Panel: Dr. Anastassia Makarieva, Tom Goreau, Dan Kittredge, Judith D. Schwartz Moderator: Didi Pershouse
We are excited to share with you the panel discussion from the Boston Premiere of the film Regenerating Life! It was such a full day with three parts to the film, interesting exhibitors, and reconnecting with friends, that it was difficult to take it all in at once.
You can share some of that excitement from our great panel of speakers, featuring:
Moderator Didi Pershouse (Land and Leadership Institute), with panelists
Tom Goreau (Marine biologist,Global Coral Reef Alliance),
Dr. Anastassia Makarieva (Atmospheric Physicist, biotic pump co-formulator),
Dan Kittredge (Farmer, Founder, Bionutrient Food Association) and
Judith D.Schwartz (Environmental journalist and author).
Realizing that there were many topics in the film that could be their own 3 hour film, Didi started the conversation by asking the panelists: What would you like a little more time to talk about from the film? Didi also asked the panelists to share their long view of the situation and what they are focusing on looking forward.
One of the most interesting parts of the discussion to me (and they were all interesting) was hearing from the audience their questions and reflections. Over 25 participants had the chance to speak their questions for all of us to reflect on as the event wrapped up.
I hope you enjoy the panel discussion, and please feel free to add your questions in the blog comments and share resources you think are important.
Thank you for being a part of the most important climate conversation of our time!
Regenerating life together,
Beck
P.S. Connect with Bio4Climate and friends from OR this Saturday at theRedesigning our Communitiesconference featuring Richard Heinberg.
P.P.S. Yes, the film is available for purchase!! Follow the links from our film page.
Dr. Makarieva explains why protecting existing forests is one of the most important things we can do to stabilize the climate. Pending legislation in MA (USA) serves as a model for policy protections needed around the world. Learn more about taking action here, and find out more at Save Mass Forests.
Our climate system is incredibly complex. Much of it depends on clouds. Clouds will either cool or warm the Earth depending on their type, because they reflect sunlight (cooling) but absorb thermal radiation (warming).
The natural forest can be compared to a skilled tightrope walker whose equilibrium (producing warming and cooling clouds) keeps the climate in balance. This dynamic has emerged throughout the evolution of the planet. It requires coordination between all species in the forest community. (Some cloud-seeding particles are produced by forest bacteria!) When we log or burn the forest, we introduce a disturbance. When the disturbance goes beyond the threshold, the system collapses. The tightrope walker cannot keep balance and crashes. Climate destabilization commences.
The less disturbed the balance of the system, the more efficient climate regulation will be. After a disturbance, the forest ecosystem has the capacity to recover through the process of ecological succession. Consortia of different species (starting from lichens and mosses and proceeding to herbs, shrubs and trees) replace each other in a non-random order — restoring the ecosystem’s environment and capacity to regulate climatic conditions. Such a recovery is not guaranteed — if disturbed beyond a threshold, the ecosystem can totally degrade. With the beginning of the era of industrialization, North American forests suffered a dramatic devastation. Today those forests show signs of self-sustainability, are recovering with a full suite of biodiversity and are exceptionally valuable. These are recovering mechanisms maintaining climate stability.
Life is governed by the universal laws of nature. These laws are not dependent on imaginary lines drawn on human maps. We have learned so much about natural ecosystems in recent decades. The sooner we align our laws with the newly discovered evidence of how important natural forests are for climate and water cycle stabilization, the better chance we have to secure favorable conditions for ourselves and our children.
A unique effort is currently underway in Massachusetts, including bills to protect natural self-sustainable climate-regulating forests from logging. Let us champion the legal recognition of the climate-regulating function of natural forests!
Our Boston Premiere of Regenerating Life at Tufts University was a tremendous success! It was exciting to see about 100 people come together to experience how John Feldman wove the many threads of the importance of nature to climate stability together in film.
Tufts Screening
Conversation was lively during the lunch break, as people talked with exhibitors from local organizations while enjoying sandwiches. The room was abuzz with admiration for the way that all the pieces of the climate message came together, along with the beautiful photography and Feldman’s own sense of humor.
Attendees in the break
After Part 3, John Feldman answered questions about the making of the film and introduced us to Sheila Silver, the composer of the mood-setting, and often hauntingly beautiful score.
We concluded with an insightful discussion from our panel of experts who traveled here from Russia, Jamaica, Vermont, New York and Western Mass. The conversation, led by Didi Pershouse, brought together key researchers, some of whom have been with Bio4Climate since our first conference and most of whom were featured in the film. The discussion proved lively as some differences in how to best apply the information were expressed. Check out the recording of the panel discussion and Q&A here.
Panel: Dr. Anastassia Makarieva, Tom Goreau, Dan Kittredge, Judith D. Schwartz; Moderator: Didi Pershouse
Nearly 30 attendees had the chance to share with the rest of the audience and panel the questions they had, which were inspired by the film. Perhaps the most common question was “How can we get this message out to more people?” Which is the same question we ask ourselves every day at Bio4Climate – but the short answer is – share the film!
The distributor Bullfrog Films is now making the film available for individuals and community groups to host a live or virtual screening. You can learn more about hosting a screening here. Bio4Climate will also make a community screening toolkit available soon, so stay tuned.
We look forward to getting this excellent movie and its important messages out to the world. Thank you so much for being a part of it!
Have you seen the film at our Premiere or elsewhere? Please share your comments and pictures in the comments so we can Regenerate Life together!
To a climate conversation long dominated by computer models and technological jargon, Regenerating Life: How to Cool the Planet, Feed the World and Live Happily Ever After brings some badly needed rain, along with dung beetles, sweating trees, fungal mycelia, cloud-making forests, beavers, worms, soil microbes, cow patties and whales. As more and more people are learning, there’s another side to the climate that’s been overlooked, one having less to do with what we put in the air than what we do to the land and this film brings it beautifully to life.
It’s a daunting task, for once we open our eyes to the biological side of climate, we confront an almost incomprehensible complexity. There’s photosynthesis to understand as well as plant transpiration, the small water cycle and the greenhouse effect. Soil microbiology, cloud formation, ecosystem dynamics and nutrient cycles all figure in. There is the physics of light and heat and the twin chemistries of carbohydrates and hydrocarbons to account for, not to mention the legacies of colonization, slavery and the industrialization of agriculture. A lesser filmmaker would leave us lost in facts and figures and timelines, but John Feldman, writer, photographer and editor of the film, delivers a journey so visually sumptuous, so evenly paced and cleverly edited, we hardly realize we are being taught at all.
The film starts quietly, with the sound of rain, then opens to a downpour in a woodland. As the camera follows a creek down a mossy ravine Feldman begins, “When I started this film about the causes and solutions to the climate crisis, I had no idea I would be spending so much time looking at water.” And so it is with anyone who learns about the living basis of climate. It’s so much about water. And water is so much about life. Together, and in exquisite synchronization, through myriad cycles and feedbacks, they produce what we call the climate (of which CO2 emissions are a critical part.) But there is no simple linear explanation for how it all works. It’s too complex for that, with many things happening at once, cycling one through the other. As he discovers early on, “everything leads to everything else.”
Mist over field – still from Regenerating Life
To deal with this lack of linearity, Feldman divides his film into three parts, looking at the whole through three lenses, so to speak. Part 1, called Water Cools the Planet, looks through the water lens. Part II, Life Sustains the Climate, asks “How does life sustain itself?” and looks through the lens of life for the answer. Part III, Small Farms Feed the World, takes on the industrialization of agriculture while providing common sense climate solutions through the lens of food.
I use the word “lens” deliberately. Feldman shows his story as much as tells it. An example comes at the end of part I. He’s just led us through the intricate ferment of living processes that run the water cycles that cool our climates. We’ve seen how living soil not only sequesters carbon but also water, banking moisture against drought while hydrating green growth above, and how vegetation sweats much like we do, with forests cooling their environments much as a sweaty shirt in the wind cools us. We’ve examined the subtle, but oh-so-powerful physics of how heat moves through the phases of water, liquid to vapor and back again. There’s been a lot of information to take in, and then as reward he lets our eyes feast a while on a time-lapse unfolding of morning mist over a glen. Vapors rise, twist, curl and fall like dancing veils as we move beyond the science into the thing itself, the animate beauty and mystery of it.
Part II widens the lens yet further. To understand climate you must understand water and to understand water you must understand life, thus the question: “How does life sustain itself?” I love that he asks this question. It’s the very opposite of the scientific reductionism that characterizes the standard climate narrative, with Earth’s climate reduced to something of a machine with a carbon dial.
A particularly mesmerizing passage occurs when Feldman takes us behind a microscope to look at the creatures we’ve so far been referring to as “soil microbia.” Looking down on the slow, translucent bodies moving about at their tasks, with the film’s subtly melodic musical accompaniment tugging at my borders, I felt a sympathy and connection with these beings that I hadn’t expected. The passage affects me still. This morning I was looking at the edge of an incoming tide and saw what I first thought was a pale fragment of dead seaweed. But noticing it was translucent like the microbes I had seen in the film I looked longer and realized it was moving on its own. Then I saw the dark eyespots, and fin-like appendages waving from its sides. Would I have noticed this embryonic creature-in-making had I not seen this movie? Hard to say, but life is so at the center of this film that it seems to have affected how I look at things even days afterward. With this intensified attentiveness to life, my surroundings seem to have, well, come alive.
The network IS the fungi – still from Regenerating Life
In Part III the film takes on more of an edge. To talk about food is to talk about the industrial takeover of agriculture. It’s also to talk about slavery and its legacy, as well colonialism and its long trail of brutal land-taking. Feldman doesn’t shy from any of it, detailing just how the growing of food has become so poisonous, industrial and corporatized. The “green” revolution turns out to be not so green after all, kind of like “green” energy: imposing an industrial solution on what is an organic problem.
Karen Washington at her urban farm – still from Regenerating Life
I’ve mentioned how Feldman shows as well as explains his material. He also lets others do the telling. There’s long been a quiet community around the world of people who, coming to understand the power and beauty of this new, more ecological way of seeing the climate, have pretty much dedicated their lives to it. We meet many of these figures and what’s so refreshing is that none of them are big names. There are no Hollywood figures, just everyday people who, in their own way, have come to see how all the pieces fit together. Along with soil scientists, microbiologists and organizers, we meet an ecologist who homeschools eighth graders in science, a nutritionist turned soil communicator, two African American sisters reclaiming their afro-indigenous heritage, farmers in India applying regenerative agriculture at province-wide scale, growing food even during drought, and a community gardener in the middle of New York City who is regenerating life from the city-center out and has become very clear that “to grow your own food gives you power.”
There’s a good chance some people won’t like this film. They won’t appreciate it referring to carbon gases and the greenhouse effect as a cause of climate change, rather than the cause of climate change. Some may even try to portray it as a kind of climate denial. But this film isn’t about denying anything. It’s a film of affirmation. And what it affirms, over and over, is life, not only the wonder of it but the power of it to heal our broken climate. It’s more of an orchestration than a machine. But even that is too tightly structured a comparison. There is something wild and beautiful at its heart. It’s a force with its own will. And if you allow yourself, it will fill you with awe and even hope.
Feldman is surely awed. You may well be too. It’s something you can only see through discovery, and now you have this calm and generous film to help you with that. You might want to have pen and paper on hand, and maybe invite a friend or two to join you.
There’s a lot to talk about.
Rob Lewis
Pictures are stills from the film Regenerating Life, used with permission.
Rob Lewis is a poet, writer and activist working to give voice to the more-than-human world, and a member of Bio4Climate’s Leadership Team since 2021. His writings have appeared in Resilience, Dark Mountain, Atlanta Review, Counterflow and others, as well as the anthologies Singing the Salmon Home and For the Love of Orcas. He’s also author of the poetry/essay collection The Silence of Vanishing Things. Lately, he’s been writing about how the climate isn’t a machine with an engineering fix, but a living system that only can only be healed through restraint and restoration, at https://theclimateaccordingtolife.substack.com/
I’d like to introduce this piece with a scenario. Suppose someone pointed out that you’d been looking at the climate through a pair of glasses with only one lens? Lifting them off your nose, they then provide you a new pair of glasses with two lenses. Suddenly, parts of the climate you couldn’t see before appear. In addition to the atmosphere, you now see the landscapes around you and the soil beneath your feet, not as helpless victims, but as active drivers of this thing we call climate. Not only that, but you see that at one point, not too long ago, science looked at the climate in just such a manner. It was only later, in the 1980’s, that the glasses with the single lens was put before our eyes and declared the official scientific view.
These are some of the insights gained when you follow the path of Millan’s career and scientific work, though Millan uses different metaphors, referring to a “two-legged” climate understanding versus the one-legged, CO2-only view, the current orthodoxy. He also shows us that water, which lies at the heart of Earth’s climate, “begets water,” that soil is like a “womb” for rain and climate, and vegetation acts as a “midwife.”
I realize I’m throwing out a lot of metaphors here, but with today’s data-driven orthodoxy, metaphors are needed to help us see through the numerical fog. In any case, read on and things will become clear.
Millan Millan and the Mystery of the Missing Mediterranean Storms
When Mediterranean climate expert Millan M. Millan was a boy, his father brought him along on his frequent partridge hunting forays through the dry scrubland of southern Spain known as the maqui, often stopping to show him how to read the surrounding weather, pointing out how a “cloud in a certain place in the morning would move somewhere else by afternoon, triggering a rainstorm.” They’d watch the storms form across the landscape and plan their route home to avoid getting wet. Little could Millan know that 40 years hence he’d be asked by the European Commission to figure out why those afternoon storms, which he and his father so enjoyed tracking across the hillsides, were disappearing throughout the Western Mediterranean Basin, with rivers drying up in their wake.
The future Dr. Millan, Head of the Center for the Mediterranean Environment, degreed in Fluid Mechanics, Industrial Engineering, Aerospace Science, Atmospheric Physics and Spectroscopy, Synoptic Meteorology and Weather Forecasting, would indeed figure out why the summer storms were failing. “Land-use perturbations (mining, industrial expansion, deforestation, paving) that accumulated over historical time and greatly accelerated in the last 30 years” had rendered the land incapable of supporting the region’s climate. The storms were vanishing because the land was vanishing, Millan showed, with far reaching implications for our understanding of the human causes of climate change and how we should respond.
Though hailed by Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen as the most significant finding for climate change in twenty years and published in the American Meteorological Association’s Journal of Climate and others,1,2 his work was effectively ignored by mainstream climate science, proving as Millan put it, “incommodious.” The CO2-oriented, global computer models that came to dominate climate science couldn’t see the local, land-level processes Millan uncovered. Politicians, with their pet building projects and “growth” mandate, ran from them.
Millan isn’t the only scientist raising the alarm about “land change” as a human cause of climate change,3,4 but at 82 he has been around the longest, long enough to remember a time when science held what he terms a “two-legged” view of climate, with a leg for atmospheric carbon and the greenhouse effect, and a leg for land disturbance and hydrologic effects (water cycles.) By researching past climate reports, I’ve been able to verify this,5,6 leading to another mystery: what happened to the two-legged understanding of climate? As it turns out, Millan’s story answers this mystery also, as we will see.
The boy, whose father pointed to his destiny and who went on to deftly met it, nonetheless feels defeated. “I failed, for all of us,” he wrote me once. And indeed, today’s climate narrative completely leaves out Millan’s work. But I don’t think the story is over. The wheel of science is moving toward Millan’s understanding, not away, and the scientific case for a two-legged view of climate just keeps building. Now, in fact, is the perfect time to tell his story.
Shared with permission from Rob Lewis, writer, activist, and member of Bio4Climate’s Leadership Team since 2021. This article was originally published on Resilience.org on July 17, 2023. Read the original article here.
Rob Lewis is a poet, writer and activist working to give voice to the more-than-human world. His writings have appeared in Resilience, Dark Mountain, Atlanta Review, Counterflow and others, as well as the anthologies Singing the Salmon Home and For the Love of Orcas. He’s also author of the poetry/essay collection The Silence of Vanishing Things. Lately, he’s been writing about how the climate isn’t a machine with an engineering fix, but a living system that only can only be healed through restraint and restoration, at https://theclimateaccordingtolife.substack.com/
Sources:
Millan, Millan et al, 2005, Climatic Feedbacks and Desertification: The Mediterranean Model, Journal of Climate, Volume 18, pp. 684-70.
Millan, Millan, 2014, Extreme Meteorological Events and Climate Prediction in Europe, Journal of Hydrology, Volume 518, pp.206-224.
Pielke, Roger Sr., 2009, Climate Change: The Need to Consider Human Forcings Besides Greenhouse Gases, Eos, Vol. 90, No. 45, pp. 413-414.
Schwarzer, Stefan, 2021, Working with Plants, Soils and Water to Cool the Climate and Rehydrate Earth’s Landscapes, UNEP Foresight Brief, pp. 1-7.
1971, Inadvertent Climate Modification: Study of Man’s Impact on Climate, MIT.
1979, Proceedings of the World Climate Conference: Conference of Experts on Climate and Mankind, World Meteorological Association.
Photo: Low maquis in Corsica (Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=181723)
Cabezon Peak after rain, Photo by John Fowler (CC BY 2.0)
Although climate change is a global issue, it can and must be addressed locally. Our overall climate is shifting drastically, but local climates are also changing, and they don’t always get the same amount of attention. Local climates change when the environment is drastically altered. This happens when the soils are depleted or covered with pavement, or when local water sources are drained and exported to rivers and eventually oceans. To restore local climates, we can start by restoring local natural cycles, and the first cycle we can look to is water.
Not One Cycle, But Many
You might have heard of ‘the water cycle,’ but there are actually many water cycles. They are in action at all times. Long water cycles draw their moisture primarily from the ocean, while short water cycles – also known as small water cycles – recirculate moisture on land. These cycles release water into the atmosphere through plant water vapor. Once the water reaches the skies, it forms clouds, and the cycle continues as clouds return the water to the land via rain. Evapotranspiration and precipitation are two processes in water cycles that ensure water stays in the respective region long-term.
Without water and its many cycles, our Earth would be hot, far too hot for us to live. The energy from the sun has to go somewhere. It is, after all, aimed directly at the planet. When plants and water are involved, the sun’s energy goes into plants to create life. Without plants or water, that energy gets absorbed by the land and creates ground too hot to walk on, let alone live on. The presence of water and the cycling of it controls local climates. It also provides moisture to plants and forms the clouds that moderate the Earth’s temperatures. The saying “water is life” could not be more accurate.
Where Did the Water Go?
If you live in a region with constant drought, you might be wondering what happened to the local water cycles, as precipitation has become more infrequent and unpredictable. Unfortunately, this scenario is becoming more and more common. As we continue to develop, paving over soils that absorb water with concrete and asphalt, we are increasing the surface area of impenetrable surfaces. Depleted soils also don’t absorb water, and when water doesn’t go underground, water cycles get disrupted – making it more difficult for all living beings to survive. The water that fails to be absorbed runs off the land (hence, the term runoff) and flows into storm drainages. Rather than keeping water local, we’re sending fresh, life-giving water to faraway rivers and oceans. For water to contribute to the local climate, it must stay in the area, meaning we need permeable ground and healthy soil.
Poor land and water management has led to an alarming loss of topsoil and decline in soil health. Industrial farming systems rely on chemicals and heavy machinery detrimental to life in the soil. Yet we need those microorganisms in the soil to build good aggregation (pore spaces) and symbiotic relationships with plants that form the basis of a functioning small water cycle. When we disrupt local water cycles and water runs off rather than evenly spreading over the land and infiltrating, we create conditions that lead to droughts, floods, heat waves, intense storms, and sea level rise.
Graphic by NM Healthy Soil Working Group
How can we restore local water cycles?
The good news is that we can restore the small water cycle by re-building the porous structure of the soil sponge – a term coined by Australian soil microbiologist Walter Jehne. Following nature’s strategy and applying the soil health principles, combined with slowing and capturing rainfall through earthworks (e.g. swales and small check dams), allows the soil to regenerate. Water gets absorbed instead of running off, some of it providing moisture for plants near the surface, and some percolating deeper underground to recharge aquifers that create water sources for all living beings.
How plants create rain: Somewhat akin to us breathing in and out, plants move water from the roots through trunks, branches, and stems, and ultimately out via the stomata (tiny pores) in leaves. Through this process, plants move nutrients to where they are needed –either nutrients from the soil or the sugars and carbohydrates photosynthesized by leaves. The water transpired by the plants becomes a key source for the formation of clouds and rain.
Therefore, to create rain in arid environments, we need more plants. Keeping all possible surfaces covered with living plants and reducing paved areas and bare ground will go a long way to restoring the small water cycle and, in return, restoring life itself. It will also maintain cooler surface temperatures and reduce the reradiation of long wave infrared heat from the Earth’s surface, which is the primary factor that drives the natural, and now exaggerated, greenhouse effect. As Walter Jehne says: “On a larger scale these same processes all play their role in helping to regulate the global climate through both the carbon and water cycles. This means that as we work to restore our regional water cycles, we may well change the global climate.”
This workshop follows Anna’s talk “Youth, Gardening and Food Security”
Anna Gilbert-Muhammed: Food Access Coordinator of NOFA/Mass
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Connect with us Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bio4climate Twitter: https://twitter.com/bio4climate Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bio4climate/
Presented at Blessed Unrest conference via online, extending across weekends in April & May of 2020
There is an intersection between, nutrition, gardening and being a good steward to the environment. Join Anna Gilbert-Muhammad – Equity Director and Food Access Coordinator for the Northeast Organic Farmers Association (NOFA MA) as we talk about how a low income housing development and youth/families are growing food and learning about methods that protect the soil.
Anna Gilbert-Muhammad: Food Access Coordinator of NOFA/Mass
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Connect with us Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bio4climate Twitter: https://twitter.com/bio4climate Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bio4climate/
Presented at Blessed Unrest conference via online, extending across weekends in April & May of 2020
This workshop follows Reverend Dele and Lama Elizabeth Monson’s talk “The Necessity of the Divine Feminine in the Climate Crisis” This panel discusses: What is the Divine Feminine? Why should we care? How can the Divine Feminine significantly impact the climate movement?
Reverend Dele: Climate Reality leader and spiritual director Elizabeth Monson: Spiritual Co-Director of Natural Dharma Fellowship and the Managing Teacher at Wonderwell Mountain Refuge
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Connect with us Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bio4climate Twitter: https://twitter.com/bio4climate Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bio4climate/
Presented at Blessed Unrest conference via online, extending across weekends in April & May of 2020
This workshop follows Precious’ talk “Building Community During Confusion and Uncertainty”
Precious Phiri: Field Professional in Holistic Management education with the Savory Institute, she works with rural communities through her organization EarthWisdom Consulting, and is the African Coordinator for Regeneration International
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Connect with us Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bio4climate Twitter: https://twitter.com/bio4climate Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bio4climate/
Presented at Blessed Unrest conference via online, extending across weekends in April & May of 2020
Increasingly frequent droughts are destroying food production levels in the more drought-prone half of sub-Saharan Africa. Although most people have attributed this gathering crisis to climate change, about 80% of the cause of the droughts is that fallowing–allowing the forest to grow for fifteen years or more to replace the soil’s organic matter–is on its deathbed. The good news, however, is that there exists an extremely simple technology, called “green manure/cover crops,” that can reverse these soil organic matter losses within just a few years, at virtually no cost to the farmers. Even more amazing is that organic matter is 50% carbon. If all the world’s farmers and ranchers were to sequester as much carbon/acre/year in their soils as tens of thousands of smallholder African farmers are already doing, they would sequester, long-term, over 50% of all the carbon the world needs to sequester in order to reach the goals of the Paris Climate Accords.
Roland Bunch: has worked as a consultant in sustainable agricultural development for over 45 NGOs and governments in 50 nation
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Connect with us Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bio4climate Twitter: https://twitter.com/bio4climate Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bio4climate/
Presented at Blessed Unrest conference via online, extending across weekends in April & May of 2020
Precious grew up in Zimbabwe and will tell us about her evolution as a trainer in Holistic Management and community facilitation. Her work currently focuses on working with rural communities and collaborating with networks in Africa to reduce poverty, rebuild soils, and restore food and water security for people, livestock and wildlife – and most recently, to address the corona virus.
Precious Phiri: Field Professional in Holistic Management education with the Savory Institute, she works with rural communities through her organization EarthWisdom Consulting, and is the African Coordinator for Regeneration International
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Connect with us Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bio4climate Twitter: https://twitter.com/bio4climate Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bio4climate/
Presented at Blessed Unrest conference via online, extending across weekends in April & May of 2020
Increasingly frequent droughts are destroying food production levels in the more drought-prone half of sub-Saharan Africa. Although most people have attributed this gathering crisis to climate change, about 80% of the cause of the droughts is that fallowing–allowing the forest to grow for fifteen years or more to replace the soil’s organic matter–is on its deathbed. This problem has in turn caused a huge drop in soil organic matter and a resulting fall of rainwater infiltration rates from 60% to between 10 and 20%. The good news, however, is that there exists an extremely simple technology, called “green manure/cover crops,” that can reverse these soil organic matter losses within just a few years, at virtually no cost to the farmers. Even more amazing is that organic matter is 50% carbon. Putting all that organic matter back into the soil sequesters tremendous amounts of carbon. In fact, if all the world’s farmers and ranchers were to sequester as much carbon/acre/year in their soils as tens of thousands of smallholder African farmers are already doing, they would sequester, long-term, over 50% of all the carbon the world needs to sequester in order to reach the goals of the Paris Climate Accords.
Roland Bunch has worked as a consultant in sustainable agricultural development for over 45 NGOs and governments in 50 nation
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Connect with us Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bio4climate Twitter: https://twitter.com/bio4climate Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bio4climate/
Presented at Blessed Unrest conference via online, extending across weekends in April & May of 2020
Spiritual leaders discuss the connections between feminism and environmentalism.
Reverend Dele: Climate Reality Leader and spiritual director Lama Elizabeth Monson: Spiritual Co-Director of Natural Dharma Fellowship and the Managing Teacher at Wonderwell Mountain Refuge
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Connect with us Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bio4climate Twitter: https://twitter.com/bio4climate Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bio4climate/
Presented at Blessed Unrest conference via online, extending across weekends in April & May of 2020
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
Regenerating Soil and Water Landscapes
Judy Schwartz, author of Cows Save the Planet, Water in Plain Sight, and a new book due out in July 2020, discusses what people around the world are doing to address our many ecological crises, including global warming. She is joined by entrepreneur and environmental advocate Nicola Williams in a lively and informative conversation. The event took place at the Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA) Public Library on December 12, 2019.
Jan Lambert’s take: This article by Charles Hegberg, talks about the importance of soil restoration in urban settings for optimal stormwater infiltration. He writes: “We have hundreds of years of experience in making ‘Dirt’ – It’s time we start re-making ‘Soils’ on a landscape level, quickly.“
“It’s no secret: Americans take their lawns seriously – kind of a green love affair. In America, lawns are the largest agricultural crop at approximately 40 million acres and growing . Where I reside, the Chesapeake Bay watershed has nearly 3.8 million acres of lawns and turf or a staggering 9.5 percent of the total watershed land area (CSN, 2009). Of that area, an incredible 75% is dedicated to lawns producing enough lawn clippings to equal to 272 million bushels of corn consuming 215 million pounds of nitrogen fertilizer, 1.9 million acre/feet of water and over 57 million gallons of gasoline.”
Soil and climate scientist Walter Jehne explains how healthy soils act as a sponge for carbon and water – the “soil carbon sponge.” When we manage soils to absorb water, biodiverse living systems thrive, photosynthesis pulls carbon out of the atmosphere, the biosphere cools, and regenerates a viable life-support system for millions of species including humans.
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Connect with us Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bio4climate Twitter: https://twitter.com/bio4climate Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bio4climate/
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
Mycorrhizal fungi connect billions of lives in the soil, bring communications and biochemical transformations to those that need it, and keep green plants healthy and abundant. More abundant than we may have seen for centuries. What’s the big deal with silly silicon? Nature’s been doing an internet for hundreds of millions of years!
Jim Laurie is Bio4Climate’s staff scientist extraordinaire (and a co-founder)
Presented at Climate, Biodiversity, and Survival: Listening to the Voices of Nature conference at Harvard University on November 17-18, 2018
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
The diversity of soil organisms is stunning. Their interactions among themselves and with plants are at the center of healthy soils. Plants (as with humans and other animals) have associated microbiomes that can stimulate defenses against disease and help with obtaining needed nutrients. Plants also have a variety of ways of responding when being attacked by insects, including signaling beneficial insects the presence of their preferred prey or organisms in which they can inject their eggs and use and utilize for egg incubation. Any playwright would be challenged to match the living drama beneath our feet!
Fred Magdoff is Emeritus Professor of Plant and Soil Science at the University of Vermont. His interests range from soil science to agriculture and food to the environment to the US economy.
Presented at Climate, Biodiversity, and Survival: Listening to the Voices of Nature conference at Harvard University on November 17-18, 2018
Biodiversity for a Livable Climate presents a talk by Walter Jehne, Australian climate scientist and soil microbiologist who is the Director of Healthy Soils Australia.
Introduction by Didi Pershouse, The Center for Sustainable Medicine
Presented on April 26, 2018 at Harvard University
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Please watch version with introduction here: https://youtu.be/123y7jDdbfY
Biodiversity for a Livable Climate presents Healthy Water Cycles and the Soil Carbon Sponge: New Climate Solutions A talk by Australian climate scientist and soil microbiologist Walter Jehne Director of Healthy Soils Australia Introduction by Didi Pershouse Harvard University, Haller Hall
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The importance of community farms
Kannan Thiruvengadam: Eastie Farm
Presented at Revitalizing Ecosystems in Greater Boston to Survive Climate Change conference at Harvard University on March 31, 2018
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Transforming public spaces
Maggie Booz: Cambridge Committee on Public Planting
Presented at Revitalizing Ecosystems in Greater Boston to Survive Climate Change conference at Harvard University on March 31, 2018
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
John Reinhardt: President Mystic River Watershed Association
Presented at Revitalizing Ecosystems in Greater Boston to Survive Climate Change conference at Harvard University on March 31, 2018
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Anamarija Frankic: UMass Boston Green Harbors Project
Presented at Revitalizing Ecosystems in Greater Boston to Survive Climate Change conference at Harvard University on March 31, 2018
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
Self-organization is a natural process—that, as a system grows it also becomes more complex. This talk focuses on how this process works in ecosystems via co-evolution to generate the incredible biodiversity we see in nature. Many examples of regional co-evolved relationships will be used to illustrate how co-evolution works. The talk then shows how this process is a wonderful model for creating sustainable human systems.
Tom Wessels: Author of The Myth of Progress: Toward a Sustainable Future
Presented at Revitalizing Ecosystems in Greater Boston to Survive Climate Change conference at Harvard University on March 31, 2018
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
Ecosystems across our highly developed region are threatened by climate change. At the same time, local ecosystems can help us to weather the coming climate shocks. Ecosystems are our allies, and there is much that we can do to revitalize them in our yards, streets, neighborhoods, parks, wetlands and waters.
Zeyneb Magavi: Research Director for HEET and serves on the National Health Impacts Team and the Gas Leaks Task Force for Mothers Out Front
Presented at Revitalizing Ecosystems in Greater Boston to Survive Climate Change conference at Harvard University on March 31, 2018
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
John Pitkin: Greater Boston Group of the Sierra Club
Presented at Revitalizing Ecosystems in Greater Boston to Survive Climate Change conference at Harvard University on March 31, 2018
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
Restorative land management includes regenerative grazing and agricultural practices that build healthy soils and support a diversity of life above and below ground. It applies to a range of settings, from urban to rural, and from small to large-acreage farms and ranches. Managing for ecosystem health brings a host of co-benefits, ranging from the production of more nutritious foods to increasing resilience against droughts and floods to building local economies and stronger communities.
Panel moderator: Gina Angiola, Deputy Director, DC Chapter, Biodiversity for a Livable Climate Panelists: * Margaret Morgan-Hubbard — ECO City Farms * Ed Huling — New Day Farms * Cleo Braver — Cottingham Farm * Nick Maravell — Nick’s Organic Farm
Presented at Biodiversity for a Livable Climate “Scenario 300: Making Climate Cool” conference at Washington D.C. on April 30, 2017
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
Glenn Gall takes us through the groundbreaking work done by many permaculture practitioners, and the central part which water plays in permaculture design. Discussion includes methods such as keyline, subsoiling and grazing, where water has become the focus of land management.
Boston-area community gardener and permaculture teacher Allison Houghton gives an appreciation of the pyramid of species that support soil life and biodiversity, and the ways in which water retention can be supported for ecosystem health.
Presented at Biodiversity for a Livable Climate’s “Restoring Water Cycles to Reverse Global Warming” conference October 16th-18th, 2015 at Tufts University.
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
Policy panel: Building Water Cycles into the International Climate Debate
Walter Jehne, Tom Goreau and Jan Lambert with Michal Kravčík each speak on the opportunities for broadening the debate over climate as we approach COP21 in Paris. How do we take it beyond the current global focus on carbon dioxide reduction to deploying methods for hydrological cooling that directly relieve climate extremes.
Walter Jehne was trained as a microbiologist and over decades has worked in Australian business and government settings. He has led initiatives to recognize the climate value of the “in-soil reservoir”, the potential of carbon-rich soil to buffer climate extremes. He describes his strategic vision for expanding the awareness of water cycles in global climate policy.
Jan Lambert speaks as co-author with Michal Kravcik of the Global Action Plan, included in her new book Water, Land and Climate – the Critical Connection.
Thomas Goreau has long and patient experience in consulting and advising small nations in UN climate bodies. He describes the policy landscape for advancing ecological restoration, both inside and outside those official organizations.
Presented at Biodiversity for a Livable Climate’s “Restoring Water Cycles to Reverse Global Warming” conference October 16th-18th, 2015 at Tufts University.
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
Precious Phiri of Zimbabwe discusses the managed grazing of ruminants from the perspective of how it opens soils for water – and raises water tables and brings back surface water for crops, domestic animals and wildlife, along with a surge of biodiversity and productivity for humans and many other species.
Presented at Biodiversity for a Livable Climate’s “Restoring Water Cycles to Reverse Global Warming” conference October 16th-18th, 2015 at Tufts University.
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
Emaline Conkey, Senior, Mascoma Valley Regional High School in New Hampshire, and Brianna Klauer, Sophomore, Hartford High School in Vermont, are two student leaders in the “Climate, Water, Soil and Hope” program developed by Didi Pershouse of the Soil Carbon Coalition. Students, teachers, and community members participate in a hands-on exploration of the role of soil aggregates in water flows and filtration, as well as role of plants and soil microorganisms in the carbon cycle. Emaline and Brianna share their experiences in the program and their goals for further involvement in the soil restoration movement.
Presented at Biodiversity for a Livable Climate’s “Restoring Water Cycles to Reverse Global Warming” conference October 16th-18th, 2015 at Tufts University.
Australian soil and climate scientist Walter Jehne discusses how the five kingdoms of life have created water cycles, moving water through sea, soil and air, navigating tumultuous changes through geological ages to the present, and how the human presence has brought earth’s systems into a crisis in which water is also the potential vehicle for stabilization and renewal.
Presented at Biodiversity for a Livable Climate’s “Restoring Water Cycles to Reverse Global Warming” conference October 16th-18th, 2015 at Tufts University.
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Connect with us Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bio4climate Twitter: https://twitter.com/bio4climate Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bio4climate/
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Featuring Bruce Fulford, Owner, City Soil.
The linkages between urban farms, conservation foundations, and municipalities can all reinforce the power of urban agriculture. Bruce Fulford describes creating agricultural land in an urban setting.
Presented at the Urban and Suburban Carbon Farming to Reverse Global Warming Conference, organized by Biodiversity for a Livable Climate, at Harvard University on May 3, 2015.
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
Charlotte O’Brien, Biochar Entrepreneur
Biochar is soil amendment made from biomass that leads to fertility and improved plant health and growth. It was developed by indigenous people in the Amazon hundreds of years ago and has excited broad interest worldwide over the past decade. Charlotte O’Brien describes how urban dwellers can make and use their own biochar for increased soil, plant and human health.
Presented at the Urban and Suburban Carbon Farming to Reverse Global Warming Conference, organized by Biodiversity for a Livable Climate, at Harvard University on May 3, 2015.
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
Featuring Eric ‘T’ Fleischer, Consultant, Harvard Landscape Services.
There are many challenges in improving urban soils. Eric Fleischer reviews these challenges and focuses on Harvard’s successful soil-enhancement project using compost tea applications.
Presented at the Urban and Suburban Carbon Farming to Reverse Global Warming Conference, organized by Biodiversity for a Livable Climate, at Harvard University on May 3, 2015.
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
Featuring Thomas Akin, State Resource Conservationist, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.
Cover cropping is a soil health-building practice gaining currency in cropland agriculture but also well suited to improving urban soils. Soil-incorporated cover crops provide large volumes of soluble carbon, the best fuel for the soil food web. Tom Akin gives a brief introduction to suitable cover crops to improve urban soils.
Presented at the Urban and Suburban Carbon Farming to Reverse Global Warming Conference, organized by Biodiversity for a Livable Climate, at Harvard University on May 3, 2015.
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
Some of the benefits of urban agriculture are well known: increased access to healthy fresh food, reduced “food miles,” and building robust local communities. Looking through the carbon farming lens we also see more benefits: biodiverse landscapes, building carbon-rich soil and creating resilient landscapes that purify the water and air. Our panelists will discuss how to support the growth of urban farm spaces and regional relationships that strengthen them.
Sarah Howard, Earthos, Moderator: Understanding and stewarding our urban-bioregional systems Bruce Fulford, City Soil: Creating agricultural land in an urban setting Mark Smith, Co-founder, Brookwood Community Farm in Milton, Massachusetts: Developing farms on peri-urban land – challenges and opportunities Liz Wiley, Program Manager at Round the Bend Farm, S. Dartmouth, Massachusetts: Regional support systems for urban farming efforts Emily Jodka, Founding member of New Urban Farmers, Pawtucket, Rhode Island: Engaging urban communities and kids in innovative and productive farms
From Biodiversity for a Livable Climate conference “Reversing Global Warming: Carbon Farming for Food, Health, Prosperity and Planet” at Bristol Community College in Massachusetts. Friday February 20, 2015.
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
How do we continue to farm productively and profitably without having to change everything we do? This panel will focus on several key practical elements that significantly increase the restorative powers of farming for biodiversity and carbon sequestration, along with increasing yields, needing fewer if any synthetic inputs, growing profits, and improving the health of both farmers and consumers.
Ridge Shinn, Grazier, Moderator: The benefits of livestock for soil, food, economy and climate Paul Schmid, Proprietor of River Rock Farm, Massachusetts State Rep. from 8th Bristol district: Raising grass-finished beef, and legislative support for agriculture Maggie Payne, USDA William McCaffrey, 2nd Generation Farmer in E. Taunton, Cornell U. Graduate: Farming produce and cranberries
From Biodiversity for a Livable Climate conference “Reversing Global Warming: Carbon Farming for Food, Health, Prosperity and Planet” at Bristol Community College in Massachusetts. Friday February 20, 2015.
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
Biodiversity is the foundation of healthy, resilient ecosystems. We humans have the ability to create the conditions for biodiverse landscapes which restore water cycles, purify the air, grow nutritious foods and build soil carbon from the carbon dioxide in the air. Jim Laurie will give us some ideas of how to recreate the living systems which are so essential to our well-being, with a focus on Southeastern Massachusetts.
Jim Laurie, Restoration Ecologist, Biodiversity for a Livable Climate
From Biodiversity for a Livable Climate conference “Reversing Global Warming: Carbon Farming for Food, Health, Prosperity and Planet” at Bristol Community College in Massachusetts. Friday February 20, 2015.
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
Wetlands have the capacity to store enormous amounts of carbon because soils under water have minimal exposure to air. Gillian Davies will discuss how to integrate climate change thinking into managing wetlands, with multiple benefits for local resiliency such as flood control.
Gillian Davies, Senior Wetlands Scientist, BSC Group
From Biodiversity for a Livable Climate conference “Reversing Global Warming: Carbon Farming for Food, Health, Prosperity and Planet” at Bristol Community College in Massachusetts. Friday February 20, 2015.
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
Adam Sacks, Executive Director, Biodiversity for a Livable Climate Jono Neiger, Ecological Designer, Regenerative Design Group Bruce Fulford, Principal, City Soil
From Biodiversity for a Livable Climate conference “Reversing Global Warming: Carbon Farming for Food, Health, Prosperity and Planet” at Bristol Community College in Massachusetts. Friday February 20, 2015.
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
There are many flavors of land management to remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it in soils where it belongs, often for centuries or millennia. Jono Neiger offers us an overview of several approaches that may be applied in a wide variety of ecosystems, and some that are particularly suited to the landscape and biology of Southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Jono Neiger, Ecological Designer, Regenerative Design Group
From Biodiversity for a Livable Climate conference “Reversing Global Warming: Carbon Farming for Food, Health, Prosperity and Planet” at Bristol Community College in Massachusetts. Friday February 20, 2015.
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
Returning carbon to the soil is the foundation of restoring ecosystems. For thirty years Bruce Fulford has been building soils. He will tell us how he does it, and the remarkable results that he’s seen from reclamation and remediation of land, urban composting and greenhouse agriculture.
Bruce Fulford, Principal, City Soil
From Biodiversity for a Livable Climate conference “Reversing Global Warming: Carbon Farming for Food, Health, Prosperity and Planet” at Bristol Community College in Massachusetts. Friday February 20, 2015.
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
There are critical connections between everyday food choices and climate change. Cool Foods emphasizes the key steps of retiring industrial agriculture and turning to practices which pull carbon and water back into the soils, thereby bringing economic vitality and human health to communities worldwide.
Diana Donlon: Director of the Center for Food Safety’s Cool Foods Campaign
From Biodiversity for a Livable Climate conference: “Restoring Ecosystems to Reverse Global Warming” Saturday November 22nd, 2014
Precious Phiri directs engagement and training for villages in the Hwange Communal Lands region that are implementing restorative grazing programs using Holistic Land and Livestock Management. This cost-effective, nature-based and highly scalable solution helps rural communities in Africa to reduce poverty, rebuild soils, restore food and water security, and reduce drought and flood risks. Precious was born and raised in one of these communities now implementing restorative grazing.
From Biodiversity for a Livable Climate conference: “Restoring Ecosystems to Reverse Global Warming” Sunday November 23rd, 2014
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/
Mycorrhizal fungi are critical conduits moving photosynthetic energy to underground microbial communities. In return these microbes find minerals and water for their plant benefactors. In addtion, nematodes are essential nitrogen pumps in the soil, while dung beetles and earthworms can lock up tons of soil carbon, year after year. Jim Laurie illustrates and explains.
Presented at Biodiversity for a Livable Climate “Restoring Ecosystems to Reverse Global Warming” conference at Tufts University on November 21-23, 2014
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/
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Meet the organizers and co-sponsors of the conference, with an overview of what we hope will happen next in the soil carbon and climate saga.
Opening speech of the Biodiversity for a Livable Climate conference: “Restoring Ecosystems to Reverse Global Warming” at Tufts University on November 21-23, 2014
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
Dan Kittredge, Bionutrient Food Association
Everything we eat depends on the health of the soil. When essential minerals are missing from the soil, they’re missing from the plants and animals that feed us. Our health suffers and disease can run rampant, common consequences of industrial agricultural practices. Dan Kittredge, lifelong farmer and nutrition expert, explains how it works and how we can bring new life to our soils, to biodiversity on planet earth, and to ourselves.
Presented at Biodiversity for a Livable Climate “Restoring Ecosystems to Reverse Global Warming” conference at Tufts University on November 21-23, 2014
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
Sue Harden comes to the climate/soils paradigm from a lifelong fascination with biodiversity. As an environmental educator, she spread what Rachel Carson has called “the sense of awe.” As an activist, she works toward solutions to the climate crisis.
From Biodiversity for a Livable Climate conference: “Restoring Ecosystems to Reverse Global Warming” Saturday November 22nd, 2014
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
Seth Itzkan is a futurist and advocate for climate action and eco-restoration through the holistic management of grasslands restoration. He has spent months in Africa observing Holistic Management and its extraordinary positive effects on desertified semi-arid grasslands. He is also on the Advisory Board Chair of Biodiveristy for a Livable Climate.
From Biodiversity for a Livable Climate conference: “Restoring Ecosystems to Reverse Global Warming” Saturday November 22nd, 2014
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
Greg Retallack is an award-winning paleobotanist whose research group is dedicated to soils in the fossil record. His studies have considered the role of soils in ape and human evolution in Kenya, grassland evolution in North America, and several others. He recently published “Global Cooling by Grassland Soils of the Geological Past and Near Future“ in the Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences.
From Biodiversity for a Livable Climate conference: “Restoring Ecosystems to Reverse Global Warming” Saturday November 22nd, 2014
Ethan Roland is an international expert on regenerative agriculture and permaculture design. He will introduce us to how carbon farming enhances productivity, increases profitability and combats climate change. Drawing from the best practices from holistic management, keyline design, agroforestry, living soils, biochar, permaculture design and restoration agriculture, carbon farming offers a whole toolkit for agricultural earth regeneration.
Presented at Biodiversity for a Livable Climate “Restoring Ecosystems to Reverse Global Warming” conference at Tufts University on November 21-23, 2014
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/
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Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
Dorn Cox is a founding member and board president of Farm Hack, an open source community for resilient agriculture. He is also the executive director of GreenStart and manages his family’s 250-acre organic farm in Lee, NH where he has built and documented low and high tech open source systems for environmental monitoring, small-scale grain and oil seeds processing and biofuel production, and no-till and low-till equipment and cover crop methods to reduce energy use and increase soil health.
Dorn Cox, Organic Farmer and Appropriate-Tech Technologist
Presented at Biodiversity for a Livable Climate “Restoring Ecosystems to Reverse Global Warming” conference at Tufts University on November 21-23, 2014
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
Advertising professional and environmentalist Larry Kopald views the nature of the paradigm shift that global warming forces us to face. He will review the issues that give us the best leverage moving forward, and will address the human social phenomenon of marketplaces. Stripped to its basics, a marketplace is people having relationships with other people. How can we optimize our use of the marketplace for messages about climate and soils, and move to action on reversing the course of climate.
Presented at Biodiversity for a Livable Climate “Restoring Ecosystems to Reverse Global Warming” conference at Tufts University on November 21-23, 2014
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
Soil remineralization is playing a crucial and vital role in improving soil fertility. Remineralize the Earth is a nonprofit that promotes the regeneration of soils and forests with finely ground gravel dust, an economically and ecologically sustainable alternative to chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Veronika Miranda Chase provides us with an overview of the role of rock powders in a comprehensive eco-restoration and climate plan.
Veronika Miranda Chase, Research Associate, Remineralize the Earth
Presented at the Biodiversity for a Livable Climate conference, “Restoring Ecosystems to Reverse Global Warming”, on Saturday, November 22, 2014 at Tufts University.
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
Widespread restoration of grasslands depends on economics. Historically beef production has been focused in the Corn Belt and western states. Now Ridge Shinn, a practitioner with experience in all aspects of holistic grazing and marketing, is building the supply of 100% grass-fed beef in the Northeast, involving farms and farmers all over New England and New York. His program offers multiple benefits to the region: revitalized rural economies; healthy soil; local, safe, nutrient-dense food; and carbon sequestration. This model could herald the demise of the corn-based feedlot system.
From Biodiversity for a Livable Climate conference: “Restoring Ecosystems to Reverse Global Warming” Saturday November 22nd, 2014
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
The earth’s forests have been decimated by human overuse and development, leading to cascading effects of biodiversity loss, soil erosion and massive emissions of carbon into the atmosphere. Mark Leighton joined the Harvard faculty in 1983 and has studied topics in rainforest community ecology, vertebrate behavioral ecology, sustainable forestry and land use, and conservation biology. He will give us an overview of how forests function, and their role in addressing global warming.
From Biodiversity for a Livable Climate conference: “Restoring Ecosystems to Reverse Global Warming” Saturday November 22nd, 2014
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
Biogeochemist, restoration ecologist, climate scientist, and reef restoration expert Tom Goreau is passionate about soils as the primary way to address global warming at this late date, given that reducing emissions alone cannot prevent dangerous climate change unless natural carbon sinks are significantly increased. He’ll explain the basics of soil carbon and how healthy water cycles can cool the earth.
From Biodiversity for a Livable Climate conference: “Restoring Ecosystems to Reverse Global Warming” Saturday November 22nd, 2014
Learn more about Biodiversity for a Livable Climate: https://bio4climate.org/ Please donate to our ecosystem restoration work: https://bio4climate.org/donate/
Tom Newmark is the founder of Sacred Seeds and Co-Owner of Finca Luna Nueva, an organic farming operation in Costa Rica. He collaborates with the Rodale Institute on carbon sequestration studies, and he will report on the results of ongoing trials of the effects of organic farming methods on soil carbon in both temperate and tropical climates. Tom is also the former owner of the New Chapter Natural Vitamin company.
From Biodiversity for a Livable Climate conference: “Restoring Ecosystems to Reverse Global Warming” Saturday November 22nd, 2014
