I THOUGHT I’D WRITE AND GIVE YOU a Crewmember update from our part of beautiful Spaceship Earth, Benicia, California: 38°,03’56.56N, 122°09’19.55”W.

I remember your talk where you recalled that, “People say to me that I wonder what it’d be like to be on a spaceship and I say you don’t really know what you’re doing. … Everybody is an astronaut who all live aboard a beautiful little spaceship called Earth.”

The good news is that more and more people and entities are either aware or are becoming aware of the need to live sustainably. That is, meeting today’s needs without jeopardizing the ability of future generations to meet their needs. So, on an incremental scale, people, governments and enterprises are taking action.

I’m not sure this next update would fit the “good news” category, Bucky, but our totally comprehensive and integrated Spaceship Earth is also making corrections given the new conditions we humans have added to the systems of our planet.

Greenhouse gas emissions

Carbon dioxide, CO2, parts per million are now at 402.10 ppm (as of April 27, 2014) as recorded by NOAA at the Mauna Loa Earth System Research Laboratory. Indeed, the needle is moving in the wrong direction. Last year for the end of April the reading was 399.57 ppm, and 10 years ago, 380.38 ppm. There’s a very sobering 3½ minute NOAA video that shows the trend lines (see link below).

Ocean acidification, warming and pollution

We learned last week that ocean acidification caused by the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere falling back into the ocean and producing carbonic acid in Pacific Ocean waters off the Northern California Coast is threatening sea butterflies, or pteropods. These creatures are part of the food chain for salmon, herring, other fish and some birds.

The ocean is warming the fastest at Antarctica. The overall global warming of oceans is already causing massive coral reef die-off. A recent Scientific American article reviewed the rapid deterioration and actual dissolving of coral reefs, which help cleanse the ocean and provide habitat for sea life around the world. The report shows that runoff from the industrial-scale use of agricultural fertilizers and pesticides, as well as sewage, causes large patches of ocean dead zones.

Here is what Scientific American says: “The cause of such “hypoxic” (lacking oxygen) conditions is usually eutrophication, an increase in chemical nutrients in the water, leading to excessive blooms of algae that deplete underwater oxygen levels. Nitrogen and phosphorous from agricultural runoff are the primary culprits, but sewage, vehicular and industrial emissions and even natural factors also play a role in the development of dead zones. … Perhaps the most infamous U.S. dead zone is an 8,500-square-mile swath (about the size of New Jersey) of the Gulf of Mexico, not far from where the nutrient-laden Mississippi River, which drains farms up and down the Midwest, lets out. Besides decimating the region’s once-teeming shrimp industry, low oxygen levels in the water there have led to reproductive problems for fish, leading to lack of spawning and low egg counts. Other notable U.S. dead zones today occur off the coasts of Oregon and Virginia.”

Oh yes, the sea level of oceans is also rising and will eventually cause massive displacements around the world, and in particular in the Bangladesh area.

Rain and drought

The California drought continues. Our City Council just voted to ask citizens to voluntarily reduce residential water usage by 20 percent. As California is a semi-arid state (and Bucky, we are quickly drifting off the word “semi”), it would be nice to think of how to reallocate the 22 to 26 inches of rain over a two-day period in parts of Alabama and Florida to the drought-stricken parts of the U.S.

But the trends are that the severity of storms and weather will continue over the Eastern and Midwestern states, while California and the Southwest dry up.

Increased rains — especially the type that dumps inches in short periods — will not only affect growing cycles but will increase soil erosion and, yes, the flow of fertilizers and pesticides into waterways.

It’s my understanding that fire season in California is no longer a season but a year-long concern. The National Interagency Fire Center’s May 1 Predictive Services report shows “significant wildland fire potential” for California, southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. Fires don’t just burn forests and meadows but habitat, animals, homes and people.

Climate change

All that I can say, dear Bucky, is that I am most grateful for not having had to endure another Minnesota winter. It was so cold and snowy in the U.S. for so long that it depressed the economy and dampened earnings on Wall Street.

Naturally, climate is a complex system because there are so many variables. When I taught scenario planning I would use the example of the complexity of predicting the weather. The more variables added to the formula for affecting the temperature, the harder it is to predict what the temperature and the overall weather conditions will be. The same holds true for climate change. Not everywhere is going to be affected the same way, and it’s a misnomer to call climate change “global warming” because there will be multiple effects.

However, the state of California’s report, “Our Changing Climate 2012,” indicates that over the next 20 to 90 years we may see average temperatures rise 2 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit depending on how we are able to react and adapt.

Things won’t just “heat up” politically in Sacramento in the coming years. This report predicts that “extremely hot” days (at least 105 degrees Fahrenheit) will become more common. With more hot days comes the need for additional energy for air conditioning, moving water around and the adaptation of crops for growing conditions. Bucky, I’m glad I’ve got my home well insulated, and I’m glad I have solar panels. I can only imagine what the price of energy will be in coming years.

Get out the manual

With all the changes we are experiencing, I know we still have much work to do in remembering we are all crew members aboard this precious sphere. I’ll share your thoughts again about Spaceship Earth:

“Our little Spaceship Earth is only eight thousand miles in diameter, which is almost a negligible dimension in the great vastness of space. … Our little Spaceship Earth is right now travelling at sixty thousand miles an hour around the sun and is also spinning axially, which, at the latitude of Washington, D.C., adds approximately one thousand miles per hour to our motion. Each minute we both spin at one hundred miles and zip in orbit at one thousand miles. That is a whole lot of spin and zip. … Spaceship Earth was so extraordinarily well invented and designed that to our knowledge humans have been on board it for two million years not even knowing that they were on board a ship. … One of the interesting things to me about our spaceship is that it is a mechanical vehicle, just as is an automobile. If you own an automobile, you realize that you must put oil and gas into it, and you must put water in the radiator and take care of the car as a whole. You begin to develop quite a little thermodynamic sense. You know that you’re either going to have to keep the machine in good order or it’s going to be in trouble and fail to function. We have not been seeing our Spaceship Earth as an integrally designed machine which to be persistently successful must be comprehended and serviced in total.”

I’m hopeful, Bucky, that one day — and soon — we will remember your wisdom and start comprehending and servicing our beautiful Spaceship Earth accordingly.

Learn more

• designsciencelab.com/resources/OperatingManual_BF.pdf

• NOAA: esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/weekly.html

• Video of 880,000 years of atmospheric carbon measurements (sobering!): esrl.noaa.gov/

• gmd/ccgg/trends/history.html

• Pteropods: Seattle Times article: apps.seattletimes.com/reports/sea-change/2014/apr/30/pteropod-shells-dissolving/

Constance Beutel is the chair of Benicia’s Community Sustainability Commission. She is a university professor and videographer and holds a doctorate from the University of San Francisco.