News Reporter: Climate Coach: Meet the bear and rock people

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Down-to-earth advice for life on our changing planet.

By Michael J. Coren

Welcome. This week, soil heat waves and urban grizzlies. But first, learning the grammar of life.

I picked up the 408-page book "Braiding Sweetgrass" by Robin Wall Kimmerer with low expectations.

Subtitled "Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants" the book felt poised to tip into platitudes. And Kimmerer, a botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, was, in her own words, not "a professional writer."

Sometimes it's wonderful to be wrong. After reading the book, I've learned to speak a new language that has changed my vocabulary of the natural world.

In English, we are obsessed with things. Nouns proliferate. Verbs get short shrift. Just 30 percent of short words in English are verbs, writes Kimmerer. In her ancestral language, Potawatomi, spoken by Native Americans living in what is today Wisconsin, 70 percent are verbs.

The difference is that we think of the non-human world as dead — or at least as mere objects, undeserving of respect.

In English, for example, "bay" is an inanimate noun, hemmed in by shores and our language's grammar. Yet the analogous verb wiikwegamaa — to be a bay — conveys how this "living water has decided to shelter itself between these shores," she writes, "conversing with cedar and a flock of baby mergansers."

The animacy of the world, she writes, is a language teetering on the edge of extinction — yet one we know instinctually at birth. "Our toddlers speak of plants and animals, as if they were people," she writes, "extending to them self and intention and compassion, until we teach them not to."

What would happen, Kimmerer asks, if we thought of the living world as alive, rather than as things with their own will, or right to existence?

"Imagine, walking through a richly inhabited world of birch people, bear people, rock people, beings, we think of them, therefore, speak up as persons worthy of our respect, of inclusion of the people in the world," she writes. "Maybe a grammar of animacy could lead us to whole new ways of living in the world … It's all in the pronouns."

Now, as I watch the birds flit through the Monterey cypress on walks near my house, I'm always curious as to who my neighbors might be.

Have questions for my next column? Write climatecoach@washpost.com. I read all your emails.

Field Sample

About 1,000 birds migrating south during the night were killed when they flew into the windows of the McCormick Place Lakeside Center, a Chicago exhibition hall, between Oct. 4 and 5, according to the Chicago Audubon Society.

Each year, up to a billion birds die this way, especially during peak migration periods in the spring and fall. "Anywhere you've got glass, you're gonna have birds hitting the windows," Bryan Lenz at the American Bird Conservancy told the Guardian.

Workers at the Field Museum in Chicago inspect the bodies of birds killed in building strikes. (Lauren Nassef/Field Museum/AP)

There are easy fixes. Keeping internal lights off at night, and adding dots or patterns to interrupt reflections, helps birds avoid window glass. A renovation at New York's Javitz Center cut deaths by 90 percent. Chicago, the deadliest city in the United States for migrating birds, according to the Audubon Society, approved a bird-friendly design ordinance. But it has yet to roll it out.

Snapshot

A devastating drought has parched Brazil's Amazon. Between July and September, eight Brazilian states recorded the lowest rainfall in four decades over this period. That's affecting most of the large rivers feeding the Amazon river basin, which account for 20 percent of the world's freshwater. The lack of water is killing fish and river dolphins, and stranding communities that depend on the rivers for supplies.

The AP reports two climate phenomena — El Niño warming the Equatorial Pacific waters and the warming of northern tropical Atlantic Ocean waters — are exacerbating the Amazon's cyclical weather pattern amid record global temperatures.

A fisherman uses water from a well in drought-affected Manaus, Brazil. (Bruno Kelly/Reuters)

In the past few months, brutal winter heat waves have swept Brazil, while devastating floods have killed dozens in the country's south.

"We are already living a scenario of an altered climate that oscillates between extreme events, either of drought or heavy rains," Ane Alencar, science director for the nonprofit Amazon Environmental Research Institute, or IPAM, told the Associated Press. "This has very serious consequences not only for the environment, but also for people and the economy."

The Second Degree

After reading my column about how to buy shampoos and personal care products without the water, many of you mentioned one of the original solutions: powdered laundry detergent.

It turns out that liquid and powders both work great on fabrics, just slightly differently. Consumer Reports says powder detergents excel at removing stains like dirt, clay and mud, while liquid detergents deal better with grease and body soil. But most of this boils down to preference, Jennifer Ahoni of Procter & Gamble told Consumer Reports. You can always pretreat stains as needed. If you're tired of lugging giant plastic jugs of laundry detergent, and paying a premium for all that water, go with powder.

In response to the image of a recycling bin in the Netherlands that took electronics, batteries and bulbs in a recent newsletter, Jeff pointed out that America has its own version: "Every Home Depot and Lowe's in the Portland, OR region has a similar recycling receptacle as the one shown from The Netherlands: compact fluorescent [bulbs], alkaline batteries, rechargeable batteries, phones/tablets and associated chargers."

On the Climate Front

From The Washington Post:

Scientists are mapping out underground fungi that could help make the planet more resilient to climate change before it's too late.

Rich countries promised poor nations billions for climate change, but they aren't paying, threatening success at the upcoming global climate talks.

These are the places that could become 'unlivable' as the Earth warms.

A watchdog group just found a big flaw in a landmark environmental treaty: F-gases.

From elsewhere:

The evidence wildlife reserves work on a global scale has been scant — until now, reports Anthropocene.

Can the West live with grizzly bears coming to town? asks the New York Times.

Every hour, extreme weather damage has cost the world $16 million between 2000 and 2019, reports the Guardian.

Soil heat waves are getting more extreme, says Wired, with implications for ecosystems and fields that grow our food.

Meat and dairy dominate the greenhouse gas emissions from our diet, especially beef and processed meat. Did you know swapping just 10 percent of these for fruits, vegetables, beans and even seafood can cut dietary emissions by 33 percent, according to the journal Nature?

Miska does. Here she is eating one of her favorite treats: carrots and celery.

Send me your pet snack photos and stories at climatecoach@washpost.com.