Adam D. Sacks, Executive Director
Biodiversity for a Livable Climate
adam.sacks@bio4climate.org
December 7, 2016

SUMMARY

Based on widely accepted scientific measurements, global emissions reduction efforts have not succeeded in reducing levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases.

On the contrary, the annual rate of carbon released into the atmosphere is accelerating (for many reasons which need not be discussed here). Reducing emissions and building out alternative energy are necessary but entirely insufficient to address global warming and, based strictly and objectively on atmospheric carbon numbers, have yet to show significant signs of success.

While we have gone through many phases of optimism – and a dramatic change is always possible – there is little evidence that such necessary atmospheric carbon reductions will take place in a suitable time frame. Indeed, the unprecedented rate of growth of atmospheric carbon to over 3 ppm during 2016 despite major advances in development and deployment of alternative energy is testament to an incomplete and not-yet-effective strategy. (See http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gr.html.)

The only practical, inexpensive and readily available “technology” for the massive carbon drawdown necessary is photosynthesis and associated biodiverse processes.  Such essential eco-restoration brings many advantages, including low cost, high food productivity, mitigating and often ending floods and drought, local economic self-sufficiency, and eliminating conflicts over scarcity. Land managers across the world have decades of eco-restoration experience on millions of acres. Evolving management approaches are highly effective and well-known outside of the conventional management practices that created the problem in the first place.

It is therefore time to reassess our climate strategies and proceed accordingly.

INTRODUCTION

When Michael Mann et al. introduced the hockey stick climate graph in 1999, they were representing global warming as an exponential process. We didn’t know at the time how rapidly exponential it was going to be, and the pace of acceleration caught just about everyone up short. Notwithstanding, apparently as a result of questionable assumptions about multi-decadal time frames for action, we still often discuss various distant (i.e., not this year or next) climate targets as if nature were going to accommodate our ineffectual responses.

We chronically speak of goals by 2030, 2050, 2100. Yet, while we’ve identified accelerating positive feedback loops such as melting ice and wildfires, we persist in talking and thinking about climate change as if it were a linear process.  To the exclusion of other possibilities, collectively we have single-mindedly focused on emissions or, to a lesser extent, on untested, expensive and frequently dangerous high-tech experiments.

Certainly there are scientists and activists who understand the alarming urgency for effective climate action. Unfortunately  the alarm is apparently not yet great enough to change the climate conversation to include the only feasible option left to humanity at this point in time, the power of the biological world to exert a positive influence on the course of events.  It is now almost midnight for switching course to give eco-restoration an equal or even greater share of our climate remediation efforts, which will surely fail unless we bring life back to billions of desertified and degraded acres across the earth.

ACCELERATING CARBON EMISSIONS AND TEMPERATURE RISE

[Atmospheric CO2, https://www.co2.earth/. Note change 2014-2015 was 3.02 ppm; 2015-2016, 3.40 ppm. There are variations from year to year, but the trends are clear.  See also http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gr.html for annual increase year over year since 1959]

[Global Surface Temperature, from Jim Hansen, “Young People’s Burden: Requirement of Negative CO2 Emissions,” http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2016/20161004_BurdenCommunication.pdf. Although 2015 through early 2016 was an El Nino year of more intense warming, the trends are nonetheless alarming.]

The annual growth rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide measured at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii jumped by 3.05 parts per million during 2015, the largest year-to-year increase in 56 years of research. In another first, 2015 was the fourth consecutive year that CO2 grew more than 2 ppm, said Pieter Tans, lead scientist of NOAA’s Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network. . . . The last time the Earth experienced such a sustained CO2 increase was between 17,000 and 11,000 years ago, when CO2 levels increased by 80 ppm. Today’s rate of increase is 200 times faster, said Tans. [emphasis added]  The big jump in CO2 is partially due to the current El Niño weather pattern, as forests, plant life and other terrestrial systems responded to changes in weather, precipitation and drought. The largest previous increase occurred in 1998, also a strong El Niño year. Continued high emissions from fossil fuel consumption are driving the underlying growth rate over the past several years.

http://www.noaa.gov/news/record-annual-increase-of-carbon-dioxide-observed-at-mauna-loa-for-2015

Jim Hansen, in his above-cited 2016 paper, “Young People’s Burden: Requirement of Negative CO2 Emissions,” states:

The growth rate of climate forcing due to human-caused greenhouse gases (GHGs) increased over 20% in the past decade mainly due to resurging growth of atmospheric CH4 [methane], thus making it increasingly difficult to achieve targets such as limiting global warming to 1.5°C or reducing atmospheric CO2 below 350 ppm. Such targets now require “negative emissions”, i.e., extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere [emphasis added].

Similarly, the IPCC AR5 (2013), stated:

A large fraction of anthropogenic climate change resulting from CO2 emissions is irreversible on a multi-century to millennial time scale, except in the case of a large net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere over a sustained period [emphasis added].

[http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdf, p 26]

LIMITS TO EFFECTIVENESS OF EMISSIONS REDUCTIONS

It is clear that at this point in history emissions reductions, were we to go to 100% tomorrow, would be insufficient to avoid serious impacts of global warming.  It is also clear that emissions reductions have not worked to date. It is particularly important to consider that positive feedback loops have been inadequately factored into the climate equation, and we are now seeing the accelerations characteristic of positive feedbacks in the form of rapid increases in temperature and greenhouse gas concentrations. More tangible as feedbacks are the growing number, distribution and intensity of fires, floods, droughts and other climate-related events.

Therefore. . .

It is reasonable, even urgent, to conclude that while we should pursue emissions reductions with all due haste and effort, 100% success immediately would still lead to climate catastrophe. We need to look elsewhere for solutions.

SOLUTIONS

The choices of approaches for eco-restoration, mitigation and reversal of global warming are many, and adaptable to a broad spectrum of habitats, biomes and latitudes. Options include but are not limited to reforestation, coastline revegetation, planned grazing grassland management, wetland restoration, applications of biochar and rock powders, permaculture and other intensive agricultural practices, regenerative water cycle management, elimination of all synthetic and fossil-based soil inputs, and focused attention on healthy and biodiverse ecosystems.

THE SCIENCE

The science of eco-restoration as an approach to global warming is supported by considerable study and data. Unfortunately, most of that information is scattered across many disciplines, as much of it was not originally pursued specifically with climate in mind.  New reports are coming out regularly, and many are indeed considering climate, but a coherent and comprehensive eco-restoration climate narrative is still in the early phases of development.  It is a project to which Biodiversity for a Livable Climate is currently devoting considerable effort.

Nobel laureate Albert Szent-Georgy once said, “Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen, and thinking what nobody has thought.”  Such is frequently the case with respect to eco-restoration and climate. The information is available but needs to be infused with meaning from a new paradigm in order to be readily understandable and broadly and effectively applicable, both at a land management level and in political and economic arenas.

OPPORTUNITIES

Briefly, there are several areas where individuals and organizations concerned with climate can play a significant role:

• Position eco-restoration as the main and top priority message with commitment to partnership, dialogue, and discussion among a broad group of stakeholders
• Provide institutional support for farmers and ranchers to transform our food system
• Lobby for federal, state and local action (laws and financing, tax incentives, etc.) for a broad spectrum of eco-restoration activities
• Fund and/or help to fund Biodiversity for a Livable Climate and similar organizations
• Educate professionals in elementary, secondary, and higher education on how to teach the eco-restoration paradigm.

By Adam D. Sacks
Executive Director, Biodiversity for a Livable Climate

Climate urgency is very clear.

There is an established belief in science that there are roughly 20-to-30-year time lags between a year of emissions and the perceptible  appearance of their effects. Therefore we are currently seeing the consequences of carbon concentrations 40 to 60 ppm less than at present. Furthermore, the signature of positive feedback loops is acceleration – it is apparent that in the last 2 or so years we are witnessing that acceleration in spades, as heat records are broken right and left, wildfires rage, etc. etc. 

Those of us who research and educate about eco-restoration have these accelerating phenomena firmly in mind. What considerations might be at the top of the list in approaching our daunting portfolio of problems? Here are some suggestions:

1. Human technology is, along with the population growth made possible by technology, the foundation of the anthropocene era.  Technology’s ultimate end is to expand carrying capacity so that we can accommodate a growing population, and bears many unintended consequences of which global warming is one of the most serious. The technologies in question over the past few hundred thousand years include the intentional use of fire, development of hand tools, agriculture, wheels, shipbuilding, architecture, culminating in the industrial era and widespread use of fossil fuels. 
2. There is a long list of unintended technological consequences and progress traps that have effectively put an end to every large-scale complex society in human history.
3. The basic planetary life-support system – sunlight, photosynthesis and soils in terrestrial and aquatic habitats – is an absolute necessity for virtually all life on earth.
4. Catastrophic climate change is one of many symptoms of the widespread destruction resulting from human technologies.
5. The ecological damage we are seeing today is a result of unintended consequences which always result from human technologies. In other words, human technologies always bear risks, from minimal to catastrophic, that may take decades, hundreds, or thousands of years to manifest (a long time in human terms, but geological microseconds).
6. This sixth mass extinction is the culmination of human technologies in the service of short-term human survival, which is a natural outcome of responding to immediate needs, i.e., food, water, shelter, warmth, reproduction. That is, it’s nobody’s fault, it’s the way we’re built.

Therefore:

Any invocation of human technology will bring unanticipated risks that will inevitably result in harm eventually, sometimes serious, occasionally extreme enough to cause widespread extinction and loss of the biodiversity on which our life-support systems depend.  No life-support system, no life – we are not immune from extinction. 

The inevitable reasonable conclusion is that we cannot rely on human technologies to solve the problems we are facing because of the unknown dangers such technologies bring.  A corollary is to use the least complex and least invasive technology possible for maximum safety and, ultimately, effectiveness.

UNFORTUNATELY we are in the thrall of our technologies to the extent that the effects of technology are often invisible to us, leaving us to wander into progress traps and to fall victim to our own ingenuity. We fail to see the pending outcomes until it is too late and resort to more technology to cure prior technological ills, digging ourselves into holes that turn into graves. The poster child today is global warming, but there are many others.

FORTUNATELY the natural world has all the answers we need. We have only to develop the ability to see them. We are blind to the power that brought us liquid water, an oxygen atmosphere, a narrow temperature range suitable for life, and millions of species for an exquisitely complex and biodiverse world. The same natural world that resulted in the evolution of homo sapiens sapiens in the first place.

In sum, our faith is entirely upside-down, believing in the world of nuts, bolts, copper wires, silicon chips and rocket ships, thinking that these are more important and powerful than biological systems. We won’t successfully address climate or any other ecosystem disasters until we understand this fallacy through and through, at a visceral as well as an intellectual level.

When we start to understand how the natural world functions – as complex systems – only then will we grasp what we need to do.

Those of us who work in eco-restoration face daunting odds because a paradigm shift is required, and the places where our cultural habits dictate that we look for answers don’t have them. The answers we desperately need cannot reside in the dominant paradigm which brought us these problems in the first place. The solutions lie elsewhere.

Fortunately, we know many of those solutions, they’ve already been applied on millions of acres on five continents. These solutions – from planned grazing to reforestation to permaculture to biochar to rock powders to wetland and ocean restoration – are all ready to go, far cheaper than anything tech, with many associated benefits for water and carbon cycles, control of floods and droughts, food production, economic justice, and on and on.

THEREFORE

Based on this reasoning and experience, one can only conclude that complex and/or untested technologies such as geoengineering (as distinct from geotherapy) should be off the table. They are potentially ineffective, expensive and/or very dangerous. Unfortunately they fit in neatly with the dominant paradigm, and getting excited over something techno-cool that we know little about is a reflex well-conditioned into our daily lives, only all too often turning out to be a snake-oily empty promise. Unfortunately, we no longer have time to play with empty promises.

From nature’s perspective geo-engineering makes no sense whatsoever, despite promises resulting from the misleading oversimplification of complex systems.  Solar radiation management (SRM) is readily available with intact ecosystems and healthy water cycles. Similarly for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) – photosynthesis can remove all the atmospheric CO2 we need. Artificial trees, deep well injection, etc. are similarly pointless – untested, expensive, potentially dangerous – we only go there because the dominant paradigm is blind to its own shortcomings and the power of nature, while we wax ecstatic over our reflex cultural loyalties. And because we are rightly desperate.

Many people request persuasive evidence that biological drawdown and ecosystem restoration alone can prevent a continuous thaw of the permafrost and other climate phenomena, given how late the hour is.  Coming from the land of the dominant (reductionist) paradigm – and we all struggle with its powerful constructs – such a request makes sense.

This is a common request, and at first blush not unreasonable, so let me take a moment to deconstruct it. There are many tricky and undefined (and perhaps undefinable) words in that sentence: “persuasive,” “evidence,” “alone,” “prevent,” “late.” There are also assumptions about mechanisms of drawdown, permafrost thaw, biological drawdown and eco-restoration. Suffice it to say that such requests are rife with undefined elements, and the key is that “seeing is believing” (not the other way around). That is, if you are prepared to believe what you’re asking for you will see it. Otherwise, it will continue to be invisible, and the conventional response to such invisibility is that “the science” isn’t there (wherever “there” may be).

When we refer to “the science” in the mainstream sense, we’re mostly referring to academic and reductionist science (where systems interactions are discounted), associated with revered institutions, experimental protocols, statistical analyses, and peer-reviewed studies. 

But we should keep in mind that before any scientific field is mainstream, it isn’t. No academic support, no peer review, no formal studies – but plenty of evidence, perhaps derided as “anecdotal,” but without which there would be no science at all.

So how does one arrive at a comfortable place of “seeing persuasive evidence”? 

When we’re studying systems such a personal transition is different for different people, but involves exposure to many new ideas, plenty of illustrative stories (“anecdotes”), conversations with numerous people, perhaps reading technical literature (or perhaps not), reflection on nature vis-a-vis human affairs, seeing the magic of eco-restoration first-hand, perusing some wonderful books by nature writers, and contemplating the vastness of the universe, the amazing existence of life on earth (perhaps nowhere else) – until you begin to recognize life as a force greater than any other on earth. Earth – it would be a dead rock in space, like Mars or Venus – without life.

I hope this longish post is helpful – I know that connecting these dots is not obvious. I’ve been on this winding road for the better part of a decade, the understandings are a personal evolution as much as anything.  

There is, thankfully, a great deal of knowledge and experience out there that has opened up a new paradigm of life on earth, into a universe of great possibility and hope where there are positive tools for regenerating a bountiful planet, where a healthy global ecosystem can take care of global warming and so many other pressing problems.  We humans have a vital role to play.

Let us proceed in partnership with nature on the path to biodiverse abundance, with enthusiasm and joy, guided by the gods within.*

*  Harking back to the original meaning of “enthusiasm,” en- (in) + theos (god).

by Jacqueline Sussman
Research Associate, Biodiversity for a Livable Climate

Solar panels on rooftops. Hybrid and electric vehicles. Meatless Mondays. What do all of these indicators of societal progress have in common? They are just some examples among the many symbolic, yet widely attainable, lifestyle modifiers for reducing energy consumption in our fossil fuel-addicted world. But while replacing SUVs with hybrid cars and changing lifestyle habits to reduce individual carbon footprints is important, it simply isn’t enough to reverse climate change. We have long surpassed the point where phasing down fossil fuel emissions alone will arrange for a biologically-diverse and livable climate.

Continue reading →

By Helen D. Silver, Director of Policy, Biodiversity for a Livable Climate

In September, members of the United Nations will convene a round of climate change negotiations. It’s not hard to guess what is on the table: greenhouse gas emissions reductions. Yet after almost three decades of effort, during which atmospheric carbon concentrations have only gone up, another meeting focused primarily if not exclusively on emissions reductions appears to hold little promise for success.  While emissions reductions are of course essential and we must keep working to end the burning of fossil fuels, we also have to do something else. Something that brings new hope to addressing global warming.  That something is soils.

Biodiversity for a Livable Climate (BLC) seeks to redirect the climate conversation to include large-scale carbon sequestration through ecosystem restoration.  Given that we know that healthy soils have the potential to sequester vast amounts of carbon dioxide, indeed enough to potentially reverse climate change, why haven’t policies seized upon this simple, apparent opportunity?  I have found the following questions helpful:

1.  Have GHG emissions reduction efforts reduced emissions?  Clearly not.  Despite admirable attempts and sincere commitment, climate policies have resulted in little meaningful mitigation of the climate crisis.  Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have climbed to 400 parts per million (ppm), far above what most scientists agree is the upper bound of a safe level.  Emissions continue rising annually, and all the while disruptions from climate change – in the form of rising temperatures, unpredictable water supplies, widespread drought and more violent storms – are being felt on every continent with ever-increasing frequency and intensity. Continue reading →

Click here for high resolution image.

by Steve Wineman

“Everything is connected to everything else.” – Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle

Like most climate activists, for a long time I thought that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were THE driving force behind climate change.  It followed that reducing emissions was our overriding goal. 

 A steady stream of messages from both the climate movement and the mainstream media are constantly reinforcing the perception that GHGs and the climate emergency are synonymous.  The most prominent activist organization is named after atmospheric carbon levels.  Even the climate deniers reinforce this focus when they react against the claims of scientists and activists  about carbon.  GHGs and what to do (or not do) about them frame the debate.

Biodiversity for a Livable Climate is dedicated to expanding the terms of the climate conversation.  We want to bring to the table measures for restoring degraded and desertified lands, re-establishing balanced water cycles, managing forests and reforestation, and restoring ocean food chains.  This is not instead of working to reduce GHG emissions, but in addition.  These are measures that have the potential to store huge amounts of carbon in the soil, reduce flooding and drought by stabilizing local climates, address the immediate dangers posed by the world’s diminished water supplies, restore habitable environments for innumerable species,  increase food supplies and create jobs.  Why would such measures not be on the climate table in addition to emission reduction?

Spanning the specific benefits of individual measures is the overarching need to restore the balance of Earth’s interconnected natural systems.  Why would we not place carbon reduction into this larger ecological context?

*          *            *

 
I can think of several reasons why it’s not easy to change the conversation. Continue reading →

By Judith Schwartz, Advisory Board Member and author of Cows Save the Planet

With a record drought in California, floods in the UK and snow paralyzing areas of the South that have hardly met a plow, people are starting to make the connection between climate change and water. But generally the cause-and-effect link only goes one way, noting how climate change will affect water by putting stress on global water sources while parts of the world get soaked. This is a real concern. But we’re not seeing the other part of the picture: the effect that water can have on climate. You see, water in its various forms is an important thermoregulator of climate. By working with the water cycle—most basically by keeping water on the land in soil and vegetation—we can address climate changes locally, regionally and even beyond.

Photograph of the square and adjacent park in Trebon, Czech Republic, taken with a thermal camera. The differences in temperatures between the vegetation, facades and roofs of the houses – from 15°C (59°F) to 30°C (86°F) – are visible.
[From New Water Paradigm, p. 33]

Continue reading →

By Adam D. Sacks, Executive Director

At Biodiversity for a Livable Climate, removing carbon from the atmosphere by regenerating ecosystems and restoring biodiversity is our non-profit mission. Supporting farmers, herders and ranchers around the world to work in ways that both sequester carbon in soils and provide major benefits in productivity is a key means to that end. Unfortunately, the resources that carbon farmers need to accomplish this are currently in short supply. We need to develop a conceptual framework outside the current carbon-market mechanisms to advance the soil solution to global warming, and to provide funds, training and supplies that make worldwide carbon farming on billions of acres a reality.

Continue reading →

Helen D. Silver, Director of Policy, Biodiversity for a Livable Climate

Happy New Year!

Over the holiday season, I had the luxury of sharing many meals with family and friends, including latkes and apple sauce; Tofurkey and yams; and locally caught shrimp and farm-raised oysters.  In discussing my work, I was asked several times, “But how can you not eat meat and be so passionate about Holistic Planned Grazing?”

Easily. Holistic Planned Grazing promotes reversing climate change, restoring grassland ecosystems, animal welfare, and healthier food.  That Holistic Planned Grazing offers a sustainable meat source is incidental for most ecological purposes, in particular restoring degraded land (notably, 74% of the land in North America).  Such restoration is necessary here and worldwide to avoid the worst impacts of climate change in the near and long term.

Continue reading →