Part four: what’s in it for us all?
Draw Down, is first plan to remove carbon throughout the world. France took it to the world for a vote, many countries signed on, the US did not. Have a love of politics? Get involved in the effort to convince lawmakers that this the kind of organized action that we, as Americans, want to be involved in.
Have you ever heard of the ‘legacy load’ this is the amount of CO2 that we omitted from 1778 to present. Then there is our daily omissions. Even if we stop our daily omission, the legacy load will still be there, warming the atmosphere for possibly centuries. We must do more than stop omitting. We must DRAW DOWN in order to avoid chaos.
Get ready to worship the earth my friends. It is our only hope. Maybe you saw this video recently, on instagram… a sweet little 3 year old in her car seat sobbing because the leaves were falling and she couldn’t do anything about their death, she wouldn’t get to see them or meet them. WE need this perspective! Okay, not literally helpful to sob about Fall, but we must raise this generation and all those to come in a way that looks much different, we must go back to the earth. We must get back to living.
The solution; LIVING ECOSYSTEMS. Everywhere we look, we must create living ecosystems.
Living ecosystems supports farmers. When farms diversifying their investment, if you are one to worry about the numbers. Say, as a farmer, you have a few years of bad weather in a row, perhaps you lose a crop or two. If you diversify you minimize your losses as some crops won’t be impacted due to timing, hardiness, etc.
This all creates better soil. Better soil, farmed in harmony with living ecosystems supports water absorption instead of flooding. Multi-species cover crops, or desk seeding instead of plowing for example, supports the soil with multiple types of roots, which leads to diversity of the soil biome. Farming and grazing together requires a diversity in knowledge, but results in a faster recovery for the soil and the livestock. Livestock hooves moving across the land assists in the process. Cow pies are filled with good bugs of their own, supporting the soil as they absorb into the soil. The way the animals pulls on the grass increases root growth resulting in carbon removal. This leads to healthy food, healthier humans, healthier soil, perhaps even happier farmers.
Wholistic land management and permaculture can have huge positive impacts on land, quickly. We can recover from what we have created but we can’t do it by turning our heads down to our devices and living for today.
WHAT CAN I DO…
Minimize food waste
-do what you can to compost, and if you can’t use it all, get it to a local farm, support the biomes around you.
Reduce your waste
-sort what trash you do make
-incentivize less trash and more green waste
Plant rich diets
-if you choose plants, farmers will grow them
-only eat meat that is pasture raised, humanly killed, free range, cage free, organic. If you wonder about this idea check out a mass produced chicken egg and compare it to a local organic chicken egg. The difference is SO clear.
Support the business solutions like seaweed farming, aforestation, soil health improvement.
History supports this theory that humans, farming without care of the causes of erosion, results in desertification across the planet. Scientists across the world have worked to map and understand how our planet has responded and how it responds when we change to permaculture. It’s all been proven to support the land, lift people out of poverty, support education, health, and happiness. A restoration and regeneration economy is the goal.
Let’s not give up… For more, and your own moving experience check out this documentary on Netflix, Amazon Prime, or check out the book here.