REGENERATION — THE LAST CLIMATE MOVEMENT
More than half a century has passed since Silent Spring, Limits to Growth and Greenpeace saw the light. James Hansen talked to congress about climate change decades ago. Fifty conferences from Stockholm to Rio to Paris have alerted the world to our plight. The message was every time the same: if we do not turn around and stop degrading our planet, the moment will arrive that nature and its life-support systems can no longer hold our species and widespread collapse will set in.
FACE IT, COLLAPSE HAS SET IN!
Well, collapse has set in around the world now while the youth is rightfully accusing the leadership of ‘’blah blah blah’’ and throws tomato soup at sunflower paintings. Meanwhile food and energy prices are squeezing the life out of people while the poor switch to firewood for their cooking and heating again, accelerating deforestation which accelerates global warming.
WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE
To anybody who is not asleep it is clear that the economy, the ecology and the fragile balance of military power are all breaking down.
To anybody who is not asleep it will be clear that net zero 2050 targets mean nothing as the impacts of the climate crisis are already destabilizing whole regions and hundreds of millions of households around the world. The world will soon become uninhabitable with stress levels and madness matching food scarcity, mass migration and conflict, while extreme weather multiplies the threats by eating away at food production everywhere. Hello Pakistan, Iran, Nigeria.
To anybody who is not asleep, the next powerful El Nino feels like a nightmare that could hit any moment now.
To anybody who is not asleep a new financial crisis could unravel the economy any moment because the central bankers cannot resolve resource issues by printing more money. Money requires trust, a story of calm but lack of resources brings chaos that will burn the foundational trust money needs to function.
And the drums of war are audible all over the Eurasian landmass from North-Korea and Taiwan to Iraq and Iran. Other lands have already become wastelands of human misery, from Yemen, Syria and Lebanon to Afghanistan, Ukraine and even sweet Sri Lanka. Is the mud drying up in Pakistan now? How is the salt infiltration going in the Mekong delta and the coastal areas of Bangladesh? Does anybody know? Can we still turn this mess around? Will even more people simply start to wander to find a decent place to live, a place that no longer exists? Internal climate migration in countries hardly gets noticed. It usually falls under the statistics of urbanisation.
A MASS MOVEMENT TO REGENERATE THE PLANET NOW!
At the roots of all this stress lies the deterioration of our lands, seas and skies because in our ignorance, our growing numbers and excess material use. We have been treating our abundant planet so badly that it is suffering of severe atrophy, emaciated biomes hidden from the power centres in the cities that do not feel that the worn soils hold less and less life to keep them fed for much longer. Half the forests are gone, two billion hectares of land exhausted and listless or even lifeless. Eighty percent of agricultural land used for livestock, the once abundant fish in the ocean have been depleted, oxygen is going down, acidity up. And madness is creeping into the minds of many as fear and impotence unravels people’s psyches.
LET’S REGENERATE OUR WORLD, ALL OF US!
How the hell can we get out of this mess this late in the game? I think the only game changer we have left is the emergence of a mass movement to regenerate the planet now. Do you see the great opportunity here? We still have that amazingly abundant resource called human spirit and human labour. If tomorrow we start regenerating those lands, restore nature and transition to sustainable food production at the scale and speed needed to get through this, we can revive our once abundant planet, locally, in millions of places. And guess what? Reversing the damage is very simple at a micro level. Regenerating lands are quickly more resilient against droughts, heatwaves and extreme rain. Regrowing forests cool and cleanse their regions and if we revive those to their original size, they will even cool the planet as a whole! Through CO2 sequester half of our emissions could be absorbed. But more importantly the increased evaporation through the leaves of billions of new trees would export heat to the outer atmosphere.
If we scale the regeneration of land around the world, we can beat back the climate-, food- and water crises, the destruction of nature and with all of that regenerate our rural communities, who can feed themselves with forms of permaculture, agroforestry or silvopasture. If we all join in, we can turn this around within years. The climate movements turns to regeneration everywhere! Will it be enough to create a sustainable future? Not by itself, but it would be a key factor in the great turning and it would go a long way!
It is clear that we will have to stop our addition for a lot of stuff. We need additional solutions to energy and we can’t stop sea level rise, at best slow it down. But by reviving our lands and taking care of each other everywhere we can recharge nature, soils, forests and human society, step out of the madness we live in now and into agency, into action by all for all and most of all to give the future a chance by cooling the planet with each patch of ground cared for turning the tide.
Can we do this?
Please share your insights.
Thank you,
Rob
