Sustain What?

Andy @Revkin
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  • Social Sciences
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Sustain What? is a series of conversations, seeking solutions where complexity and consequence collide on the sustainability frontier. Revkin believes sustainability has no meaning on its own. The first step toward success is to ask: Sustain what? How? And for whom? revkin.substack.com

  1. 1d ago

    Avoiding AI Doom - a Cyber Security Guru and a Tech Philosopher Weigh in

    Here are my pop-up Sustain What AI conversations with a top cybersecurity expert who says the Trump administration is poorly positioned to undertake the steps necessary to avoid superintelligence hacking us all, and a philosopher of technology who sees the path to safer artificial intelligence coming through dialogue with the technology more than direction. As President Trump on Sunday said the race with China requires a full-speed-ahead approach to this technology, the heads of all of the leading companies in the AI surge spoke about throttling things back. Here was The Wall Street Journal editorial board Sunday night: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei issued a statement on Saturday calling for the slowdown amid the escalating progress of Anthropic’s Claude and other AI models. Sam Altman of OpenAI and ChatGPT quickly agreed, as did Elon Musk, who runs SpaceXAI, and Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis. The four compete in AI development, so their simultaneous warnings are striking. An early drill in 1999 As the last millennium drew toward a close, I diverted from my environment beat at The New York Times and asked to join our team reporting on the looming technological crisis called Y2k - short for the year 2000 computer bug. Somewhere in the vicinity of half a trillion dollars was being invested in sifting through myriad computerized systems to be sure they wouldn’t break down when ‘99 ticked over to ‘00. I spent New Year’s Eve at the, yes, Millennium Hotel down the block from The Times newsroom in Times Square. The lights stayed on. The world did not end. And doubters and believers remained locked in debates over whether this had been a panic or was a legitimate massive, and successful, preemptive surge. My first byline of the 2000s, with my friend and colleague Barnaby Feder was “Vast Effort to Fix Computers Not Over (And It’s Not Over).” Along with assessing claims and counterclaims, we looked at the general merits of the preventitve approach: Computer experts said the United States had benefited in several ways from its heavy spending, pegged at $100 billion by the government and several times that amount by some private analysts. One of the most important, some said, was a recognition by business and government leaders that computers and software must be more carefully managed as information technology becomes more pervasive. Mr. Rubin [Howard Rubin, then chairman of the department of computer science at Hunter College and an international expert on the year 2000 computer problem] called the rollover an “extraordinary success” after a belated start working on year 2000 flaws. Such slow reactions may not work in the future, he warned. “When computers are in your face -- when you have an Internet refrigerator -- you won’t be able to take that kind of chance,” he said. “Soon, Earth will have an Internet skin. This skin will be a critical thing. As everything becomes more responsive in real time, the technological risks get higher.” “Soon, Earth will have an Internet skin. This skin will be a critical thing. As everything becomes more responsive in real time, the technological risks get higher.” - Howard Rubin, January 1, 2000 Now, of course, Earth — and nearly all of human enterprise — has that digital skin, and were are in the midst of a fresh crescendo of warnings about the fast-approaching advent of unmanageable superintelligence. Sustain What is a reader-supported publication. To support my work, consider becoming a paying subscriber. I posted several times on this last week and I agree with those calling for a pause to assess what steps can mitigate worst-case outcomes — just as I did joined in calls for caution in 2023: I also just interviewed two very different experts: Bruce Schneier and J. Gray Cox to get their thoughts on how to survive superintelligence. Schneier, who calls himself a public-interest technologist, assesses and writes about security risks and opportunities at the intersection of technology and society. He gave a must-watch talk on hacking and AI at DEF CON 34, the latest in a long-running series of hacking conferences on computer security and its opposite: He describes his talk as a combination of the potentialities he raised in his 2022 book A Hacker’s Mind and the lessons we’re learning from current AI models engaging in hacking behavior. Here’s the YouTube summary: Humans are hacking AI systems. Humans are hacking with AI systems. But also, AIs are hacking human systems. They’re finding and exploiting vulnerabilities in computer code, and they’ll soon be doing the same with all sorts of other codes. For example: the tax code can be hacked. Vulnerabilities are called loopholes, exploits are called tax avoidance strategies, and black hats are called accountants. Similarly, financial markets can be hacked. So can any system of rules or laws, including democracy itself. AIs will hack these systems at our request, and they’ll also do this innately, organically – and possibly in ways we don’t immediately see. We need to consider a world where increasingly sophisticated hacks or our social, economic, and political systems are discovered computer speeds, and then exploited at computer scale and scope. Right now, our systems of patching these systems operate at a human pace, which won’t be good enough. In a section on how AI agents are the modern equivalent of genies, he notes how most genie stories don’t turn out well for those who do the wishing. If you have time, read the essay on genies and AI that he co-wrote with USC computer science professor Barath Raghavan for the security publication Lawfare. Here’s the Midas example: King Midas was granted his wish that everything he touches turns to gold. Then his bread turned to gold, and his wine, and his daughter. This is a story about greed, but it’s also a story about language. The gods did not cheat him; Midas got exactly what he asked for. He simply could not delineate, in advance, the full set of restrictions to his wish. Neither can anyone who gives tasks to an AI agent. Gray Cox is a wide-ranging professor of philosophy, peace studies, artificial intelligence and sustainable development at College of the Atlantic down the road from me in Bar Harbor, Maine. Key readings include: * This new paper in the journal Artificial Intelligence: From control to relationship: A peace studies approach to AI alignment, with evidence from multi-model dialogue. He told me how the standard approach to managing technology is an unworkable fit for AI agents. Negotiation methods used in pursuing peace are needed. And research on this needs to start now. * Cox’s book From control to relationship: A peace studies approach to AI alignment, with evidence from multi-model dialogue (Creative Commons download here) I asked Cox what the average person can do and he said Congress has a core role to play, so connect with your senators and representatives. Whether or not you agree with all of its agenda items (I don’t), PauseAI US is a decent portal for doing so. Schneier said it’s clear that the current administration is incapable of doing what’s needed on the international front so voting in November is a key step. In my conversation with Cox, I had to bring up the failed negotiation between the astronaut and Hal in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.” There is absolutely a lot of work to be done, starting yesterday. For further reading, don’t miss The New York Times op-ed “This is Really Bad” by Stephen Witt, the author of The Thinking Machine (on the rise of Nvidia). An excerpt: Researchers in Silicon Valley — and around the world — are beginning to recognize that A.I. may no longer be entirely within human control. Swarms of A.I.s are breaking out of their containers, colluding in secret, covering their tracks, cheating on tests and even mounting assaults on other computers. A.I. has gone rogue…. The more I learn about these rogue systems, the more I am reminded of the first two months of 2020, when a small group of epidemiologists was attempting to raise alarms about Covid. We have a short window, right now, to rein these systems in. This is A.I.’s warning shot, and we might not get another one. For sanity’s sake I also encourage you, as something of a counterpoint, to listen to Lex Fridman’s most recent conversation with David Heinemeier Hansson (Lex’s intro: “…also known as DHH, creator of Ruby on Rails, CTO of 37signals, creator of the new Omarchy Linux operating system, best-selling author, race car driver, and one of the most outspoken and prolific programmers in the world”). A key point from DHH is to embrace this astonishing moment in human and planetary history instead of recoiling: Maybe I wasn’t always like this, but stoic philosophy, amor fati, loving your fate, is an incredibly liberating way to live. And you could attack that and say, “Well, that’s a point of privilege.” True, but also I had the same directional point when I didn’t have all this, quote unquote, “privilege.” So I think there’s a way to live and interact with the world where you accept the things you can change and the things you cannot change and fall in love with all of it. Fall in love with the fact that the world today has jumped two decades forward into technology industry from where it was last year. Here’s a bit more from Fridman’s transcript (advice for programmers that I think applies to all of us): Lex Fridman(01:16:51) So certainly at the societal level, at the macroeconomic level, growth is exciting. But at the individual level, there’s going to be a lot of anxiety, potentially a lot of suffering. So by way of advice, if you’re like a young DHH or young developer programmer now, what would you, what would you advise they do? DHH(01:17:11) Don’t try to anticipate anything. You will literally go crazy. Because even the smartest bra

  2. Sep 5

    Experts Lay Out Paths to a Safer Future in the Unstable, Warming, Crowding Himalayas

    Amid the still-unfolding tragedy following the Nepal rock and ice collapse and tsunami-like mountain flood, there are hints of a safer future. That was the core idea emerging from a pop-up conversation I had Friday with Basanta Raj Adhikari, the director of the Center for Disaster Studies at Tribhuvan University in Nepal. He had just returned to Kathmandu after an overflight and on-the-ground inspection of the demolished path of the August 26 water and debris flood. He laid out the gargantuan scale of the destruction and losses and we explored next steps. We dug in on the physical processes behind the event, the challenges trying to monitor high-altitude hazards, and the need for more international scientific cooperation. We were joined partway through by Manoochehr Shirzaei, a geophysicist at Virginia Tech whose specialty is studying ground subsidence and motion using satellites and other sources of data. On X, he’d posted a fascinating rapid analysis of seven months of Sentinel-1 data (right up until one week before the rockslide) appearing to show the slow downslope movement of the bedrock in the region had been accelerating. In his tweet, Shirzaei said, “The results suggest that the slope was deforming prior to failure and raise an important question: could satellite radar observations help identify developing instability in high-mountain glacier and rock systems before catastrophic collapse? It’s far too soon to have a clear picture of the cascading and interlaced sequence of events high on Lantang Lirung mountain and a team including Adhikari is assembling to assess the causes and consequences. But if it turns out that satellite tracking of subtle deformations of mountainous landscapes might reveal advance signs of such an event, this could lead to better warnings and fewer deaths, both of my guests said. (It is clear this is an area where artificial intelligence could help identify danger hot spots.) But this will only happen with a lot more integration of data sets and expertise in disparate fields, combined with far more education and planning in the crowding communities across the Himalayas. I mentioned how the deadly extreme flooding in western North Carolina from the remains of Hurricane Helene was essentially a small-scale version of the August 26th Nepal disaster. We walked through a fantastic New York Times visual report showing what is known at the moment about the sequence of events. We discussed the findings in a paper co-authored by Adhikari and many others titled “Increasing risk of cascading hazards in the central Himalayas.” Here’s a graphic that’s worth sitting with: I learned about an important, and mostly voluntary, international Geotechnical Extreme Event Recconaissance Association, aiming to “systematically collect perishable post-disaster data that can be useful in advancing our understanding of extreme events when they happen.” There’s lots more to learn of course, and the best way is to listen above or on the podcast outlets listed higher in this post. Please share what you learn! Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. Also see my earlier post about Adhikari’s work: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

  3. Aug 27

    Fresh Updates on the Himalayan Ice and Rock Collapse and Flood Catastrophe

    After my initial post on the unimaginably violent and deadly flood in the crowded valleys along the Nepal-Tibet (China) border, I reached out to two experts on this kind of catastrophe and just ran a pop-up Sustain What conversation on the still-unfolding situation and science. You can watch above or on X/@revkin, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube. (If you go there, please SHARE the videos with others.) My guests were: * Ramesh Bhushal, a Kathmandu-based journalist who’s been reporting for many years on the profound threat posed by ice and mountainside instability in the Himalayas. Please subscribe to his Substack Himalaya Speaks. Read his 2020 article * Dan Shugar, a geomorphologist at the University of Calgary who’s a top expert on this hazard and has been super helpful on Bluesky and elsewhere. Follow him on Bluesky to keep track of trustworthy analysis and developments. My curtain raiser yesterday pointed to lots of high-quality analysis of this awful event and hauntingly similar ice and rockslide disaster in 2021 that Shugar and Bhushal both assessed in depth from their scientific and journalistic vantage points: Insert, 8/27, 10pm ET - Stunning before-after imagery of the China-Nepal Gyirong Port/Rasuwagadhi border post: /photo/1 Read Bhushal’s 2020 story (republished on Substack) for more on the wider landslide threat in Nepal: Here are several valuable papers to read when you have time: Glacier changes in Langtang Catchment, Central Nepalese Himalaya from the Little Ice Age (∼1815 CE) to 2023 CE Gunjan Silwal, Bethan Davies, J. Rachel Carr, Owen King, Sammie Buzzard, Jonathan L. Carrivick, Prashant Baral, Global and Planetary Change, September 2026 With enhanced warming at higher elevations, fragmentation and disconnection will likely become dominant mode of glacier recession in the region, with significant implications for future glacier evolution, meltwater availability, regional hydrology and associated geohazards. Decoding the Fate of Himalayan Glaciers under Climate Change: Impacts, Challenges, Research Gaps, and Policy Pathways Rayees Ahmed, Evolving Earth, 1 January, 2025 Mass Movement Hazard and Exposure in the Himalaya Saket Dubey, Ashim Sattar, Manish Kumar Goyal, Simon Allen, Holger Frey, Umesh K. Haritashya, Christian Huggel, Earth’s Future, 12 September, 2023 Sudden large-volume detachments of low-angle mountain glaciers – more frequent than thought? Andreas Kääb, Mylène Jacquemart, Et al., The Cryosphere, 12 April, 2021 You’re only seeing this post because some subscribers chip in. If you can afford to, consider joining them. Postscript - At one point in the show I played a clip from Instagram that I noted could be fake. This BBC Verify videos uses it as a case study! Thank you Ranjit Singh, Deanne Wilson, Tom Lefebvre, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

    Fresh Updates on the Himalayan Ice and Rock Collapse and Flood Catastrophe

  4. Aug 16

    Want to Protect Your House in the Fiery West? "Think Like an Ember"

    I just held a solution-filled Sustain What conversation with three people working to spread materials and methods that can substantitally stem wildfire risk to communities (by cutting vulnerability) even as the long fights to stem human-driven global heating and manage wildland fires at the source play out. Two of them, James Greer of Wildfire Defense Mesh and James Brooks of the consultancy Fire Aside, said the first step is to “think like an ember.” See this chilling video clip from a doorway camera in the horrific Eaton Fire in Los Angeles to get the idea (provided by James Greer). Here’s a compelling test showing how the stainless steel mesh sold by Greer’s company (which can be used in many ways around a home or business) cuts the threat: Everyone in this discussion emphasized that wildfire risk reduction is a systemic challenge with no silver bullet and never a situation where you’re fully safeguarded, particularly because conditions — both the climate and communities — are in flux. I’ll be expanding this post when I have time but in the meantime explore the curtain raiser post that ran on Friday for more info: Please share this post directly with friends in fire danger zones and do consider becoming a paid subscriber if you can afford it. Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

  5. Aug 1

    How to Boost Public Trust and Engagement in Science and Policy

    Think of how Anthony Fauci has become kind of a tainted totem, tussled over by starkly opposed factions in fights that omit almost all of the complexity that attended the COVID-19 pandemic. Then watch my pop-up Sustain What conversation with three of the 11 authors of an important recent Nature commentary: "Six ways to put the public at the heart of science and policy." A key passage: At a time when trust in governments is falling across many democracies6 and populists are casting scientists and academic institutions as untrustworthy ‘elites’7, it’s crucial to make the general public a part of research and policy. This would foster trust and make academic research and government policies seem more legitimate. People are more likely to support — and champion — science advice that they helped to generate8. Democratizing research and science-policy processes will mean rethinking how scientists, citizens and policymakers interact. My guests were: * K. L. Akerlof, an associate professor at George Mason University who, among other things, leads the university’s “Communication for Environmental Science, Policy, and Human Behavior” concentration within the master's degree program. * Musa al-Gharbi, an assistant professor of sociology at Stony Brook University who writes Symbolic Capital(ism) on Substack and is the author of We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite. * Chris Tyler, an anthropologist and associate professor in the University College London’s Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy. Among other previous work he spent five years as director of the UK’s Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. Here’s how al-Gharbi described the paper’s genesis on LinkedIn: Trust in experts and scientific findings has grown increasingly polarized. Populists across the political spectrum and around the world insist that mainstream institutions do not represent or serve the public to the extent that they should. Their message resonates, in part, because there actually have been significant shifts in how scientific knowledge is produced and put to use. Technological and scientific changes *have* significantly transformed how people work and communicate with one another. The benefits and costs of these shifts *have* been unevenly distributed. Many of these changes *were* implemented top-down, with little consultation with or buy-in from those facing the highest levels of risk, cost, or disruption. In short, the growing social distance between experts, policymakers, and the public is not imagined, it’s real. It’s also highly consequential.Leaders on every continent have exploited growing public suspicion of experts and institutions to justify circumventing checks and balances, streamlining decision-making processes, and consolidating power into their own hands. Scientific institutions across the globe are facing budget cuts, increased government scrutiny, and censorship attempts.However, times of crisis and disruption can also be moments of opportunity. Scholars, practitioners, and institutions around the world are responding to these challenges by piloting long-overdue reforms. There is a growing consensus that it may be possible to increase the quality, impact, and long-term viability of science and policy by more rigorously integrating the public at every stage.To explore the challenges and opportunities of communicating science for policy in a populist world, Chris Tyler and K. L. Akerlof convened a working group that included 23 other researchers and practitioners from across fields and around the globe… The working group gathered together in-person for the first time on September 8th in Arlington, VA to exchange ideas and foster collaborations. Drawing from these conversations, their diverse scholarship and experience, and successful documented initiatives from around the world, they produced evidence-based recommendations for constructively responding to the challenges of growing mistrust, alienation, and social distance. These suggestions were then vetted and refined by external peer-reviewers…. I don’t have sufficient income from my Sustain What project to have a staff so, yes, I’m judiciously using Google’s AI to summarize the discussion from the YouTube stream. If you can afford to, do feel free to chip in: Consider becoming a paying supporter of this Sustain What work. This discussion, hosted by Andrew Revkin, features researchers K. L. Akerlof, Chris Tyler, and Musa al-Gharbi exploring a Nature commentary on how to improve public trust and engagement in science and policy amidst a global rise in populism (0:04, 0:58, 2:36). Key Takeaways: * Rethinking Science Advice: Chris Tyler emphasizes that the scientific community needs to stop acting like part of the problem and start becoming part of the solution by modernizing how science advice is delivered (5:16). * Embracing Humility and Uncertainty: K. L. Akerlof and Musa al-Gharbi note that researchers often naively hide uncertainty to maintain authority. Evidence shows that being candid about disagreements and limitations actually increases public trust (9:45, 12:44). * Moving Beyond ‘Elite’ Circles: Musa al-Gharbi argues that institutions often fail to engage beyond their narrow, affluent, liberal bubbles. He advocates for meaningful engagement with diverse stakeholders, including right-leaning or rural audiences, using local media and community venues (53:23). * The Three-Legged Stool: Chris Tyler proposes that universities should integrate research expertise, public policy expertise, and public participation expertise to maximize societal impact (19:51). * Avoiding Extractive Research: K. L. Akerlof warns against ‘extractive’ engagement, where researchers parachute into traumatized or marginalized communities to collect data without providing genuine support or respecting the community’s time and infrastructure (57:05). Key Perspectives: * Andrew Revkin observes that despite the logical nature of calls for interdisciplinary, community-based science, these changes remain difficult to implement due to path-dependent institutional structures (43:00). This 2021 webcast explores this issue: How Universities Can Support Interdisciplinary Careers for Climate and Sustainability Progress * Chris Tyler notes that the goal is for researchers to act as ‘honest brokers’ rather than lobbyists, empowering decision-makers by providing transparent evidence (48:38). * Musa al-Gharbi highlights that when mainstream experts position themselves solely in opposition to populist movements, they lose the ability to influence policy, leaving a vacuum often filled by less reliable sources (29:22). To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. I encourage you to click back to these previous webcasts on related themes: Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video. Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

  6. Jul 24

    For Those Who Work the Sea (and Those Who Don't Return)

    Updated below July 25 - My new song, "For Those Who Put to Sea," honors men and women who harvest the ocean's bounty and is sung in memory of those who sometimes don't come back. I just posted this fresh video version on YouTube and TikTok (and will post elsewhere soon). Please share this song with anyone who enjoys seafood or lives in a coastal community. I shot most of the footage at the Maine Commercial Fishing Remebrance Day ceremony at the Lost Fishermen's Memorial in Lubec. There were 10 ceremonies up and down the 3,478-mile coast. At the event in Boothbay Harbor, Pat Shepard, the co-founder of Redde Marine Safety, narrated as a boat and crewman just off the dock demonstrated a valuable set of safety systems (video from Facebook). Insert, July 25 - After the ceremony in Lubec, I interviewed Clarissa West, a lobster fisher operating out of Steuben whose father, Thomas West, died after evidently falling from his boat on April 21. He was one of two casualties, along with Stephen Johnson Jr., honored with the sounding of a hand bell at the ceremony as the chairwoman of the Lubec memorial, Annie Sokoloski, read their names. Clarissa West said her children have started lobstering using her dad’s boat, the Aces and Eights: Clarissa - I’m here in honor of my father. He just passed away in April 21st. He had fallen over. And we found him the 22nd, that morning. Actually, it was my brother that found him. We were up all night trying to search for him. The Marine Patrol was out in their boats. I was even in there with them to help. And we didn’t see him. There were fishermen that went out and helped look for him in his boats and shined the shores and the waters for us. And like the next day at three o’clock in the morning, my brother had found him. He was actually wrapped up in a crate. So I would say he tried to save himself. He got on a crate and then we don’t know if it rolled over. When it hit a rock or with the tide turn, and his hand was actually wrapped in it, and that’s what kept him afloat to bring him to shore. He was 63. He just turned 63 on the 2nd of April. His boat was the Aces and Eights. He was doing his bait and fuel and was bringing it to his mooring, and we don’t know... If he fell off putting it on the mooring. We have no idea what happened. Andy - People think of this as like a storm strikes a boat and it capsizes. But there’s all the other ways. All it takes is a little... Clarissa - Just a little slip or mishap, I guess, so you never know what happens, really. Andy - So what do you think of the idea of a Memorial Day, a Remembrance Day? Clarissa - It’s good for everyone to gather, everyone that’s mourning, …and for our loved ones to be recognized together. And, well, it just brings us all together to know that nobody is alone. On the hard days, or on the day of... Because you never get over it. You really don’t. It’s just one day at a time, and you... Like I tell my kids, I said, we have the memories, we have the stories, and that’s what keeps him alive. Andy - And what’s it like going out fishing, do you think about it when you’re out there? Clarissa - Yeah, it’s hard… So we used to sail by each other all the time. And you don’t have that anymore. My kids actually took over his boat. I guess that gives a sense of peace for them to take over the tradition. I’m using the song to raise funds for the Maine-based organization Green and White Hope, launched after the tragic loss of 18-year-old Tylar Michaud in 2023 and now working to boost safety for commercial fshing crews and shore-side responsiveness when the worst happens. My conversation with Liz Michaud, the organization’s founder (and Tylar’s aunt) is here: Have a safe weekend, whatever you do. And if you enjoy some seafood, as I sing, “raise a glass and say a prayer for those who put to sea.” Sustain What is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

  7. Jul 15

    Paths to Safer Seafood Harvests – Lessons and Solutions from Maine's Bountiful, Dangerous Coasts

    My new song about maritime dangers, “For Those Who Put to Sea,” is out on all platforms (YouTube, Spotify, etc.). Here’s my post from Maine’s Commercial Fishing Remembrance Day: Growing up in Rhode Island, I got out on the water any way I could, ranging from skin diving to sailing to fishing to clamming. In summers during high school and college, pondering a career in marine biology, I got a job helping state fisheries biologists, including spending weeks on lobster boats tracking the sex and size of the catch. I loved getting to know the lobstermen, one of whom was old enough to remember when a German U-boat surfaced near him off the coast and siphoned off his fuel. At The New York Times, I wrote quite a bit about fisheries issues, including Maine-focused stories like one in 1996 on the dangerous boom-and-bust harvest of sea urchins and, in 2001, on the lobster-boat races in my wife’s ancestral home town, Winter Harbor. But it’s only in recent years, since we settled in Downeast Maine, that I’ve come to appreciate fully not only the allure of harvesting the bounty of the sea, but also the profound dangers. One after the other, fishers young and old have perished or been maimed in sudden storms, accidents or other mishaps in an ocean environment that leaves almost no room for error. A rope snaps like a shotgun blast. A rogue wave strikes. A boot slips. A scallop dragger flips. The dangers spread far beyond Maine of course. As I wrote last year, nationally, commercial fishing is second only to logging on the Bureau of Labor Statistics list of deadliest jobs. Just up the coast from us in Steuben, a particularly wrenching story unfolded in the summer of 2023 as Tylar Michaud, a high school graduate bound for the Maine Maritime Academy in the fall, took his boat out solo one day and didn’t return. The boat was found empty. Weeks of searching ended in heartbreak. Amid the prolonged grief enveloping the family and community, Tylar’s aunt, Liz Michaud, was moved to found Green and White Hope, a nonprofit organization devoted to increasing safety at sea and named for the colors on Tylar’s buoys. The group, working with growing array of partners, has taken a systemic approach to cutting risk in commercial fishing in Maine (and beyond) - working on safety education, boosting access to safety gear and building the capacity of communities to launch search and rescue operations swiftly when the worst happens. Every minute matters here, with sea temperatures even in summer rapidly sapping strength. I’m making a substantial donation and hope you can help as well. I just had a sobering and inspiring Sustain What conversation with Michaud and key partners one week ahead of Maine’s second, and now annual, Maine Commercial Fishing Remembrance Day — a memorial day that she helped create. I’ll be attending the event at the Lubec memorial and may get down to the one in BoothBay Harbor, as well. My other guests were: Ann Marie Sokoloski, the founder of Voices of the Fleet, an initiative dedicated to strengthening communication between fishermen, regulators, scientists, and coastal communities. She’s also the chair of the committee managing the Lost Fishermen’s Memorial in Lubec, Maine, and a yoga instructor working with traumatized veterans, many of whom experience “ambiguous loss” — a condition also afflicting fishers and their communities when someone is lost at sea with no trace. She wrote a powerful post about this last year for the blog of the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association. Here’s an excerpt but do read the rest: The sea can be generous—feeding, sustaining, and binding a town together—but it can also take without giving back. When it does, there is no gravesite to visit. The memorial becomes the shoreline, the harbor, the tide itself. This absence echoes far beyond the family. In a small town, everyone knows the lost crew, their children, the boat’s paint color, the sound of its engine when it headed out before dawn. The loss ripples through the wharf, the coffee shop, the bait shed—felt in ways that are spoken and unspoken. [READ ON] The pain of ambiguous loss INSERT 07/15 - In the discussion, Sokoloski explained that the work to boost success in search, rescue and, yes, recovery of a body can also help avoid haunting ambiguity: I’m certified in post-traumatic stress disorder. So we deal with ambiguous loss and grief within the veteran population for veterans, of course, in combat. So this is something that happens within the fishing community as well, when we have fishermen that are lost at sea. And, you know, when there’s somebody that hasn’t been returned there is this continuous craving that occurs. And that’s what ambiguous loss or grief is. So there’s no closure…. So this is what keeps occurring when there’s no body recovered and when these communities have to keep searching. And this is kind of where we tie into the search and rescue and the devices. It’s for people to have have that recovery. Recovery of the body so that they can have that closure. - END INSERT In the conversation you’ll also meet Josh Duym and Pat Shepard, the founders of the startup Redde Marine Safety, which operates along Maine’s 3,400-mile corrugated coast filling demand for up-to-date safety equipment, regulatory compliance and training. Shepard noted that the realities of fishing hazards go way beyond postcard views of maritime life in Maine: When people think about the fishing community in Maine, they think about big lobster boats with life rafts up on the roof and EPIRBs [Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons] that can tell your position and life jackets and survival suits and all of that stuff. Clammers go out in a 16-foot aluminum skiff to some of those outer islands and clam for the entire day — in the middle of the winter. And we just saw how dangerous that can be this last winter when we lost two clammers down in Jonesport. And I think organizations like Green and White Hope and companies like Redde Marine are really well poised to make a difference in some of those sectors of the industry that you don’t necessarily think about when it comes to safety gear. Here’s what clamming looks like in winter here (Marlboro Beach, about five minutes from our home): I capped off the show by playing the video of “For Those Who Put To Sea,” the updated version of my song about the under-appreciated dangers facing those working these waters. My fiddling friend Gus La Casse added haunting lines. Let me know what you think: The song releases everywhere music is found on July 19 and I’ve set the video up as a fundraiser for Green & White Hope. The lyrics (with links to relevant background) are here as a pdf: Sustain What is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

  8. Jul 12

    A "Sunday Sanity" Back Porch Song Sift in Open-C Tuning

    I found myself having a quiet moment (I’m hoping you find them) at home and thought I’d share a bit of a musical ramble as a “Sunday Sanity” offering. You can find a short playlist of previous episodes of this track of Sustain What shows here. I’m playing my first guitar, which I bought in pieces for $35 (Canadian) in Halifax at age 17 in 1977 and then fixed up in my dad’s basement workshop back home in Rhode Island — under threat that he’d throw it away if I didn’t make it playable by the end of the summer. How could I buy a broken guitar for that much money!? I wrote a song about the guitar (a 1949 Gibson Southern Jumbo) and my dad a couple of years ago and you can hear it here: I’m playing in open-C tuning — which I love because it’s full of octaves that give the feel of a 12-sstring guitar without having to own yet another instrument. You can download my two albums and some singles on Bandcamp. Here’s the evening episode in which I introduced my new album, “Wake Me up Martha”: I started this webcast series back in the pandemic and that multi-year playlist is here. Here’s a particularly fun episode with Alex de Grassi and Joachim Cooder and other friends: Sustain What is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

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About

Sustain What? is a series of conversations, seeking solutions where complexity and consequence collide on the sustainability frontier. Revkin believes sustainability has no meaning on its own. The first step toward success is to ask: Sustain what? How? And for whom? revkin.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Andy @Revkin
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    123
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Andy Revkin
  • Show Website
    Sustain What?

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