What we could do

if we had a lick of sense

I often read that nothing can be done about the ongoing ecosystem collapse, that the die is cast, a specific degree of heating is baked in, a specific biophysical outcome is already unavoidable, including (but not limited to) human extinction.

The degree of hubris required to make such an absolute statement about all possible futures from current limited knowledge using human intelligence cannot be overstated. Yes, it might go there. But seriously - things are fucked up to a fare thee well, but no human can see the future. There is nothing out there but variables.

For instance, the sudden rush to build data centers might overburden and collapse the US electric grid. Armed terrorists affiliated with any number of organizations might do it. Overnight, global emissions would drop like a rock. We’re the second biggest emitter. Our off-shore manufacturing supplier, where we get our clean energy solar panels, is the only one bigger.

The President of the United States might succeed in launching a nationwide internal shooting war. He’s obviously itching for one. He might even launch a world war. Anything that halts manufacturing and transporting eliminates 75% of current emissions.

A far more serious pandemic can do it too, and we’re ripe for one. If you look at the process of evolution, life forms evolve to harvest energy. Life forms are evolving right now to harvest the energy embedded in plastic. Meanwhile the biggest biological energy source on the planet is homo Sap. and our cattle. Add to that the way we jet around the world, live in giant steaming piles, and - I don’t know what form of fungal or microbial life or semi-life, what virus or ill-mannered protein, what bacteria or amoeba, will win the prize, but something out there is working on the problem of how to eat all these 8 billion people and their cows right now. We seriously aren’t interested in being prepared for it, which seems appropriate, given our other behaviors and our lived value system.

There are any number of ways that human lifestyles on Planet Earth might be altered virtually overnight, and current human lifestyles are the problem. The problem is not fossil fuels and their emissions. CO2 is just one of hundreds of crises. Without CO2 emissions the ecosystem would still be in freefall. CO2 emissions don’t cause plastic in the ocean. They don’t cause global topsoil loss. CO2 emissions don’t empty aquifers, don’t cause habitat destruction or biosphere degradation. CO2 emissions aren’t causing the 6th global mass extinction. CO2 emissions have nothing to do with the massive dead zones in every ocean at the mouth of every major river in all the developed world. All of modern industrial society put together is the cause of the global ecosystem catastrophe. Anything which disrupts global industrial society will immediately reduce the inputs which cause all of those things. The more industrial society is disrupted, the greater the reduction of all those inputs, and just as the cherry on top, the greater the reduction in CO2 emissions too.

To the extent that industrial society continues and prospers, all those inputs, obviously including CO2 emissions, will continue to increase. The entire global ecosystem, biosphere, atmosphere, aquasphere, and geosphere will continue to degrade at exponentially increasing rates. This isn’t that complicated. Anyone with a window can see the change. It’s like pulling the plug out of the bathtub. For a long time there’s still water in it, but there is less every minute and sooner or later it’s all gone.

Every part of nature which makes large numbers of h. Sap possible is circling the drain. We can’t fix it overnight, but we could change directions if we wanted to.

The natural processes of Earth all operate by extracting carbon from the atmosphere and packaging it as life. The more life processes and forms we encourage, the less carbon remains in the atmosphere. Besides adding carbon the atmosphere as though our lives depended on it (they don’t), we are continually reducing all life processes except human reproduction and monocrop annual grain and bean production. We don’t need to and in the long run it’s not going to work. It’s already not working.

Topsoil is largely carbon. In the first place, topsoil is largely made up of living things, and living things are mostly about 50% carbon by dry weight. Some are more. The rest of topsoil us mostly the remains of formerly living things. The remains are over half carbon.

Plants inject carbon into soil.

There are hundreds of millions of tons of topsoil missing from the agricultural regions of the world.

Current agricultural practices and conventions cause it go continue to depart.

We know horticultural and agricultural processes which can compete with modern agriculture in caloric output per acre while increasing topsoil. Why don’t we do them? They’re not easily automated. They require more humans per unit of land to produce food. They don’t run on diesel fuel or gasoline. They don’t make more money for the rich.

Every word of news in the English speaking West is pre-approved by the billionaires who own all large scale global media. If a message might cut into their profits it will not be broadcast. That is an absolute. It’s why climate action = build renoobles.

Because any real climate action is going to, not cut into, but destroy the profits of billionaires. The system which creates billionaires is destroying the ecosystem. It cannot do otherwise, and never will do otherwise.

This isn’t about making tweaks to this system. It’s not about clean energy, mass transit, trains instead of airplanes.

What needs to be done, and will be done sooner or later, is that all the people on Earth, whether 8 or 9 billion, or fifty thousand, need to put all their attention and all their effort into healing this wounded world, building topsoil, growing perennial foods for ourselves and all other mobile life forms, birds to bugs to fish to mammals. We need to restore beavers everywhere they ever lived in the wild, and regardless of what they cut down or what they flood, we accept that and build around it.

We need to tear up every highway we ever built, every paved parking lot. We need to walk away from the skyscrapers and let the biosphere eat them.

We need to garden all of the Earth, every square foot we can occupy, protect water and life.

We need to slow down to the pace of life. All the humans on almost all of the Earth are descended from people who got there walking. We can still do it.

And someday we will. In spite of our inconceivable arrogance, Earth votes last. Whether she keeps us around and lets us try again I can’t say, but I can say this: for the past 40 years I have been planting and nourishing, building topsoil and slowing water, planting things that grow food for me and for every living thing around me. You can barely see all the work, but I can see it.

Every single day Industrial Civilization in the United States alone kills and paves more land than I have healed in all the days of my life. It’s a lot quicker to kill it and pave it than it is to feed it and water it. I won’t change my ways, but I can see how this comes out. In the short run it’s going to be ugly. It wouldn’t have to be, but I think it will.