Tag: climate change

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Planting the seeds

Photo by Eze Amos.

Devin Floyd has made his knowledge of, and love for, the Piedmont into a personal vocation by working to restore it in all its ecological diversity.

Floyd is the executive director of the Center for Urban Habitats, an environmental education, research, and consulting group that he created in 2012. But its mission really began decades ago, with a young boy raised in the Blue Ridge.

When Floyd was about 6, the family moved to the mountains of northwest North Carolina, eventually settling in southwest Virginia, in a log cabin in the Mt. Rogers area. “We lived in the woods,” Floyd recalls. “My parents made a living making crafts and working with plants, and my grandmother encouraged me to engage with nature. I spent every day outside, and absorbed so much about the animals and plants.”

Floyd earned a baseball scholarship to James Madison University and a degree in prehistoric archaeology (with minors in geology and art). He got a job as an archaeologist at James Madison’s Montpelier in Orange, and then at Oatlands in Leesburg, where he also did work as a freelance technical illustrator. Archaeology, Floyd says, requires a skill at reading landscape, which came naturally to him, given his upbringing. In addition, concentrating in this one region of Virginia was deepening his knowledge of the flora, fauna, geology, and ecological niches of this area.

His environmental interests led Floyd into a collaboration with nature-lovers, hikers, educators, and scientists in the Mount Rogers area. The result was the Blue Ridge Discovery Center, near Marion, Virginia. The nonprofit, which Floyd co-founded in 2008, has a mission to combine environmental research, education, conservation, and stewardship in a multi-faceted approach to learning about and living with the natural world.

By this time, Floyd and his wife had settled in Charlottesville. Floyd was working at Monticello on a major project, a plantation survey of Tufton, one of Thomas Jefferson’s farm holdings bordering Monticello. But Floyd’s interests were evolving.

“I became increasingly aware that people saw [the landscape] as here to manipulate,” Floyd says. “But I was reading it as plants responding to the geology, the soils, all the inputs of their environment.” He began looking for the areas that were still free of modern human degradation—and he saw a whole new world.

The Piedmont, a geological area that stretches from Alabama to the Hudson River Valley, is the most populous ecosystem in North America, Floyd points out, and has been through centuries of human habitation and activity. “But even here, all over are little pieces of ground that are undisturbed, like finding a little time capsule.” He calls these pockets “remnants,” areas that have never been developed, never been sprayed or treated with herbicides, never even been plowed.

With this personal epiphany, says Floyd, “everything changed.” He started using his environmental and botanical knowledge to create landscapes using plants specific to that particular microhabitat. His first project was designing the plantings for a homeowner’s patio; instead of the usual Virginia native or rock garden plants, he selected species that fit the site’s particular geology and microhabitat—in this case, a Piedmont mafic barren (mafic referring to the underlying rock types and barren meaning that natural plant growth is sparse).

To meet the needs of clients who wanted more detailed ecological assessments of the habitats, plants, and animals across their properties, Floyd began finding and collaborating with others in the Charlottesville area who were equally devoted and knowledgeable about this area’s ecology.

In 2014, he left his Monticello job to concentrate full-time on the Center for Urban Habitats, a group of like-minded environmentalists and educators (including his wife Rachel), with specialties from plants, birds, and insects to landscape restoration, publications, and web design. The organization’s mix of environmental research, conservation, and education was like that which spurred the Blue Ridge Discovery Center, but instead of the wilder area of southwest Virginia, CUH’s focus was the more domesticated landscape of Charlottesville and its surrounding counties. If he was going to educate folks about their natural world, Floyd thought, “Let’s go to their backyard.”

Many of CUH’s first projects were as much educational as environmental. The Wildlife Garden at Clark Elementary School was designed as a hands-on way for children to learn ecological basics, using native plants specifically adapted to the site and exceptionally supportive for wildlife. Jackson-Via Elementary School’s Owl Magnet, which students helped build and now study as it evolves, created a habitat with the right mix of plants, insects, and animals to make a perfect hunting habitat for owls. A native pollinator sanctuary in Friendship Court (now Kindlewood) was part of a community garden project led by the Urban Agriculture Collective of Charlottesville and other community organizations. Most recently, CUH helped design and build an outdoor living classroom for science and art at Nelson County Middle School.

These and other projects—including a native plants garden in Court Square, pollinator plantings on the curb extensions along Hinton Avenue, and a path and meadows project still under construction at Ix Art Park—were created in cooperation with community partners and funded by local and state agencies, donations, and grants.

Armand and Bernice Thieblot turned to Devin Floyd to transform the derelict soapstone quarry on their Schuyler property into The Quarry Gardens, which now includes 14 ecozones, seven conservation areas, an education center, and walking trails. Photo by Tom Daly.

Floyd was increasingly sought out by private landowners seeking to return their property to its more native state. One of CUH’s best-known and most ambitious projects grew out of a 2014 presentation Floyd did about the Ix Art Park project for a master gardeners group, which included Bernice Thieblot who, with her husband Armand, owned a large ridgetop tract near Schuyler that included a derelict soapstone quarry. Inspired by a visit to British Columbia’s Butchart Gardens, extensive formal gardens created a century ago in a former limestone quarry, the Thieblots wanted to build an exhibition garden of native plants, and Bernice saw Floyd as “just the right person.”

“Our site is unusual,” Thieblot explains. “It’s right on the edge of both the Piedmont and the Blue Ridge [ecoregions], and the soapstone bedrock means our soil is very pH basic, which is unusual in this area. It’s also hilly, with lots of wet and dry areas. Devin came out to take a look, and was intrigued.”

Over the next year, the CUH team came out every few weeks to survey the site and its existing biota, design a plan to restore the microhabitats there, and develop a comprehensive plant list. Site work and planting began in the spring of 2016, and The Quarry Gardens opened in the spring of 2017. It now includes 14 ecozones and seven conservation areas, as well as an education center that offers exhibits on both the local ecology and the history of the soapstone industry, general and specialist tours, two miles of walking trails, and speakers on topics from native plants to geology, spiders, fungus, and moths. And because the work is never done in a garden, the CUH team leads volunteer work days every Friday morning.

The 40-acre Quarry Gardens was a massive challenge, but Floyd and CUH were willing to take on smaller, backyard projects. In 2018, a recent retiree from northern Virginia bought an Albemarle County house with a backyard that was “a disaster—the former owner had used it for doggie day care.”

Over the years, the new owner became more and more interested in native plants, and Floyd became well known in native plant circles. She invited him to take a look at her yard, and “he came out in the freezing cold, and got all excited. He told me I had the kind of soil that Jefferson and Madison had come here to farm,” she says.

CUH developed a four-zone garden plan, and preparing and planting the yard took a couple of years. At that time, the homeowner recalls, “native plants were hard to source, and expensive.” Getting a grant from a local government conservation program helped (see sidebar), but she’s still happily investing in her piece of ecological heaven. “You should see the difference. The wildflowers I have, and the birds I get here … I get hawks hunting in my yard. As they say, if you build it, they will come.”

While gardeners’ knowledge about and demand for native plants was increasing, Floyd found the ones on sale at nurseries weren’t always the same plants he was finding in unspoiled habitats. Many plants have developed specific genotypes adapted to their individual environmental microhabitats. To meet that need, CUH is creating a network of local genotype native plant growers, including Twinleaf Native Nursery, Little Bluestem Nursery, Hummingbird Hill Native Plant Nursery, and private landowners.

The challenge of restoring the environment that was here originally is not all about plants. Perhaps one of CUH’s most unusual projects is the salamander crossing under Route 29 at Polo Grounds and Rio Mills roads. In the 1990s, local nature-lovers Bess and Jim Murray had located one of the largest colonies of spotted salamanders in the state, and the amphibians needed to migrate every spring from their wooded upland habitat to their mating grounds on the floodplains across the busy highway. Working with Albemarle County, VDOT, the Virginia Safe Wildlife Corridor Collaborative, and Riverbend Development, CUH was able to get a wildlife tunnel and guide walls constructed to allow salamanders (and other creatures) to cross safely under Route 29 and fulfill their life cycle.

While the need for more research, education, restoration, and conservation are unending, Floyd is also taking on a whole new aspect of recovering ancient landscapes. Among the remnants of the prehistoric Piedmont that Floyd has been identifying are a habitat that has been ignored: grasslands. It’s a common assumption that pre-colonial Virginia was one huge expanse of forest. In fact, he says, “50 percent of the Piedmont was savanna.”
CUH has already identified more than a thousand grassland remnants in central Virginia, and is beginning to identify patterns in their distinctive biota. Many of these plants are clonal (growing vegetatively, not by sexual reproduction), which makes them literally ancient. Floyd describes finding these old-growth habitats as “coming across an abandoned cabin in the woods.”

Savanna remnants may be tiny, but they aren’t rare. CUH has found at least 300 sites on roadsides throughout our area. “You could drive by one every day, within 10 miles of your house,” Floyd says. “There are some grassland areas at Preddy Creek Trail Park, along the paths in Hilltop Meadows. Look for green milkweed.”

Grassland remnants of a size large enough to support wildlife as well as plants are particularly rich and biodiverse. CUH has already gotten two grants from the Virginia Native Plant Society to study these savanna fragments, with a goal of conserving and protecting them for further research. In one of the study proposals, Floyd wrote, “Before we can make room [for] natural grasslands, or begin to inspire others to love and steward them, we must learn how to see them.”

Learning to see has been Devin Floyd’s life work.

When your yard needs a little green

Restoring a native plant community or creating a conservation-oriented landscape takes time—and money. The Thomas Jefferson Soil and Water Conservation District has supported several CUH projects, including the Owl Magnet at Jackson-Via Elementary School and the above-mentioned backyard restoration.

Funding for the backyard restoration came through a grant from TJSWCD’s Virginia Conservation Assistance Program, a cost-share program for residential or other developed land uses. VCAP provides financial, technical, and educational assistance to property owners who adopt eligible “best management practices” in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The Albemarle Conservation Assistance Program and Charlottesville Conservation Assistance Program are similar,
with special funding from Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville.

Property owners and schools or places of worship at least a year old may
be eligible for assistance to treat and control stormwater runoff, control erosion, conserve water within the landscape, improve riparian buffer areas, and promote native vegetation and wildlife habitats.

For more information, go to tjswcd.org/best-management-practices-homeowners.

Ed. note: This story has been updated to better clarify the details of Devin Floyd’s early life.

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Opinion The Editor's Desk

This week, 5/6

Forestwander.com

Like so many others, I’ve been taking a lot of walks lately. My walk, and getting the mail, have become the highlights of my day. In this, my quarantine life resembles my life when my first child was born. She came, too, in early March, and life slowed down enough that, for maybe the first time, I began to notice the progression of spring.

As I paraded up and down the Brooklyn blocks to get her to sleep or, more often, just to give myself something to do, I watched the world wake up, and I marked every flower. First the daffodils and forsythia, then the azaleas and the tulips. The magnolias gave way to the cherry blossoms. Finally, the rhododendron and the roses.

Here, we are lucky enough to leave near Meadow Creek, and this spring, with nowhere to go, I’ve watched the bare brown banks come slowly alive. I’ve noticed the first yellow wildflowers, lesser celandine (which a friend later informed me were invasive), and how the buttercups have shown up now, after the violets. My girls have been delighted by the preponderance of robins in the yard, the occasional flash of a bluebird. In the creek we’ve spotted lizards and snakes, and once, I swear, a turtle.

As cities around the world have seen how clean the air gets when auto and air travel drastically decrease, many people have also discovered a newfound connection to the natural world around them. That matters, because, while global emissions levels have dropped, they haven’t dropped enough.

To have any hope of mitigating the most disastrous effects of climate change, we will need to sustain much bigger shifts after the pandemic is over. So far, rational argument and evidence have failed to persuade the world to change. Perhaps remembering this time, when so many experienced nature as a source of solace and delight, will be what saves us.

 

 

 

 

Categories
Opinion The Editor's Desk

This week, 12/3

Photo: Skyclad Aerial

On Monday night, City Council took another step in its plan to tear down Guadalajara and Lucky 7 and build an $8.5 million, 300-car parking garage on Market Street, just a few blocks from an existing parking garage .

The move is part of a larger project to keep the county courts downtown, in which the city agreed to add 90 parking spaces for courthouse use. How the other 210 parking spaces got into the mix (or around 150 if you subtract existing spaces) is less clear—a study by “nationally recognized transportation consulting firm Kimley Horn” suggested the 300-car design “based on the dimensions of the site, traffic volumes in the area, and existing zoning.”

In other words, the thinking seems to have been, if you’re going to build a parking lot, why not make it as big as it can be?

The city’s proposed capital budget for 2021 includes almost $5 million for the garage,
while cutting the amount for new sidewalks from $400,000 to $100,000 and eliminating funding for bicycle infrastructure entirely.

That this might be in opposition to the climate goal this same City Council passed only months earlier (to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent by 2030, and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050), seems not to have been considered.

But projects like these don’t operate in a vacuum. Transportation accounts for roughly 27 percent of our local greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2016 report. Investing in car infrastructure while cutting funding for bike and pedestrian infrastructure is moving in exactly the wrong direction.

Last week, the U.N. released its annual Emissions Gap report, which “measures the gap between what we need to do and what we are actually doing to tackle climate change.” Greenhouse gas emissions are still rising worldwide, despite pledges to curb them. Clearly, Charlottesville City Council is not alone in being unwilling to connect the consequences of its daily decisions to the climate promises it has made. But that isn’t an excuse.

As Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists put it, “We are sleepwalking toward a climate catastrophe.”

It is well past time to act, and every decision matters.

Categories
Living

Hot topic: Experts discuss global warming and everyday ways to address it

Jeremy Hoffman, an earth scientist at Richmond’s Science Museum of Virginia, says climate change is altering the timing of seasonal transitions. Photo: Courtesy Piedmont Master Gardeners

Have you heard the news? The planet is getting hotter and it’s a real problem. That was the simple but important takeaway from a recent event at The Paramount Theater, hosted by Piedmont Master Gardeners and Virginia Cooperative Extension. Hundreds of attendees learned about the impact of climate change in the natural spaces around them, and what’s yet to come as temperatures steadily rise.

Even for the most conscientious Charlottesville resident, acknowledging and planning for climate change can feel overwhelming. But activists at the Paramount event warned that it’s imperative to know what lies ahead for our region—and our planet—in the face of global warming, and take action.

One simple option is to plant more trees to sequester increasing carbon dioxide emissions. You could not only help the Earth but also naturally cool your home by planting deciduous trees on its east and west sides. “We probably can’t stop climate change rapidly enough, so we’re going to have to learn to live with it,” said Francis Reilly, Jr., of Washington, D.C., the emcee and a master gardener with more than 35 years of experience as an advisor on environmental policy.

Reilly also suggested mitigating the effects of global warming by creating landscapes with woody, carbon dioxide-absorbing plants, and in a way that minimizes mowable grass. (Most mowers still use fossil fuels, in addition to the other environmental issues, like water and pesticide use, associated with lawns.)

According to Reilly, warmer winters mean garden pests like pine bark beetles and corn earworms will thrive. That’s bad. And less snow equals a drier spring. That’s also bad. An increase in frost-free days will make crops more vulnerable to colder temperatures, so that’s also not good—unless you’re growing sweet potatoes, which prefer a hot, dry environment (and which you probably aren’t growing).

Another speaker at the event, Jeremy Hoffman, a climate and earth scientist at Richmond’s Science Museum of Virginia, said we’re now seeing earlier springs and summers at the expense of falls and winters. In Charlottesville, he said, the average last-freeze date each spring has moved up a week—from April 8 to April 1—over the past 120 years. While this technically extends the growing season, it’s still problematic, because if farmers decide to get a head start on planting, their crops can be killed by a surprise frost. Despite climate change, a crop-destroying freeze is still possible, because of the Earth’s tilt, and this raises the probability of food shortages, Hoffman said.

Hoffman also brought up another climate-change fact: Because of warmer weather, the local mosquito season is now 20 days longer than it was in 1970. It also means folks with seasonal allergies are reaching for their Zyrtec earlier than ever. In 2017, Hoffman said, tree-allergy season in Richmond peaked on April 15, about eight days earlier than 30 years ago.

As the evidence mounts, more people have come to understand that climate change is real. Seventy percent of Virginians—and 80 percent of Charlottesville residents—agree that global warming is happening, according to a study by Utah State University, the University of California Santa Barbara, and Yale. Also statewide, 80 percent of people agree that global warming should be regulated as a pollutant. Curiously, only 42 percent think it will harm them personally, and only 21 percent say they became aware of global warming through the media.

Those statistics would suggest that we have a long way to go, even when it comes to awareness of the global rise in temperatures. Hoffman admitted that it can be a hard topic to discuss. To help start those conversations, he gave his audience some easy talking points: It’s real, it’s caused by humans, and there’s hope. Echoing other experts, he ensured that we haven’t yet lost the battle against climate change: “There’s a lot we can do about it.”

Samantha Baars, a former C-VILLE Weekly staff writer, now works for the Southern Environmental Law Center, which was a sponsor of the Paramount event.

Be a steward

Talking about climate change isn’t usually inspiring, but experts at the Paramount event repeatedly stressed how everyone has the power to help mitigate it. The nonprofit group Piedmont Master Gardeners says small decisions you make while landscaping can make a big difference for environmental health. Here are some tips:

• Plant native species in your garden and remove invasive species, because natives save water and provide food and habitat for wild-
life, while invasives can out-compete them and reduce biodiversity.

• Reduce or eliminate your use of toxic chemicals for landscaping.

• Prevent soil loss due to erosion by covering bare soil with ground covers, shrubs, grasses, and trees.

• Grow your own food and support area food producers by going to farmers markets and spots that use local ingredients.

• Conserve water by collecting it in a rain barrel or cistern and using it to hydrate your plants.

For more resources, visit piedmontmastergardeners.org

Categories
Arts

World of difference: ‘A Quick and Tragic Thaw’ chronicles the implications of a hotter Earth

“Plastic Projections” is one of the works on view in the climate change-focused “A Quick and Tragic Thaw” at UVA’s Ruffin Gallery through October 18. Courtesy of the artist

Escapism or activism? Should a work provide respite from pertinent problems, or is it art’s duty to provide commentary on these political and social issues? More and more, this seems to be the debate among artists and patrons.

While it’s limiting to think that the two approaches are mutually exclusive, the conversation surrounding them seems to have grown louder in recent years. The problems of the world have grown louder, too, not least the ever-approaching specter of climate change. How is escapist art possible when its subject concerns something that none of us can escape?

“A Quick and Tragic Thaw,” the latest exhibit at UVA’s Ruffin Gallery, seeks to find some middle ground. Co-creator Gabrielle Russomagno says the climate- themed collection of artwork is intended to be a “meditation on something that might feel like loss…regardless of pedagogy and political paradigms.”

Russomagno and her artistic partner Yvonne Love, have been concerned with climate change since their first collaboration over a decade ago, when the two created an exhibition on global warming. “A Quick and Tragic Thaw” certainly feels like the culmination of many years of work and thinking—their art was informed by the research of Howard Epstein, a UVA environmental science professor who studies the effects of climate change.

This added scholarly element compounds the sense of collaboration. Liza Pittard, visiting artist coordinator for the UVA Arts department, calls it “bridging the arts and sciences in an almost poetic way.” “UVA is a research institution,” she says. “How can we get other people involved?”

If the crowd present on the exhibit’s opening night is any indication, then “A Quick and Tragic Thaw” has already left a considerable impression. The single, cubelike room it occupies was overflowing with spectators.

The largest portion of the exhibition is a re-creation of Greenland’s shifting, shrinking glaciers done in black sand and porcelain—a stark dark and light that comprises much of the room’s color scheme. Love and Russomagno have given it the fitting label “Patterned Ground.” The porcelain analogues for ice contain intricate valleys and divots, and the black sand holds a network of delicate grooves. It’s eerily soothing to look at, hypnotic almost to the point that the viewer forgets the dire subject matter.

On the far wall, “Plastic Projections” provides a burst of color to the muted room. Present and future predicted maps of the Arctic are arrayed in an oblong shape, each of them on plastic that has been warped by heat into new forms. Close inspection is required to realize that they are maps at all—from a distance, they resemble flowers in the process of opening and closing.

This uneasy balance of extremes—finding beautiful ways to represent terrible things, almost to the point of obfuscation—is present in all of the exhibition’s artwork, and it brings to mind the ongoing debate of escapism versus engagement. Which is being practiced here? After all, Love and Russomagno’s work is not explicitly giving a call to action.

The abstract explaining “A Quick and Tragic Thaw,” says that the artworks are meant to “emphasize connections…between indisputable data and the conceit of how we choose to live.” The result is plainly gorgeous but only quietly upsetting, what Pittard calls a “passive political statement.”

Another juxtaposition here is the artists’ differing reasons for creating a series of works about climate change. Love, whose father was a naturalist, approaches it from a scientific view. “Observation was a huge part of my upbringing…I was hearing about the negative human impact on the environment from a very early age.”

Love’s observational skills have given her an intimate understanding of how humans can affect their surroundings. “I’m seeing the effects in my own backyard, and it’s been really scary.”

Russomagno, by her own admission, is “totally urban.” She contrasts her upbringing to Love’s, saying that although she wasn’t surrounded by the natural world, she could still “notice if people were in despair, because I was surrounded by a bajillion of them.”

The result of these distinct points of view is a representation of climate change that not only connects the personal and political but also the universal. On the wall labeled “Transfer and Pierce,” a collection of drawings on carbon paper, the sketch of a single Arctic individual feels perfectly in place next to large-scale renderings of his home.

Love and Russomagno recognize that this is a problem that affects all of us. They wanted to avoid the “screaming, politicized voices,” as Russomagno puts it, and reach something more transcendent. “There’s something about loss and beauty combined that I think stirs everyone’s soul,” she says. “Maybe if the conversation through art activates that in someone, then we’ve done our work.”

“Plastic Projections” is one of the works on view in the climate change-focused “A Quick and Tragic Thaw” at UVA’s Ruffin Gallery through October 18.

Categories
Arts

Land here now: Les Yeux du Monde challenges traditions of landscape art

Anne Chesnut’s collage is included in Les Yeux du Monde’s “Landscape Re-Imagined,” an exhibition of 27 local artists offering perspectives on the lay of the land through August 11. Courtesy of the artist.

In the Anthropocene, what does it mean to paint the landscape? Pristine, unspoiled wilderness no longer exists (even places that look “untouched” are affected by climate change),  and we’ve learned to cast a suspicious eye at bucolic pastoral zones, now that we know how often they involve Roundup runoff and soil erosion. This isn’t meant to harsh anyone’s plein-air buzz; it’s just reality, and one that Lyn Bolen Warren, director of Les Yeux du Monde, readily acknowledges.

“It’s just such a crucial time now for the Earth,” she says. “It’s disappearing in the way we knew it before.”

When she found herself putting together a group landscape show to hang at Les Yeux this summer, she titled it “Landscape Re-Imagined”—a nod to the genre’s weighty history as well as to the urgent need for humans, whether artists or not, to reframe our view of the planet.

The show, which includes work by 38 artists, surveys many different conceptions of landscape. There’s land itself, and then there’s landscape—an artifact of a distinctly human endeavor, one that does rest on imagining, a la Warren’s title. When we picture the land, we’re making choices to see it in a certain way, and a show with this kind of range invites us to step back and ask the meta-questions.

Take, for example, the difference between Priscilla Long Whitlock’s canvas “Reflections, Mirrored Marks,” and Isabelle Abbot’s “Spring Fling.” The first seems to immerse the viewer in a body of water—as though our heads were just above the surface, gazing through Whitlock’s suggestive brushstrokes in space—and the second positions us at some high viewpoint, the sea a distant band of blue. These are not just different places to stand; they imply different ways of being, one as an intimate of the land, one as its commander and surveyor.

Yet as we move through the show, an even deeper sense of possibility emerges. The simple act of including houses in a “landscape” painting, as in Ann Lyne’s “The Smiths, Lexington, VA,” reminds us that even in town, nature is present. To take this a step further, we might ask whether our dwellings are part of nature just like bird’s nests and anthills. If that seems obvious (on the one hand) or simplistic (on the other), consider all the contexts in which wilderness images are still de rigueur. There is a certain view of nature as not-human to which we remain firmly attached.

There are material choices, too, that push the traditional boundaries of landscape art. Molly Herman’s piece is subtly sculptural, with woven fabrics incorporated onto its painted surface. Just barely 3D, the piece—at least in the context of this show—invites us to reflect on our habitual conversion of land, which has depth and surrounds us, to a flat representation that we regard as separate.

Dorothy Robinson’s “Full House” takes the legacy of, say, van Gogh and refracts it into a postmodern space where floral fragments are adulterated by abstract sweeps of color and brushwork. Accustomed to single-point perspective, our eyes may find Robinson’s realm disordered, but in truth it’s a realist depiction of how any landscape artwork is a fiction of sorts, an impermanent gambit—someone’s mind and eye at work. Anne Chesnut’s quilt-like multimedia collage of images gathered on a drive between Crozet and White Hall is another kind of personal landscape view: the eye that’s an I.

Importantly, the works of David Hawkins and Richard Crozier focus on the built (and in Crozier’s case, the post-industrial) environment. Carefully representing streets, buildings, vehicles—and including such images in a landscape show—might be one of the deepest ways to re-imagine inherited ideas about how we picture land. After all, if we insist only on all-natural beauty, we’ll ignore most of what the world offers to our seeing.

The scraped, paved site in Crozier’s piece, “Monticello Dairy Demolition,” shares some DNA with the sculpture outside by UVA Aunspaugh fellow Charles Lambert: a concrete-and-rebar form that hovers between rubble and transcendence. Titled “Quiet,” it’s made of materials we tend to completely disregard. Yet here it is, inviting us to stand and be present with it and the dizzy view from the Les Yeux lawn.

It’s entirely appropriate that this landscape show has an outdoor sculpture component. One emerges from the building and engages, via many senses, the place that had been framed by its large windows. And in these outdoor works, human beings appear—the figures that, in the paintings indoors, had been only implied.

Categories
News Uncategorized

Climate changer: Youth activists are fighting for their own future

As the planet continues to increase in temperature, 11-year-old Gudrun Campbell says we don't have time to argue. Photo: Amy and Jackson Smith

Flashback to March 15, when the Downtown Mall teemed with 200 miniature activists rallying as part of the national Youth Climate Strike. Among them was 11-year-old Gudrun Campbell, who fearlessly gripped a microphone attached by a curly black cord to the bullhorn held by her dad.

Drawing the mic half an inch from her mouth, she declared, “For years, our government has known about climate change, and for years, they have done nothing.”

Her voice hung over the near-silent crowd of peers and parents.

“We will not sit here and watch them do nothing. We will not sit here and watch them trade our futures, and the futures of millions of people, millions of children, for profits of billions of dollars. We can’t.”

And then the sixth-grader, her blonde hair pulled back in a low ponytail, read a list of demands for grown up government leaders: approve the Green New Deal and transition entirely to renewable energy by 2030, declare a national emergency on climate change, mandate comprehensive education on global warming in schools, commit to reforestation, and change the agriculture industry to focus on plant-based instead of carbon-based farming.

The Walker Upper Elementary student, who also plays cello in the school orchestra and studies Brazilian jiu-jitsu, says her interest in environmental activism was ignited earlier this year, when her language arts teacher showed the class a video of 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg’s headline-making speech in Davos, Switzerland.

Campbell says she went home and read more about Thunberg and the climate, which led her to  “school strikes” and Alexandria Villaseñor, a 13-year-old climate activist who’s been skipping school every Friday to protest in front of the United Nations. Then Campbell and a classmate coordinated the local strike, which she called “necessary.”

“I organized it because there isn’t any time to quietly contemplate the pros and cons of fighting to save our planet, only time to act,” she says.

And while she has certainly proven that she can talk the talk, she’s also walking the walk.

Last summer, Campbell was one of many protesting the Mountain Valley and Atlantic Coast natural gas pipelines, which opponents say would destroy landscapes, contaminate drinking water, disproportionately affect minorities, and create dirty energy that won’t be needed because of the country’s transition to renewables.

“Stopping them means putting pressure on Dominion Energy and the state to halt the construction of the pipelines and the Union Hill compressor station,” she says, referencing one of three ACP compressors proposed in a small, predominantly black neighborhood in Buckingham County, which was partially founded by emancipated slaves, and where Dominion would like to build in the immediate vicinity of unmarked slave burials.

On the last weekend in March, Campbell joined Villaseñor and other young climate activists in a strike outside the U.N.’s headquarters in New York City.

“Meeting these people gives me hope that more youth will join us in standing against the climate crisis and creating lasting and meaningful change,” she says.

And because opponents often criticize environmental advocates for the carbon footprint of their activism, Gudrun is quick to clap back.

“Back off haters, I took the train.”

Categories
News

Going solar together

Though there’s always that initial investment, going solar can be a profitable way to save the planet.

A new co-op opportunity in Charlottesville aims to help area home and business owners save money on solar panels and electric vehicle chargers by bulk purchasing the equipment.

Solar United Neighbors, a nonprofit headquartered in D.C., has developed similar co-ops in multiple states, including Virginia, to help neighbors save on solar while building a community of solar supporters.

“Rather than recruit a large number of participants that are less engaged, we focus on recruiting a smaller, more engaged group by forming a solar co-op,” says Aaron Sutch, the Virginia program director.

It starts with interest. After prospective participants sign up online, the Solar United Neighbors team will screen each person’s roof via Google Earth and Bing Maps to make sure their structures are fit for solar. Then the team issues a request for proposals from local solar installers to provide a base price for the entire group.

About 25 folks went to a local information session in March, and 20 have already signed up, according to Sutch. The group wants to recruit about 10 more people, he says, and then they’ll be ready to issue the RFP for installers, which will likely happen in mid-May. The absolute deadline to sign up is August 31.

Next, a committee of participants will review the bids and select one installer to complete all of the projects for the group. The installer will meet with participants to provide individualized proposals that list the size and cost of each solar system (with a group discount), and those who choose to move forward will then sign an official contract.

Sutch says the group rate can typically give customers up to a 20 percent discount, and while the co-op offers an especially good deal, solar, in general, can be a profitable way to save the planet. A small system might cost about $8,000 upfront, but you can expect to save about $17,500 on energy costs over 25 years, say co-op organizers. That’s a net profit of nearly $10,000.

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We’ve got work to do: Lagging behind, Charlottesville aims for more ambitious climate goals

In Charlottesville, carbon emissions per household are more than a ton above the national average. Photo: Skyclad Aerial

In the words of Kermit the Frog, it’s not easy being green. Though the Muppet references the color of his amphibian skin, the famous line is a sentiment that also rings true for Charlottesville, where carbon emissions per household are more than a ton above the national average.

With 10 tons of carbon emissions per home annually, the United States trails the considerably more environmentally-friendly Europe by nearly five tons, but “as a city, we’re even further behind,” says Susan Kruse, the executive director of the Charlottesville Climate Collaborative.

Charlottesville lags behind both America and its neighboring continent by clocking in at 11.2 tons of greenhouse gas emissions per household, according to local environmentalists like Kruse, who used an emissions calculator from the California-based Community Climate Solutions.

“We have a lot of work to do,” she says.

City data shows that local greenhouse gas emissions have decreased by nearly a quarter since 2000, from approximately 470,584 metric tons to 362,192 metric tons in 2016. But according to an Environmental Protection Agency equivalency calculator, that’s still enough carbon dioxide to match the greenhouse emissions from 76,899 cars in one year.

Why is an ostensibly progressive community like Charlottesville doing so poorly? Kruse has a few theories, including that the city’s current emissions reduction goal is weak, and the average income here is greater than the national average, so more people own bigger homes and additional vehicles.

“Another factor is that our city was not designed around a robust public transportation system,” she says. “Without an adequate base of affordable housing to serve our community, those who cannot afford to live in Charlottesville rely on their cars to get to work.”

Time for a change

There’s a bit of history to the city’s various attempts to reduce its footprint. In 2011, it committed to a community-wide greenhouse gas reduction goal of 10 percent below those 2000 baseline levels by 2035, a far less ambitious goal than other Virginia cities like Richmond, which has pledged to reduce emissions by 80 percent by 2025. But when city leaders signed on to the Global Covenant of Mayors in June 2017, they agreed to tackle a more aggressive, three-phase goal, which started with an inventory of citywide gas emissions, and will now require setting a new target for reduction, and the development of a climate action plan.

The time may be right, says Susan Elliott, Charlottesville’s Climate Protection Program manager. Given the changes in available technology, cost improvements, utilities integrating more renewables into their fuel mixes, and the city’s increased focus on affordable housing, “Charlottesville is both capable and at a timely point to adopt a new and more ambitious reduction goal,” Elliott says.

She gave the most recent update on this initiative to City Council in November, when she said the inventory phase was finished, and that residential energy, commercial energy, and transportation were the highest contributors to carbon dioxide emissions—at 29.8, 27, and 26.6 percent, respectively. The city then accepted public comments through March to give community members a chance to weigh in on a draft recommendation for an official reduction target and action plan, which will be presented to council May 6.

The Charlottesville Climate Collaborative is one of several groups urging what it calls a “best in class” climate goal of a 45 percent reduction (of 2010 emissions levels) by 2030, with the additional objective of total carbon neutrality by 2050. This is the threshold recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and one that Elliott says she expects her draft recommendations will reflect.

Albemarle officials recently proposed the same net zero goal for 2050.

But Anna Bella Korbatov, chair of the Cville100 Climate Coalition, says environmentalists are urging local leaders to do more than just set robust climate goals. In order to meet their target, she suggests committing to conducting a greenhouse gas inventory every two years, benchmarking progress, and making the data clearly available to the public to make the process more transparent.

And while Charlottesville is already taking steps to address climate change, areas in which the city could use some work include addressing equity issues, tree cover, and transportation, she adds.

Making goals a reality

“Energy efficiency work is really at the nexus of affordable housing and climate change action,” says Chris Meyer, the executive director of the Local Energy Alliance Program “It is not very sexy, but it delivers immediate results to reduce energy bills [and] related greenhouse gas emissions, and increases a low-income household’s quality of living.”

LEAP is tackling this issue head-on, and in 2018 it delivered free energy efficiency improvements—such as new insulation, LED light bulbs, and aerators for faucets and shower heads—to 475 low-income homes in Charlottesville and Albemarle, with financial support from the city, county, and Dominion Energy.

Charlotte and Ralph Terrell are grateful to the Local Energy Alliance Program for improvements that keep their home warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Photo: Eze Amos

Over the past several years, LEAP has made multiple improvements to Charlotte and Ralph Terrell’s home in the 10th and Page neighborhood, including insulating multiple walls, ceilings, and closets. They’ve also made safety enhancements to their dryer hose, installed an upstairs heating and cooling unit, and replaced 13 60-year-old windows.

“Our gas bill has gone down considerably because the house is holding the heat in the winter,” and staying cool in the summer, says Charlotte. “We are very, very thankful for that.”

One of the major challenges Meyer’s organization faces is identifying those in need. “There are resources available, we just have a tough time connecting with those who are eligible,” he says.

Another way to make a home—and a city—more efficient is quite simple, says Wild Virginia board member and lifelong nature lover Lil Williams. Look no further than the trees.

“You don’t have to recreate the wheel,” she says. “You have to plant the right kind of trees in the right place and you have to maintain them.”

Cities are heat islands that absorb and retain warmth, and are generally a few degrees warmer than rural areas. Planting shade trees is proven to decrease a city’s temperature from two to nine degrees based on the type and location, she says.

Due to increasing development and natural causes, Virginia cities are losing approximately 3,000 acres of trees per year, and globally, 20 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to deforestation, says Williams.

“In Charlottesville, we’ve cut down whole swaths of forest and put in apartments and shopping centers,” she adds.

While development may be inevitable, Williams recommends the city plant broad-leaf deciduous trees in more densely populated areas with higher pollution levels, such as near schools, hospitals, and in disadvantaged communities, where shade is proven to decrease the cost of air conditioning and electricity.

The city’s 2007 comprehensive plan established a goal of 40 percent tree cover, and a 2009 study found that number at 47 percent. When the city reassessed it in 2015, tree cover had decreased by 2 percent.

Williams expects tree cover has continued to decrease over time, and seemingly without a one-for-one replacement.

A 2018 city “greenprint” noted that, “while 45 percent is a good canopy coverage, the citywide percentage does not tell the whole story,” because 72 percent of that canopy was on private land, and increasing cover would require participation from the private and public sector.

The city’s urban forester, Mike Ronayne, says the tree commission has recently said it would like to instate a 50 percent canopy goal.

Aside from encouraging the planting of more trees, community activists also hope the city’s forthcoming climate action plan will include a better plan for regional transportation, which accounts for 26.6 percent of all local gas emissions.

City residents have long complained about the ineffectiveness of the Charlottesville Area Transit. “People have a hard time getting from point A to point B in a reasonable amount of time,” says C3’s Kruse. “The buses are not always reliable.”

She says the city should look at public transportation and its layout as an aspect of affordability and emissions reduction.

“It’s not just about whether Charlottesville is walkable or bikeable, it also has to have public transit for the people for whom those are not options,” she adds.

Signs of hope

But it’s not all bad news—there are some areas in which the city is successful. Charlottesville has been a leader in piloting and funding climate protection-related programs, including joining the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement in 2006, and drafting its vision for becoming a “green city” by 2025 three years later, CPG’s Elliott says.

In 2017, Charlottesville was the first Virginia city to earn a SolSmart designation, meaning city leaders incentivized going solar by hosting a community “solarize” campaign, reviewing zoning codes, and identifying and addressing restrictions that prohibited solar development.

Several city buildings—including the Smith Aquatic and Fitness Center, Fontaine Fire Station, and Lugo-McGinness Academy—have installed solar panel systems, and the city tracks their energy production. The solar arrays at Charlottesville High School, installed in 2012, supply about an eighth of the school’s annual electricity usage.

Some private companies have followed suit: Carter Myers Automotive in Albemarle, for example, recently built a solar array that covers more than 90 percent of the dealership’s energy use.

To meet a more ambitious carbon reduction goal, the city will also have to work with UVA, its largest employer. The university has its own climate goal—currently, it’s a 25 percent reduction of 2009 emission levels by 2025. Despite university growth, it has already reduced emissions by nearly 19 percent, says sustainability director Andrea Trimble, and is on a trajectory to meet its goal ahead of schedule. Like the city and county, UVA is in the process of developing a new sustainability plan and more aggressive climate goal, and Trimble says all three entities are working on coordinating their efforts.

Says Kruse, “We have leaders in our community who are stepping out and doing the right thing. What we need to do as a community is learn from those leaders and put forward new policies.”

Corrected April 17 at 1:43pm with the correct figure from the Environmental Protection Agency equivalency calculator.

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In brief: Looking for Mr. Sunglasses, sunshine kids, Dewberry’s digs, and more

Photographer Eze Amos snapped Sunglasses, left, arriving with a Vanguard America contingent. Sunglasses was later spotted attacking DeAndre Harris in the Market Street Garage. Eze Amos

Where’s Red Beard—and Sunglasses?

Although four people have been convicted in the August 12 assault of DeAndre Harris in the Market Street Parking Garage, video and photographs from that day show there were other attackers joining the fray who have not been arrested—or even identified.

Charlottesville police photo of Red Beard.

CPD image of Sunglasses.

On February 14, Charlottesville police asked for the public’s help in finding the men online activists have dubbed Red Beard and Sunglasses: “Our detectives have worked tirelessly and exhausted all efforts to identify the other two men more than a year later, and hope the public’s assistance can help bring the assailants to justice and close this case.”

That appeal spurred former mayor Dave Norris to look at his photos from August 12, and he discovered a picture of Red Beard sitting near a helmeted man. Norris posted the photo on Facebook and wondered “if the guy in the helmet next to him knows his identity.

 

 

Dave Norris took this shot of Red Beard taking a break at Unite the Right.

 

 

 

 

Sunglasses and others have shields up as they appear to be leaving Market Street Park. Eze Amos

 

 

 

 

We took a spin through our own August 12 archives, and found a photo of Sunglasses carrying a Vanguard America shield and flag, and another of him with some  of his fascist pals.

Anyone with information is asked to call Detective Declan Hickey at 970-3542 or Crimestoppers at 977-4000.

Quote of the week

“You either believe in equity or you don’t.” —Mayor Nikuyah Walker on why tax increases are necessary to fund affordable housing and school equity

In brief

While John Dewberry was feathering his nest in Atlanta, Charlottesvillians continue to contemplate a less appealing Dewberry project. Skyclad

Dewberry doings

As the skeletal Landmark in downtown Charlottesville continues to molder, its owner, John Dewberry, 55, has been refurbishing a 1924 neo-classical condo in Atlanta with his 30-year-old bride. The New York Times featured the Dewberry digs recently, but for those searching for clues about movement on our historic eyesore, the only mention of Charlottesville is to note an 18th-century Hepplewhite sideboard the couple found here to complete their décor.

No. 1 seed

Despite Virginia’s disappointing 10-point loss to Florida State March 15 in the ACC semifinals, the Cavaliers got the top seed in the NCAA South Region and will play No. 16-seed Gardner-Webb University March 22 in Columbia, South Carolina. We’ll try not to think about UVA’s encounter last year with a  No. 16—the UMBC Retrievers.

Youth in revolt

Eze Amos

Protest organizer Gudrun Campbell. Eze Amos

About 100 local kids ditched class for a cause March 15, when they joined thousands of students across America in a coordinated climate strike. Carrying signs with slogans such as “There’s No Plan(et) B,” they assembled on the Downtown Mall to protest and march. Gudrun Campbell, an 11-year-old sixth grader at Walker Upper Elementary and area event organizer, said she wants comprehensive education on climate change for grade schoolers, “so children grow up understanding the issue and that it’s based solely on science.”

Litigious candidate

Bryce Reeves Publicity photo

State Senator Bryce Reeves has threatened to sue his 17th District Republican challenger Rich Breeden for defamation, according to Daily Progress reporter Tyler Hammel. Reeves also filed suit in his unsuccessful 2017 bid for the GOP lieutenant governor nomination, saying an email that falsely alleged an extramarital affair came from the cellphone of opponent Jill Vogel’s husband.

Home sentence

Walter Korte, the ex-UVA film studies professor who pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography in 2018, was granted permission March 18 to serve the remainder of his 12-month sentence—which he started in October—from home. The 75-year-old has no prior offenses, according to his attorney.