BE GRATEFUL FOR TINY LIFE — IT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR CLIMATE
Life is based on a complex network of interactions, which take place at microscopic scales in biological cells, and in tiny ecosystems. One tea spoon of healthy soil can hold up to a billion bacteria, several meters of fungal threads, several thousand protozoa, and hundreds of nematodes. The total surface area of your lungs is the size of a tennis field and the interactions that keep us alive is the exchange of molecule for molecule of oxygen and carbon dioxide. We all know what the butterfly effect is, but the biosphere is an ongoing dynamism of countless trillions of microscopic interactions that make life thrive. Recently I wrote how shrimps could help fight climate change and pine beetles may be partly responsible for the melting of the Greenland glacier. There is a radical interconnectedness of all biological and non-biological activity with the climate, with the quality of your and my life.
This article is about the incredible amounts of ocean water copepods stir and help nutrient distribution throughout the water column, while regulating the ocean surface temperature. In fact in a conversation this week Russ George told me that this churning was some of the largest biological activities on the planet. Most raindrops are formed by tiny bacteria that act as condensation nuclei for the drop to form. Are the recent record temperatures caused by CO2 or by the accelerated decay of the ocean’s biology? The story I am trying to tell is that we need to start taking all life seriously if we want to keep ourselves alive and create a future of simple abundance on a thriving planet. Increased CO2 in the atmosphere is a problem but it does not compare to the damage we inflict on this almost infinite interaction in our guts, in our soils, in the Earth’s oceans that create the conditions for life to thrive. We have killed off half of living biomass on our planet. THAT is the greatest cause of the climate crisis. We need a new way to look at life in order to reverse climate change. From there much more effective action is possible. We can cool the planet within two decades if we are willing to open our eyes to the miraculous workings of life’s interactions and support the regeneration of life everywhere. Will you get aboard this new climate story? Thank you!
