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While some dams provide hydropower and some (very limited) flood control, most have become relics of the past, expensive to keep up, dangerous if not maintained, and a menace to local ecosystems. More than 2,100 of them have been removed in the past century, including between 50 and 100 each year since 2017. What happens when you remove a dam? The restorative effects are visible almost immediately, Jill Webb wrote in this story about the positive impact of dam removal. “Dry sediment around the waterbodies gets hydrated and vegetation begins to grow again. … Fish species, like American shad and sea lamprey, rebound … river herrings repopulate. They play a critical role in the local food chain.”

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“The decarbonization of the world economy is irreversible. The momentum is building to the point where it is simply unstoppable, with or without the United States.”

— Christina Figueres, former U.N. Climate Chief, founder of Global Optimism, and podcast host of Outrage + Optimism, speaking at COP30

Today’s newsletter celebrates the beaver, that industrious and gifted (and sometimes destructive) wetlands engineer. COP30, the planet’s biggest climate conference, which closes today, features many industrious and gifted (and sometimes destructive) people trying to engineer agreements and solutions to our dangerously warming world. It’s easy to feel discouraged — few signatories to the Paris Agreement signed 10 years by 190 countries and led by the U.S. have met their commitments to try to keep warming to below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and preferably to 1.5°C. But there have been remarkable gains, as well, including, as one of the architects of the Paris Agreement, Christina Figueres, notes, the rapid escalation of clean energy driving the decarbonization of the world economy. 

As we write this, it’s unclear what the new agreements will entail. Among some exciting proposals are the creation of a $125 billion fund to pay countries to protect their forests and the Beat the Heat Implementation Drive, a flagship effort to support local-level solutions to extreme heat and scale up the use of sustainable cooling solutions (cool roofs, urban green spaces, early warning systems). Completely in Bluedot’s wheelhouse, a dozen countries have endorsed the first-ever Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change with participating countries committing to take action against the spread of false information and support those working to share accurate, fact-based climate news, like, ahem, us. You can do your part by forwarding this newsletter to friends and colleagues in your life who are interested in fact-based, solutions-focused climate news. 

• Climate Quick Tip: Raise the Bar (and Reduce Plastic)

• Daily Dot: Sweet Dreams and Beaver Tales

• Wild Facts About … Beavers

• What’s So Bad About Dams?

• Bamboo Cutting Board With Trays

• Post-Holiday Turkey Stock

• Shop Our Store!

• Food and Love in North Carolina

• Southern Prune Cake

• Dam Removal Restores Fish Migration in Massachusetts

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Post-Holiday Turkey Stock

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Wild Facts About … Beavers (and Dams)

If you’re lucky enough to live near a river or pond, you might notice that your aquatic neighbors are, well, busy beavers. These buck-toothed engineers “take to the shore from September until the ice freezes — they need to cut and stockpile a healthy supply of tree trunks and branches, enough to last them through the cold season,” writes Jackie Davis, who produces Bluedot Canada’s “Wild Facts About …” series. “They can stash as much as 8,000 gallons of food — a.k.a. wood — beside their lodges.” Learn more about this flat-tailed icon in Wild Facts About … Beavers. And while beavers are building dams, environmental groups are removing manmade versions and, consequently, restoring crucial habitat. Read about the fish species now successfully migrating along one Massachusetts river.

Daily Dot: Sweet Dreams and Beaver Tales

Our Dear Dot has a daily newsletter, Your Daily Dot. (Not a subscriber yet? Let’s fix that! Click here.) Recently, Dot detailed the ways that beavers “may be acting as ecosystem engineers, reshaping waterways in ways that benefit not just their own survival, but also that of entire landscapes. By slowing streams and spreading water onto flood plains, their dams create lush pockets of habitat that can endure long after fire or drought has swept through.”

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What You Can Do: Become a Waterkeeper

You can get involved protecting lakes, rivers, and streams in your area by joining forces with others in your community via the Waterkeeper alliance. Click here to find out more.

The Keep-This Handbook

If you’re headed to someone’s home for Thanksgiving this year, thrift a serving bowl or tray to carry what you make instead of grabbing something disposable. They are festive, give old things new life, and double as a thoughtful and unique gift for your host. Check out this list of Sustainable Gifts for Gracious Hosts for more great gift-giving ideas.

Saying Grace

“Everyone does it: from the Burmese to the Balinese, to the Inuit and Icelanders,” I wrote in a magazine story more than 15 years ago. “In the United States, almost half of us give thanks before eating a meal, making it one of the most common of our shared rituals.”

Philosophy professor (and my next-door neighbor) Laurel Schneider said that in the time before pasteurization and refrigeration, blessings may have been part purification (we pray that this food will not mysteriously kill us), along with simple gratitude and the practice of “pleasing God/the spirits/the ancestors.” Acknowledging, she says, that the food “is not ours to begin with, but loaned to us” by those entities keeps us humble and in proper harmony.

We thought of grace, and gratitude, when we heard about Annie Forsthoefel, who has a garden cafe near Asheville, North Carolina. After the hurricane last year, Annie fed dozens and dozens of people in town for weeks, for free. On the anniversary this fall, she wrote in a newsletter: “We’ll be sharing with each of you a free slice of cake, a beautiful southern prune cake … because in the end, love is what carries us through: love for one another, love for the food that nourishes us, and love for this incredible place we are blessed to call home.”

Sounds like grace to us. 

We hope you feel the same when you look around your Thanksgiving table next Thursday. Enjoy the weekend; we’ll see you next week. 

–Jamie Kageleiry (and Emily Cain, Leslie Garrett, and Robin Jones)

Editors

Write us at editor@bluedotliving.com

Leslie Garrett has been covering climate stories for close to two decades.  She makes her home in Canada, west of Toronto. She’s still figuring out her favorite spot but it’s definitely near the water.

Jamie Kageleiry, a longtime magazine and newspaper editor from Martha’s Vineyard, says her favorite spot on earth is out on a kayak there, looking at birds.

Robin Jones is a Southern California native who served as an editor at Westways magazine for more than a decade. She lives in Long Beach and teaches journalism at Cal State Long Beach.

Emily Cain is a recent graduate of Cal State Long Beach, where she wrote and edited for the university’s award-winning magazine, DIG.

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