Enough With Coral As Home Decor

Even in sleepy, organic, green-centric Mendocino, one cannot escape the dead, bleached remains of once vibrant, living coral reefs. At least three different stores along the main strip either used dead coral colonies and reef mollusks in window merchandising or flat-out sold dead coral as objet d'art.

Enough already!

Coral isn't just too precious to wear, it's too precious to end up as chachki in the window or on a shelf next to that picture of Aunt Peg. Read up on the impacts of coral reef harvesting and what you can do to help keep coral alive and on reefs where they belong.

Algal Knots

Manuel and I just returned from Mendocino where we spent five days sleeping late, eating well, napping, strolling the cold, foggy shorelines, and celebrating our back-to-back birthdays. Forty-five years old! How did that happen?

As I swing back into the real world (and begin preparing for my AARP paperwork), take some time to enjoy this photo-study of beach wrack. Breathe deeply... you can almost smell the glorious intertidal bouquet!

Rocks Suck Carbon

Forget your complex carbon sequestration schemes involving tree planting or ocean fertilization with iron filings. According to a new report to be published in the November 11 edition of the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences, peridotite--the most common rock found in the Earth's mantle directly below the crust--has been found to soak-up carbon dioxide.

As reported by geologist Peter Kelemen and geochemist Juerg Matter, peridotite (pictured above) naturally absorbs gaseous CO2 and converts it into solid minerals such as calcite.

Hooray, we're saved!

But wait, peridotite is found miles beneath the Earth's crust and mining the rock is impractical.

Oh no, we're still doomed!

But wait, peridotite is found at a few locations on the Earth's surface such as Papua New Guinea, Oman, and Greece where tectonic plate collisions have exposed deep mantle rocks. In fact I once strolled through vast glacially carved valleys of peridotite in the Tablelands of Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland.

Hooray, we're saved!

But wait, peridotite can't naturally absorb enough CO2 on it's own and there's not enough of it on the Earth's surface to really make a dent in greenhouse gas reduction.

Oh no, we're still doomed.

But wait, Keleman and Matter report they have devised a means to enhance peridotite's naturally occurring carbon absorption capacity 1 million times. They predict the enhancement--injecting peridotite with heated water containing pressurized carbon dioxide--would result in 2 billion or more of the 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted by human activity every year to be permanently captured in mineral form.

Hooray, we're saved!

But wait, the method would require thousands of miles of pipeline transporting poisonous gas, and the major CO2 producing nations with little or no access to peridotite (the US, China, and India) are potentially shit out of luck.

Oh no, we're... I give up!

Yes We Did... Except In California

It's a morning where I should be feeling elated, relieved, and victorious. Instead, I find I'm battling with anger over Proposition 8 passing. No sadness or grieving... just straight out anger that my home State of California was duped by the rhetoric of fear (funded primarily from christian groups and individuals). I'd at least like to think that the good people of California were duped, as the alternative--that they truly believe people like myself and the millions of others in the GLBT community simply don't deserve equal rights--is a path I don't wish (emotionally or intellectually) to walk down.

All this talk of "America finally united," only fuels my pain. I stood in a crowd of hundreds last night on the streets of Oakland and watched the election results roll in. We all burst into screams and tears of joy as it was announced that Obama had secured the necessary electoral votes. Everyone I could see, Black, White, Asian, Latin, were shaking hands, clapping, and hugging. An African American woman next to me, tears rolling down her face, grabbed me by the arm as we all shouted cheers of, "Yes we can!"

As much as I wanted to be taken over by the moment (and believe me, it was a powerful, transcendent feeling last night) my own tears of joy were held back knowing that Proposition 8 would be a hard fight at the polls. My suspicions were confirmed when I got home and heard that Prop 8 support was leading. It continued the lead throughout the night, and this morning 52% of the vote showed support for Prop 8's passing.

It's still unclear what this means for the thousands of same-sex marriages performed over the past 6 months since the ban on gay marriage was found unconstitutional. In conversations with other angry friends over coffee, we talked about the stark incongruity that Californians could elect the first African American into the nation's highest seat of power yet in that same moment, touch a voting screen or mark a ballot card to deny other Californians of fundamental rights.

We played the blame game for a while. Why did SF Mayor Gavin Newsom allow his arrogance to play into the hands of Prop 8 supporters? The constantly running TV and radio ads of Newsom smugly announcing that same sex marriage is happening "whether you like it or not" played well in San Francisco, but enraged inland communities. And why didn't No on 8 supporters react more swiftly to the devious strategy that framed the proposition as safeguarding children from learning about same sex marriage in schools.

Prop 8 supporters tapped into some visceral fear that trumped any laid back, easy going, good life, California-esqe "live and let live" credo we all like to pretend we live under. They campaigned on a platform that "things will change if we don't pass this proposition." When in reality, the only change that would happen is if Prop 8 passes. It would strip GLBT Californians of rights. If Prop 8 went down, it would be business as usual. Gay marriage would not be mandatory instruction in schools, same sex couples could marry and be legally protected under state laws. Church steeples would not have crumbled to the ground, California would not have turned overnight into Sodom and Gomorrah, and packs of leather daddies and dykes on bikes would not have set up recruiting stations in every valley town.

I've now lived in three states--Massachusetts, Maine, and now California--where the long fought for rights for legally recognized equality for GLBT people has been won, briefly celebrated, then stripped away by out-of-state interests and funding and the machinations of over zealous religious groups preying on archaic fears. Massachusetts managed to defeat bigotry and fear and now remains the only US state to allow same sex unions. Last night saw California, Florida, and Arizona pass bans. But California's ban stings more profoundly because it marked the first time that voters rejected same-sex marriage in a state where it was already legal.

I know I'm supposed to keep my chin up and forge ahead. That's what civil rights supporters do. But I'm challenged today to find a shred of civility. I need to try to center myself in the "greater" good of President-elect Obama. Even though he himself does not support same-sex marriage, he may be able to seat new Supreme Court justices over the next four years. Justices whose constitutional interpretations aren't clouded by fundamentalist ideology and bigotry.

YES WE CAN!

On my way home here in Oakland's Jack London Square, it was like Mardi Gras. People had taken to the streets, musicians were playing outside one of the blues clubs on Broadway as Oakland residents danced, screamed, snapped photographs, and cried. It was an emotional explosion of relief, disbelief, and pride. We all got to share a moment of history together with, for at least tonight, nothing but hope and promise ahead.

Hope you are feeling the buzz as well!