"We MUST want to rethink how we really live" Sir Kristian Goldmund Aumann
What world do we want to live in?
That' the question.
Not "Can we survive and
can we continue to grow the economy?"
What if we could sustain
business as usual
What if we could install, you know
carbon sucking machines and
bleach the sky with sulfur aerosols
to maintain constant temperatures
and continue to ruin life on earth
until we have a concrete world
with hydroponic factories,
synthetic food and
digital VR displays
of all the nature that's been lost
And rising GDP of the whole time
what if we could do that
Do we want to do that?
The geomechanical view is basically
understands Earth as a complicated machine
So it's like a diesel engine
If the air fuel mixture is wrong
then the engine won't perform well
So if levels of greenhouse gases are too high
then the planet is not going to perform well
Earth as a living being
Whereas if we understand Earth is a living being
then we might say okay
what will make the planet more resilient
to higher levels of greenhouse gases
because I think that if we
cut greenhouse gases to zero
even if we did that overnight
if we continue to degrade the organs
and tissues of this living being
then the planet will die of organ failure
even if carbon dioxide emissions are
reduced to zero
because this is not a machine
CLIMATE A NEW STORY
I'm advocating that we
reformulate our basic environmental narratives
so and especially the climate narrative
so that it comes from the understanding
that Earth is a living being
and not a complicated machine
The living planet view is familiar
to a lot of people
because of Gaia theory
that essentially says Earth, if not live, is
like a living being
it maintains homeostasis
it has many qualities of life
Most scientists would not say
that it's actually alive
but I think we need to go
to the place of relating to earth
as a living being
and even a sacred being
PLANETARY HEALTH
So we have a planet that is severely degraded
the rainforests, the mangrove swamps
the wetlands, the kelp forests
the seagrass meadows,
the water, the soil
all of these are at a a fraction of their
former level of vitality and health
which means that
this earth is much less able
to maintain
a stable climate
and to deal with whatever challenges and fluctuations
happen whether it's human emissions
CO2 emissions or
volcanic emissions or whatever
fluctuations in the Sun
the planet is much less able to be resilient
when its organs are so degraded
so that means that
if we hadn't reduced
our tree count to half
of what used to be
if we hadn't turned
vast areas of every continent into deserts
I don't think that 400 ppm would be a problem
but in fact
we've done the opposite
we've made life so so much less able
to handle challenges
that greenhouse gases, I think,
are a serious threat they're very destabilizing
and that's a different view
than the standard global warming
runaway global warming narrative
but it's not entirely contradictory to it either
the production of fossil fuels
also does damage in other ways
that I think ultimately from
the Living Planet View might even be more damaging
the way that it destroys whole ecosystems
I mean you've seen probably the photographs of the
Alberta tar sands
and just the ruin caused
by the more mountain top removal, you know
or the oil spills
when we understand Earth as alive
I mean imagine like that's happening to the cells
and tissues in your body
like whole swaths of them
are getting poisoned and destroyed
then how are you going to maintain
a healthy body temperature
you know, maybe that's extending the metaphor too far
but that's the situation that we'll in
STEPS TO RECOVERY
So from the living planet view
we understand that
the organs of Gaia are essential
especially those that are still intact
like the Amazon
like to some extent the Congo
like some other places on earth
that are smaller but still intact
these are reservoirs of health
these are where Gaia's memory of health
even is located
we need to protect these areas
the Amazon is a living being in and of itself
and we just have a very superficial understanding
of how that inter-relates to to the Gaian physiology
so if you reduce the Amazon to how much carbon
that it sequesters
you're gonna miss out on all of these other
physiological effects
so first priority
these places must be held sacred
if we do not do that
then even if we compensate
for the lost carbon
from the Amazon
this planet is still going to spin out of control
PRIORITY #1: SACRED
second priority is
to repair, regenerate and heal
the organs that have been damaged
particularly forests and soil
soil is probably THE most important
organ of the planet
and of course it's related to the trees
and to the prairies
and to all the other ecosystems
so regenerative agriculture for example
from the carbon lens
you can also justify this
it's probably by far
I would say it's by far the fastest way to
take carbon out of the atmosphere
there are farmers and ranchers out there
who are building topsoil
at just phenomenal rates
in school we learned it takes 500 years
to build an inch of topsoil
but the farmers out there who are doing it
in one year
taking huge amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere
PRIORITY #2: HEAL
so, okay
third priority is
to stop poisoning all the tissues
with herbicides, pesticides, insecticides
toxic wastes, pharmaceutical wastes, sunscreens etc. etc.
that reduces the resiliency of the planet
universally on, like a tissue level
as opposed to an organ level
like we've got to put a halt
to this 90 year experiment
what will happen if we douse the whole landscape
with insecticide
again and again
like, are we surprised now that
insect populations have declined everywhere
it's not just because of that rhough
I think a and really important and unrecognized cause
is the depletion of megafauna
that reverberates down through the food chain
so, like we don't even have to understand why
if we're coming from a living Earth perspective
we know that this is important
fourth priority is to reduce fossil fuel emissions
and this is controversial thus I put this as fourth priority
however, if you hold the first three priorities
you're necessarily going to
have to reduce fossil fuel emissions
because you can't hold ecosystem sacred
and continue to frack and drill
and strip mine
and pipeline
so the fourth priority is actually
a product of the other three
and it all comes from the same perspective
of "let's do everything we know how to do
to participate in the healing of the planet
that's why we're here
at this point in time
first the healing
and then to bring even more life
to this world
TACTICS
I think that the appropriate tactics
vary in every situation
I don't have a formula that you should do this kind of
action here and that kind of action there
but the tactics need to come from
an understanding of what we're serving here
werel serving
yeah, in one level you can say
the protection of life on Earth
or the healing of life on Earth
on another level you might also say
that we'rel serving a change in our deep narratives
and our mythology that names who we are
why we'll here
and what's real
so, I think that
part of that understanding
is understanding of each other
and even if the people that we demonize
that actually you are here to serve life, too
and it might be difficult in your situation
but you're the same as I am
instead of demonizing you
and holding you as an irredeemable
polluter or greedy or an enemy
and thinking that the only solution is
going to be to dominate you
to conquer you
to win a battle
by doing that we enemies of people
who wouldn't necessarily have to be enemies
if there were some way to invite them
into alliance
and to speak to that part of themselves
that if they really knew what was happening
they wouldn't want to do that
the despair that a lot of people feel
about the future of this Earth
draws from the same theory of change
and the same understanding of reality
that the problem comes from
basically the theory of changes
that you exerts a force on a mass
of something changes
so the more force you have
the greater power you have to change the world
from that theory of change
sorry, the powers that be in the system
they have a lot more force than you do
and you're never gonna have enough power to change anything
but maybe the world doesn't work like that
like there are other ways
to change the world besides
dominating others by force
for me hope lies in these things
hope lies in understanding that nature
where let's say other beings
can be our allies
because we're tapping into
another world of cause and effect
that puts us in the right place at the right time
saying the right words to the right person
awakening in them what has been awoken in us
bringing them into greater courage
in their service as well
maybe the change happens that way
and when we understand that
we just don't really know how this world works
and if anything, the failure of our civilization
should teach us
that we actually don't know
it should bring us to a point of humility
from that point of humility
anything is possible