Greetings!
I can only imagine how people first reacted to Copernicus when he claimed the earth revolves around the sun. Heliocentric? Pff! What’s with this guy?
I have a hunch we all resist reorienting our own personal solar systems sometimes. It’s okay to be wrong—we can’t be right all the time and know everything! It’s not okay, however, to be deaf and blind to new information when it presents itself.
Through some recent work, a couple of my own “personal solar systems” have been given a good shake, testing my understanding of what revolves around what. I thought I’d share these mental re-wirings, as they relate to challenges far beyond my world alone.
And by the way, apparently those mathematically skillful Greeks suspected the earth revolved around the sun as early as 300BC, but it took about two millennia for the idea to resurface, and even then it was slow to catch on (like, 100 years slow). Copernicus, and then Galileo about a century later, both took some big hits to their reputations before what they had patiently explained—at their peril—finally came to be understood as, “Well, duh.” I’m hoping we can move a bit more quickly when it comes to these latest paradigm shuffles.
Carbon: Good witch, bad witch, or not a witch at all?
What if we stopped thinking about carbon as the cause of climate change, i.e. as something we must reduce or even eliminate. What if, instead, we viewed carbon as a desirable element when it’s in the right place, or if we even saw it as a building block of life itself? What if the solution to climate change were right under our noses—in our own backyards even!—and not confined to the wheelhouses of politicians and scientists?
The more I’ve been listening to people with practical experience (and yes, the science to back it up), the more I see a beautiful carbon-centric world emerging in my mind’s eye. It’s forcing me to reorient my planets a bit.
For example, there is compelling evidence that meat from animals grazed holistically—a specific agronomic practice that takes knowledge and commitment, not just keeping animals outside for a while—as well as other soil-enriching cropping techniques, can dramatically decrease atmospheric carbon while increasing the microbial health of soil (not to mention increase farmers’ livelihoods). This evidence runs counter to a lot of the climate-change mitigation rhetoric out there, my own dietary preferences for that matter. Frankly, this evidence makes me uncomfortable, because many will just interpret it to mean “eating meat is good,” and skip the carbon relevant parts, so there is a risk that it might make things even worse. But ignoring the latest information about soil carbon that famers have been sharing, including some who were not in favor of cattle ranching until they saw the on-the-ground impacts—and soil sample results—would land me in the very same denial camp I try to avoid.
So now, here we are with significantly less than 100 years—forget 2000!—to sort out the little planetary puzzle of our changing climate. A quote from, The Soil Will Save Us (Kristin Ohlson, 2014) sums up one part of the opportunity—that is, if we can see it:
“The rates of biomass production we are currently observing in this [crop cultivation and grazing] system have the capability to capture enough CO2 (50 tons CO2/acre) to offset all anthropogenic CO2 emissions on less than 11 percent of world cropland. Over twice this amount of land is fallow at any time worldwide.”
Yes, you read that right: “… offset all anthropogenic CO2 emissions.” I didn’t believe it either (see also, Tycho Brahe) so I kept chasing footnotes and farmers for more answers. There are a few naysayers out there, and I sure don’t know the future, but these farmers’ findings seem to hold up scientifically and give us real grounds for hope. They’re starting to get through the force field of my stubbornly held beliefs, illustrating that if we let life on earth as we already understand it—photosynthesis, in a nutshell—do its thing, and stop getting in its way so massively, things might just turn out for the better. Flying over Nebraska at dusk the other day (see photo below) was a reminder that farming can shape, and therefore potentially reshape, the land in profound ways.
There are other ways carbon is being opportunistically re-imagined and re-purposed, literally above and beyond the soil, via a wide range of products across many industries. Patrick Thomas, CEO of Covestro, a material science company (a.k.a. a chemical company), has well-informed words on this very thing. Wait: that’s the CEO of a chemical company, right? Right. There go those planets bumping into one another again.
What does the new perspective on carbon mean for you and me?
For those who buy food (i.e. all of us), we can pose a few questions about production methods to our food suppliers (farmers’ market vendors, produce managers at major chains, butchers, waiters, farming friends, etc). We can be alert to the practices that increase carbon in soil. And in the very act of asking questions we can spread the rumor that this is happening—from Australia to Zimbabwe, from America to New Zealand. Yes, this is a shift and it will take time to become self-evident on our grocery shelves, but so too, at one point, was finding the key ingredients of products on labels. We can figure it out. Hopefully soon.
What else could a new perspective on carbon mean? Well, it could mean that if you work at a business, you can think about all sorts of opportunities, not just those relating to energy reduction or switching to renewables; you can apply this perspective to just about any value chain that your company is part of—food, forestry, consumer goods, aerospace and so on. You can move beyond just thinking about “carbon reduction” and also consider positive carbon impacts, or so-called “carbon productivity.”
And, if you think about this more broadly as a citizen, you can shift the narrative from hand-wringing about the evils of Big Oil, Bad Politics and the high cost of a Tesla, and fix your gaze (and choices) upon insightfully-led companies, progressive farmers, thinkers and doers who see that the earth does indeed revolve around the sun, that we have the technology ready at hand to put that sun and our own minds to good use, and that it’s a very beautiful thing. We can definitely do this.
Famine: Not a weather problem.
I said there were two “personal solar systems” that had realigned for me, and that they’re related. I recently published a piece on Medium exploring the yuletide fundraising campaign that Band Aid launched over 30 years ago, Do They Know It’s Christmas Time. I noted it felt as relevant today as ever (all the more so in fact, because it was actually Christmas in Ethiopia just this past weekend). The planetary rearranging here meant going from believing that I might help matters by caring and giving, to recognizing I didn't even have the basic understanding required to make a difference. I didn’t know what the problem was that I was trying to solve.
Understanding the relationship between people, land ownership, political power and hunger is a steep climb, full of many complex and unanswered questions, but attempting the ascent is preferable to watching history repeat itself because it’s easier not to understand. Not only that, but Ethiopia—just like every country on earth—has a role to play in the transition to promoting and protecting healthy soils, in the adoption of a productive approach to carbon. All the more reason to truly understand and halt the (actual) causes of famine—the point the article explores.
Onwards into 2017 (or 2010 if you’re in Ethiopia)
It’s destabilizing to have one’s planets rearranged. I’m still figuring out how all the various orbs hang together, and I sense there are more paradigm shuffles to come. I welcome your feedback—on the Medium piece (it’s an easy platform in which to interact), on any of the above, or in response to what you see on my site, via whatever channel you’re happiest to connect in, be it good old-fashioned email (blorrainesmith@gmail.com), Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. Or, if the planets align nicely, maybe we could even have a real live conversation, one of my most favorite ways to explore solar systems.
In the meantime, thanks for joining on me on this planetary journey. All the best to you and yours for a great year ahead!
Yours in connectedness,
Lorraine
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