20 is the earliest date on which the winter solstice can occur (more commonly on December 21 or 22, but we need a topic for December 20).  It is the shortest day of the year, and consequently has had special meaning to humans throughout our history (people today celebrate the summer solstice at Stonehenge in England, but ancient people celebrated the winter solstice there).  The winter solstice is variously called “mid-winter” or the first day of winter, depending on the country and custom.

            But that doesn’t matter for our purposes—suffice to say that when the winter solstice comes around, never feat—it is winter!  And nature knows this all too well, so let’s reflect a bit on how animals in the far north respond to winter.  Scientists have categorized the general ways of surviving winter into three strategies, exemplified here by a champion of each.

            The first is to “get out of Dodge,” or in this case, winter.  Many animals migrate to escape the rigors of winter.  Birds, of course, are the most obvious, and the grand champion is the Arctic tern.  Arctic terns (Sterna paradisaea) spend the summer in the Arctic, where they breed, but head south for the winter, really far south.  They fly to Antarctica and back, an round-trip of about 24,000 miles!  In fact, they are avoiding two winters each year, one in the north and one in the south.  Other animals make less dramatic migrations.  Elk, for example, move from high mountain elevations in summer to lower elevations in winter, where the snow isn’t so deep and forage is more available.

            The second strategy is to hunker down and pretend winter isn’t happening, saving energy by going dormant.  Different animals utilize various levels of dormancy, from simply digging dens and filling them with food, to the official state of hibernation.  The yellow-bellied marmot (Marmota flaviventris), a high elevation relative of the squirrel, is the champion.  It hibernates for as many as 200 days each year, from September or October through April or May, depending on the habitat.  A colony of 10-20 individuals digs a common burrow that they line with grass.  They fatten up in the fall and then cuddle together in the marmot version of grandma’s feather bed.  A hibernating marmot reduces its body temperature as low as 41 degrees Fahrenheit, slows its heart to as low as 30 beats per minute (compared to 180 when not hibernating), and breathes only about twice per minute.

            The third strategy is to just make do.  Humans throw on another layer, insulated gloves and hats—and wild animals do the same.  Mountain goats and many other grazing animals sport heavy undercoats made up of hollow hairs that insulate their bodies.  The pika, a small rodent, has tiny ears and tail, proportioned to reduce heat loss.  Many northern animals shed their brown summer coats for white fur or feathers, including ptarmigans, Arctic foxes and hares, giving them camouflage as either prey or predator. The snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus) is the champion, however, with thick stiff hair covering its large paws, allowing it to travel easily across deep snow on namesake “snowshoes.”

            Nature has perfected these amazing responses to winter over a very long time.  And that leads to the compelling question of sustainability:  What will happen with global warming?  We can imagine all sorts of bad impacts—like species coming out of hibernation too early and then falling victims to late winter storms.  Less Arctic ice means shorter hunting seasons for polar bears—and we’ve seen the sickening photos of starving bears. The survival of prey animals, like ptarmigan and snowshoe hare, is also compromised because their molting from brown to white coats is triggered by day-length, not temperature.  In a warming world, a white ptarmigan on bare ground is, figuratively, a sitting duck.

References:

Cornell Lab of Ornithology.  Arctic Tern.  Available at:  https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Arctic_Tern/overview#.  Accessed December 9, 2019.

Elischer, Melissa.  2015.  Animal adaptations for winter.  Michigan State University Extension, December 10, 2015.  Available at:  https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/animal_adaptations_for_winter.  Accessed December 9, 2019.

National Park Service.  Marmot, Rocky Mountain National Park.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/romo/learn/nature/marmot.htm.  Accessed December 9, 2019.

National Park Service.  Snowshoe Hare.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/articles/snowshoe-hare.htm.  Accessed December 9, 2019.

National Snow & Ice Data Center.  All About Snow – Snow and Animals.  Available at:  https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/snow/animals.html.  Accessed December 9, 2019.

Peterson, Christine.  2018.  How Climate Change Affects Winter Wildlife.  The Nature Conservancy, December 06, 2018.  Available at:  https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/united-states/idaho/stories-in-idaho/winter-animal-adaptations/.  Accessed December 99, 2019.

November 30 sports a number of events that relate to conservation.  The Welland Canal first opened in 1829, allowing all sorts of environmental chaos to travel past the natural barrier of Niagara Falls.  Australia experienced its hottest November ever in 2014, a tribute to climate change.  The Paris Climate talks began on this date in 2015 (see the results on December 12, the day it ended).

            But I’ve chosen to highlight Mark Twain’s birthday on November 30, 1835 (died 1910).  Mark Twain needs no introduction.  He was born in Missouri, lived most of his youth in the Mississippi riverbank town of Hannibal, and is most notably associated with the river and its immediate surroundings.  The world loves Twain for his humorous homespun stories, from The Adventures ofTom Sawyer to Huckleberry Finn to The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.  Beyond humor, however, his writing was often satirical and sometimes cynical, about life and human nature.

            Twain was an adventurer as well as a writer.  He spent many years tramping, as he would say, around the U.S. and the world.  He travelled to Hawaii and across the American West, working as a travelling correspondent for various newspapers and magazines.  He wrote a collelction of stories of his western adventures in Roughing It. He spent years as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River, and recounted his experiences in his book, Life on the Mississippi.  He also travelled around Europe and the Middle East.  His time in England was the basis for his magical tale of A Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

            Let’s enjoy a few of the ideas that Mark Twain left us regarding nature and our relationship to it. 

“This is the fairest picture on our planet, the most enchanting to look upon, the most satisfying to the eye and spirit.  To see the sun sink down, drowned in his pink and purple and golden floods, …is a sight to stir the coldest nature, and make a sympathetic one drunk with ecstasy.”

“Architects cannot teach nature anything.”

“The laws of Nature take precedence of all human laws. The purpose of all human laws is one — to defeat the laws of Nature. This is the case among all the nations, both civilized and savage. It is a grotesquerie, but when the human race is not grotesque it is because it is asleep and losing its opportunity.”

“Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.”

“Each season brings a world of enjoyment and interest in the watching of its unfolding, its gradual harmonious development, its culminating graces-and just as one begins to tire of it, it passes away and a radical change comes, with new witcheries and new glories in its train.”

“To one in sympathy with nature, each season, in its turn, seems the loveliest.”

“Change is the handmaiden Nature requires to do her miracles with.”

References:

AZ Quotes.  Mark Twain Quotes About Nature.  Available at:  https://www.azquotes.com/author/14883-Mark_Twain/tag/nature.  Accessed December 3, 2019.

Mark Twain Quotes.  Nature.  Available at:  http://www.twainquotes.com/Nature.html.  Accessed December 3, 2019.

Quirk, Thomas V.  2019.  Mark Twain, American Writer.  Encyclopedia Britannica, Nov 11, 2019.  Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mark-Twain. Accessed December 3, 2019.

Coffee rationed.  Imagine that.  No longer could you just get a cup of coffee whenever you wanted.  No double French vanilla latte with skinny cream!  No senior decaf with three sugars! 

            But, it was World War Two, and the U.S. was rationing everything—food, gas, clothing.  So, no reason that coffee shouldn’t be added.  Interestingly, the rationing occurred not because coffee was scarce, but because shipping it up from South America endangered merchant ships being targeted by German U-boats.  Thankfully, the rationing only lasted one year, freeing Americans to resume their coffee habit (and get to work on time and not growl at their loved ones).

            Since then, the world’s coffee habit has exploded  Coffee is now the second most traded commodity worldwide, surpassed only by oil.  About 22 billion pounds of coffee are produced per year, filling the daily demand of about 750 million cups.  The biggest producers are Brazil (by far the biggest), followed by Vietnam, Colombia, Indonesia and Ethiopia.  And although Americans aren’t the biggest per person consumers of coffee (rank 22^nd among countries; Europeans drink a lot more per person than Americans), the U.S. does lead the world in total consumption (about 2 billion pounds), as we do for almost every materialistic stat.

            Coffee was rationed during the war, but we might just need it again in the fight for sustainable lifestyles.  Your daily cup of coffee (or three or four cups) can have a devastating impact on the environment.  Traditionally, coffee was grown in the shade, under a canopy of tropical forest trees.  Individual farmers tended small farms of coffee bushes in a sustainable manner that required little fertilizer, pesticides or water, and kept the soil intact and fertile.  But in the 1970s, increasing demand for coffee caused a revolution in growing strategy.  Small shade-grown plots were combined into co-ops, the overhead forests were cleared, and plantations of coffee bushes were planted.  The new style required all the inputs of modern agriculture—fertilizer, pesticides and irrigation.  Recent statistics show that at least 2.5 million acres of forest have been cleared for coffee production in Central America alone.

            The change to large plantations was particularly hard because of the environment where it occurred.  Coffee grows in tropical areas, where forests created habitats for a diverse fauna.  The shade-grown coffee farms have been called the second most favorable habitats for biodiversity in the tropics, right below undisturbed forests.  But the sun-grown coffee plantations are monocultures with no place for native biodiversity.  Sun-grown coffee also impacts soil fertility and erosion, because clearing removes the trees that previously fed and stabilized soil.

            Thankfully, coffee production has a chance to become sustainable again.  Environmental groups, such as the Rainforest Alliance, have developed certification programs based on a return to shade-grown coffee.  Other groups have developed fair-trade certifications that assure better returns to farmers and investment sin local communities.  Starbucks has led the way, now serving almost entirely shade-grown coffee.  This process has a long way to go, however, with only about 25% of all coffee now grown under shade, almost all from Central and South American sources.  Asian countries have begun consuming and producing more coffee, with Vietnam now the world’s second largest producer.  Asian countries grow almost all their coffee in the sun.

            Want to do your part winning the war for sustainability?  Fill your cup with that wonderful elixir brewed from certified shade-grown and fair-trade coffee. And maybe just have one cup today!

References:

Blacksell, George.  2011.  How green is your coffee?  The Guardian, 4 Oct 2011.  Available at:  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/oct/04/green-coffee.  Accessed December 1, 2019. 

Caffeine Informer.  Caffeine (Coffee) Consumption By Country.  Available at:  https://www.caffeineinformer.com/caffeine-what-the-world-drinks.  Accessed December 1, 2019.

International Coffee Organization.  Trade Statistics Tables.  Available at:  http://www.ico.org/trade_statistics.asp.  Accessed December 1, 2019.

Moore, Victoria.  2013.  The Environmental Impact of Coffee Production:  What’s Your Coffee Costing The Planet?  Sustainable Business Toolkit, January 31, 2013.  Available at:  https://www.sustainablebusinesstoolkit.com/environmental-impact-coffee-trade/.  Accessed December 1, 2019.

National WWII Museum.  Coffee Rationed.  Available at:  http://www.nww2m.com/2012/11/coffee/.  Accessed December 1, 2019.

Rainforest Alliance.  2016.  Rainforest Alliance Certified Coffee.  September 24, 2016.  Available at:  https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/articles/rainforest-alliance-certified-coffee?utm_campaign=cy18aware&utm_source=18vvaawarecomms&utm_medium=cpc&s_src=ADK18VX&s_subsrc=18vvaawarecomms&gclid=CjwKCAiA5o3vBRBUEiwA9PVzalPEMLPr1ousUqeggUN95pjQ8B-dhDTIV7cKNyvfCbK1xfkIDXUQzRoCjVsQAvD_BwE.  Accessed December 1, 2019.

Wernick, Adam.  2016.  Can coffee become the world’s first 100 percent sustainable agricultural product?  PRI, March 20, 2016.  Available at:  https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-03-20/can-coffee-become-world-s-first-100-percent-sustainable-agricultural-product.  Accessed December 1, 2019.

There are only a few conservationists who have achieved lasting international fame.  But there are many who have done remarkable things at a somewhat smaller geographic scale.  Today I write about such a person, who concentrated her career on one particular type of ecosystem—and made the earth a lot more sustainable.

            Elsie Quarterman was born in Valdosta, Georgia, on November 28, 1910 (died 2014, at 103 years old!).  She grew up on a family farm, where walks with her mother and aunts nurtured her interest in plants.  She graduated from what is now Valdosta State University in 1932 and then received an MS from Duke University in 1943.  She taught at Vanderbilt University in Nashville from then on.  But knowing that she would need a doctorate to keep her job, she simultaneously pursued her Ph.D. in botany at Duke, which she received in 1949.

            Her doctoral research focused on the ecology of “cedar glades,” a unique Tennessee habitat.  Cedar glades are underlain by limestone rock with shallow soils—no deeper than about 8 inches—that support correspondingly unique plant communities.  Red cedar trees often border these areas, where gaps in the rocky substrate accumulate deeper soils that allow scrubby tree cover.  But within the cedar glades themselves, the vegetation is largely grasses and flowering plants.  Quarterman’s research established the composition of the plant communities and related their structure to soil conditions, exposure and inter-species competition.  Although once covering 5% of the region, human modification of the landscape has eliminated most of them.

            In the early 1960s, Quarterman and a colleague saw an unusual flower growing in a cedar glade as they drove by.  It turned out to be the Tennessee coneflower, Echinacea tennesseensis, a species that had been declared extinct decades earlier (also called the Tennessee purple coneflower).  She found other isolated populations in other cedar glades and studied the plant’s distribution and life history.  Because of her work, the Tennessee coneflower was one of the first plants placed on the U.S. endangered species list—and more importantly because of her efforts to establish new populations in suitable habitats, the species recovered and was delisted in 2011.

            Along with becoming the world’s authority on cedar glades, Quarterman made equally important contributions to Vanderbilt University.  She was one of the nation’s first female botany professor to earn a doctorate, and in 1964 she became the first woman to chair an academic department at Vanderbilt.  She taught a dozen doctoral students, who have carried on her work on cedar glades along with their own students.  After retiring in 1976, she continued working and exploring actively through her 90’s, always ready for a hike to look at plants, especially if students could join her.

            The list of her professional achievements is staggering.  She was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and held important positions in many other botanical and conservation organizations.  She founded the Tennessee Protection Planning Committee, and was a founding member of the Tennessee chapter of The Nature Conservancy.  She received a long list of awards for her role as one of the region’s leading plant community ecologists.  A particular cedar glade, which was among her major research sites, was named in her honor in 1988; the Elsie Quarterman Cedar Glade State Natural Area covers 185 acres in Rutherford County, Tennessee, and contains a recovery population of Tennessee coneflowers.

            Dr. Elsie Quarterman won’t make the list of the most important people of the century and she doesn’t have a biography in Encyclopedia Britannica or anywhere else, but she should have.  I find her work more inspiring for the very reason that most people don’t know about her.  She focused on the importance of one habitat and its unique diversity, making sure that we saved some for the future.  Because of hundreds of dedicated people like her, our world is that much better than it would have been without them.  Thank you, Dr. Quarterman.

References:

Canopy Roads of South Georgia.  Dr. Elsie Quarterman, November 28^th 1910 – June 9^th 2014.  Available at:  http://www.okraparadisefarms.com/blog/2014/06/dr-elsie-quarterman-november-28th-1910-june-9th-2014.html.  Accessed November 27, 2019.

Furlong, Kara.  2014.  Elsie Quarterman, who rediscovered Tennessee coneflower, dies at 103.  Vanderbilt University News, June 12, 2014.  Available at:  https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2014/06/12/elsie-quarterman/.  Accessed November 27, 2019.

Hemmerly, Thomas E.  Cedar Glades.  Tennessee Encyclopedia.  Available at:  https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/cedar-glades/.  November 27, 2019.

Quarterman, John S. et al.  2014.  Elsie Quarterman (1910-2014), Centenarian Ecologist.  Clan Sinclair.  Available at:  http://sinclair.quarterman.org/who/elsie_ecologist.html.  Accessed November 27, 2019.

Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation.  Elsie Quarterman Cedar Glade Class II Natural-Scientific State Natural Area.  Available at:  https://www.tn.gov/environment/program-areas/na-natural-areas/natural-areas-middle-region/middle-region/elsie-quarterman-cedar-glade.html.  Accessed November 27, 2019.

I’ll say a phrase, and you say the first thing that comes into your mind.  I say, “Bill Nye,” and you say what?  The Science Guy, duh!  But we might just as well answer, the Environment Guy.  Whatever you call him, he’s our guy for today.

            Bill Nye—or William Sandford Nye, as he parents named him—was born on November 27, 1955.  He had an early penchant for science—and humor.  He said, “My family is funny.  I mean funny in the sense that we make people laugh, not just funny looking.”  After he graduated from Cornell with a degree in mechanical engineering, he moved to Seattle to work as an engineer for Boeing.   He say, “I’ve always loved airplanes and flight.  There’s a hydraulic resonance suppressor ‘Quinke’ tube on the 747 horizontal stabilizer drive system that I like to think of as my tube.”

            That sort of humor spawned his second career.  While working as an engineer during the day, Nye began doing stand-up comedy in the evenings.  He called into a live Seattle television show one afternoon to correct the host’s pronunciation of “gigawatts.”  Soon after, he was a regular, answering science questions and cracking jokes.  That’s where he earned the name “Bill Nye the Science Guy.”

            And that’s how most of us got to know Bill Nye.  His PBS television show about science aired for five years in the 1990s.  The show sought to de-mystify science in a light-hearted manner, along the way earned 7 Emmys for Nye and 18 overall for the show.

            Nye believes that science is of essential importance to sustaining life on earth, and his messages have focused more recently on combating climate change.  He rebukes the claims that one doesn’t need to believe science or scientists.  “You can’t chose to believe in gravity; if you walk off a cliff, you will be affected adversely.  Climate change is not a 50-50 thing which you can choose to believe or not.  If you choose to ignore human’s influence on the world’s climate, we will be affected adversely.”  And he walks the talk—he competes with his friend and neighbor, Ed Begley, to see whose home is more sustainable.  He has installed solar power, solar hot water, and a water-saving garden in his home (but I don’t know who is winning).

            His more recent Netflix show, “Bill Nye Saves the World,” reflected that more serious side of his mission.  “I don’t think of it as educational so much as thought provoking,” he said.  “It’s science with an opinion.  We hope to give our viewers a scientific perspective on global issues.”  Nye was co-chair of the global March for Science in 2017, and he protested outside the White House when President Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Climate Accords.

            We can expect Bill Nye to keep up his assault on those who would deny science and deny climate change.  He says, “Climate change is bigger than I am; it’s bigger than you are.  I’m sorry, peple, you can shoot the messenger but the climate is still changing.”

References:

BillNye.com.  Bill Nye biography.  Available at:  https://billnye.com/resources/Bill-Nye-bio-2018.pdf.  Accessed November 26, 2019.

Sayej, Nadja.  2017.  Bill Nye: ‘You can shoot the messenger but climate is still changing.’  The Guardian, 25 Jul 2017.  Available at:  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul/25/bill-nye-the-science-guy-climate-change-books-netflix.  Accessed November 26, 2019.

Bees are among the world’s most important insects.  And a great deal of what we know about bees comes from the career of Dr. Anna Maurizio, who became one of the world’s leading melissopalynologists.  You do know what a melissopalynologist is, don’t you?

            Anna Maurizio was born in Switzerland on November 26, 1900 (died 1993).  Her father was a professor of botany, and Maurizio followed closely in his footsteps, completing a doctorate on the topic of mycology.  She learned of fungi that  affected the lives of bees.  She started working on bees, and never stopped.  In 1928, she began working in the Bee Section of the Swiss Federal Research Institute for Milk Husbandry, and she remained there for the majority of her career.

            Her research ranged widely across bee biology.  Studies of pollen dominated the first half of her career, covering the relationships between bees and pollen.  In 1954, she published a major work on the composition, collection, utilization and identifications of pollen that established her as the world’s leading scholar on the subject.  Her knowledge of pollen led in the second half of her career to studies of the linkage between types of pollen and various aspects of bee nutrition, honey characteristics and ecological relationships.  As she wrote,

“The concept of bienenbotanik (bee botany) comprises the relations of the honeybees with their plant environment.  To this field belong first of all bee plants (secretion of nectar, collection of nectar, production and collection of pollen), poisoning of honeybees by plants, microscopy of honey and pollen and also the relation of apiculture and agriculture.”

            Anna Maurizio pioneered techniques to trace the pollen in honey back to the originating plants—that work is called melissopalynology.  Understanding the pollen composition of honey allows researchers to trace plant use by bees, a fundamental aspect of bee ecology.  From that basic research (her work is still the foundation of much pollen analysis) comes rationales for conserving plant diversity and controlling factors that reduce bee survival.

            And that work is important for environmental sustainability, because bees play such a large role in the pollination of flowering plants.  According to the Earth Day Network, individuals of the world’s 20,000 bee species (4,000 in the U.S.) pollinate about 35% of the world’s food production, valued at $577 billion U.S. dollars—and more importantly, feeding billions of people.  In total, about 90% of all flowering plants in the world (that’s about 370,000 species) depend on insects, especially bees, for pollination.

            How effective are bees at pollination?  A typical colony of bees includes from 10,000-80,000 individuals.  The Earth Day Network uses 25,000 as an average number, and then suggests the average bee takes 10 trips to and from the hive each day and visits 50-1000 flowers on each trip.  Therefore, one colony can pollinate between 12.5 and 250 million flowers per day!

            Bee populations have been under stress lately.  In the U.S. and Europe, colonies have been losing about 30% of bees annually, for all sorts of reasons—habitat loss, climate change, diseases and chemical pollution.  This rate of loss is well below replacement levels..  However, in other parts of the world (and bees live everywhere, from deserts to polar regions), we know little about the condition of bee populations.

            Looks like we need a lot more melissopalynologists—or maybe just apiculturists—to “bee” working!

References:

Earth Day Network.  2018.  Fact Sheet:  Bees.  Available at:  https://www.earthday.org/2018/05/23/fact-sheet-bees/.  Accessed November 25, 2019.

Encyclopedia.com.  Maurizio, Anna (1900-1993).  Available at :  https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/maurizio-anna-1900-1993.  Accessed November 25, 2019.

Louveaux, J.  1990.  L’oeuvre d’Anna Murizio.  Apidologie 21(5):397-416.  Available at:  https://www.apidologie.org/articles/apido/abs/1990/05/Apidologie_0044-8435_1990_21_5_ART0003/Apidologie_0044-8435_1990_21_5_ART0003.html.  Accessed November 25, 2019.

Playfair, Richard.  2019.  How Many Bees Live in a Hive?  School of Bees, February 10, 2019.  Available at:  https://schoolofbees.com/how-many-bees-live-in-a-hive/.  Accessed November 25, 2019.

When science and politics mix, the result is usually bad—and science is generally the loser, but only in the short term.  Such was the case of Nikolai Vavilov, an extraordinary Russian geneticist who ran afoul of Soviet doctrine under Jospeh Stalin.

            Vavilov was born on November 25, 1887, to a wealthy family in Moscow (the “wealthy” part is foreboding).  Always interested in natural sciences, he studied agronomy at the Moscow Agricultural Institute.  There he formed his life’s goal—to use the new science of genetics to breed agricultural crops tailored to specific growing conditions (temperature, soil type, water availability), and, therefore, to rid the world of hunger and famine.

            He was up to the task. He spoke several languages, had a photographic memory and was a tireless researcher. “Life is short,:” he wrote, “there is no time to lose.”  His scientific abilities were recognized early, and he advanced rapidly through the ranks of Russian academia and government science.  People liked him and gladly joined his mission.  He traveled across the world on more than 100 expeditions, amassing a seed collection (what we now call a gene bank) of 250,000 specimens, the largest in the world at the time.  He won awards (including the first ever Lenin Prize), led international botanical congresses, and wrote seminal works on plant distribution and diversity (today we would call that biogeography).

            His work grew from the emerging understanding of genetics, based on the work of Gregor Mendel.  Genes determined the traits of a plant, and those genes separated and recombined in ways that produced diversity in plant characteristics.  That process could be guided by scientists to produce new hybrids with desirable traits.  After disastrous crop failures in the new Soviet Union after World War I, the nation’s president, Vladimir Lenin, was looking for solutions—and he found Vavilov. 

            In 1922, when just 35, he was installed as head of the research institute that became the V. I. Lenin All-union Academy of Agriculture.  He built the institute into a network of 400+ agricultural research stations across the country, employing more than 20,000 workers.  As Russia Today states, he “was one of the most outstanding scientists of the twentieth century.”

            When Lenin died in 1924, the country was taken over by Joseph Stalin.  Gradually, a different concept of genetics took hold in the country.  Led by Trofim Lysenko, a peasant farmer turned plant breeder, the new view was that organisms could inherit characteristics derived from their environment.  Lysenko advanced a practice of chilling wheat seeds so they could be planted earlier in the spring, supposedly increasing yield.  And seeds from those plants would then acquire the ability to live in colder conditions.  This theory was wrong (acquired characteristics are not inherited), but that did not dissuade Stalin.  Lysenko was from the proletariat, Vavilov was from the bourgeoisie; therefore Lysenko was correct.

            Vavilov refused to stand down.  “We shall go to the pyre,” he said, we shall burn, but we shall not retreat from our convictions.”  Convictions is what he got.  In 1940, Soviet police arrested and imprisoned Vavilov for sabotaging Soviet agriculture, spying for England, and being a right-wing conspirator.  He died in prison in 1943, when just 56 years old, and buried in a common grave without fanfare.

            The passage of time, however, has restored Vavilov’s scientific and Russian reputations.  His major works on the geographical locations of centers of plant diversity are acknowledged as the basis for new scientific fields in ecology and evolution.  His pioneering gene bank led the establishment of many others across the world, one of the most important plant conservation strategies we have today.  Scientific institutes across Russia now carry Vavilov’s name, as do streets in Moscow and St. Petersburg, glaciers and a crater on the moon.

            So,the lesson is clear.  In the longer term, truth will always prevail over lies, especially in science. The struggle may produce martyrs, like Nikolai Vavilov, but truth will always prevail.

References:

Janick, Jules 2015.  Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov:  Plant Geographer, Geneticist, Martyr of Science.  HortScience 50(6):772-776.

Klevantseva, Tatyana.  Prominent Russians:  Nikolay Vavilov.  RT Russiapedia. Available at:  https://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/science-and-technology/nikolay-vavilov/.  Accessed November 19, 2019.

N.I.Vavilov Institute of Plant Genetic Resources.  Biography of Nikolai I. Vavilov.  Available at:  http://vir.nw.ru/test/vir.nw/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=88:00-biography-of-nikolai-i-vavilov&catid=28:02-nikolay-ivanovich-vavilov&Itemid=495&lang=en.  Accessed November 19, 2019.