Regeneration in Catastrophic Times

[Music]

well thank you it’s really good to be

here it’s rather strange to be talking

about

how to solve the climate crisis when the

whole world

is looking at this pandemic

and wondering whether they’re going to

get sick and die whether they’re going

to lose their job

whether the whole global economy is

going to collapse

but i’m here to bring some good news

because

solving the climate crisis on a global

scale

is also going to solve some of the

causes

of this pandemic of the global poverty

of the global competition and and

belligerence instead of cooperation that

we need

so i just wrote a book about this called

grassroots rising

basically i believe what people are

looking for

is a positive message that the most

serious crisis that humans have

ever faced which is the global climate

crisis

and the corresponding destruction of the

environment and biodiversity

the deterioration of our health the mass

death that’s going to occur is that we

can

solve this and i think one thing very

interesting in the last two weeks

with this pandemic has been that people

are starting to understand on a global

scale

that we need system change not just

small

change you know and that this system

change

is going to cost literally trillions of

dollars

not billions of dollars and that’s going

to require global cooperation

on a scale we haven’t seen since at

least the second world war

so the climate crisis as i think

everyone

realizes now involves the fact that

we’ve got

too much carbon dioxide and other

greenhouse gases up in the

up in the sky and in the ocean and not

enough

of carbon in our trees in our soils in

our grasses

when before humans embarked on a very

destructive global

you know procedure practice of burning

fossil fuels like there’s

no tomorrow and whacking down the forest

and

plowing up the grasslands and you know

ignoring biodiversity the average soil

on the earth had three to eight percent

carbon levels in it

now we’re down to about one percent and

that’s

a major part of the problem most people

now understand that we have a climate

crisis

they understand that we’ve got to stop

burning fossil fuels that we’ve got to

conserve

energy and that we need to do this on a

global scale

and that we’ve only got about 10 years

to turn things around

before we reach the point of no return

what most people do not understand

however

is that besides going to zero emissions

from fossil fuels

as quickly as possible we have to draw

down

a lot of that excess carbon that’s in

the atmosphere

and put it back where it used to be in

our trees our grasses our plants

our soils even fewer people

understand that we can do this on a

significant scale in the next

10 years but basically

the global regeneration movement of

which i’m a co-founder of regeneration

international

has basically looked around the world

and we’ve seen

what are the best regenerative practices

that farmers and ranchers and land

managers and

forest communities are carrying out

and what you start to see is that every

country in the world

people are practicing regenerative land

management

regenerative livestock management

they’re growing

food not only organically but

regeneratively

what is regenerative food you know it’s

simply organic taken to the next scale

yes you don’t use toxic chemicals and

pesticides and synthetic fertilizer

but regenerative organic basically

actively tries to improve soil

health and crew increase

ground cover and utilize techniques like

agroforestry and silver pasture

to literally suck down carbon from the

atmosphere and put it in the soil

the great thing about drawing down this

excess carbon from the atmosphere and

put it in our soil

through regenerative food and farming

and land use is that it solves a lot of

other problems at the same time

as we do this great draw down we improve

the fertility of the soil we

raise the nutritional level of the food

we improve animal health

we can improve rural economic

situation of the world’s 570 million

farmers we then can start to solve

problems like

forced migration and organized crime on

a massive scale

and deteriorating public health so

yes we do have to move as quickly as

possible

to reduce fossil fuel

use but at the same time we also have to

draw down the x

the excess carbon from the atmosphere if

we are going to reach

zero net emissions uh in 10 years

now what does zero net emissions in 10

years mean

this doesn’t mean that every one of us

is going to have access to

an electric car in 10 years this doesn’t

mean that every one of us is going to

live in a house

that’s perfectly insulated where we

don’t need to

cool it or heat it this doesn’t mean

that we’re going to totally seize using

any fossil fuels

but it does mean that we must be drawing

down

in 10 years the equivalent amount of

emissions that we’re still

putting up now looking at the united

states as an example

one of the biggest greenhouse gas

polluters in the world

the positive news is that the

alternative energy

revolution is moving forward very

quickly

in the united states as in the european

union

what we’re going to see over 10 years is

50 reduction germany is going to have a

reduction but even in the united states

we are going to reduce

our emissions by 50 percent um

why is that because alternative energy

is actually more efficient and more

economical

than using petroleum products

you know the investor class has pulled

over

12 trillion dollars out of fossil fuels

over the last few years

and they’ve invested quite a bit of it

in alternative energy

now they haven’t done this simply

because we’re telling them they’re carp

they’re climate criminals and they need

to do this they’re partly doing it

because

there’s no future in investing in fossil

fuels

you know if you’re going to get a return

on your investment you better start

pulling out of that

and investing in the energy of the

future

you better start in investing in energy

conservation

so this is going to happen uh the the

last

two weeks we’ve seen global emissions

go down by 30 percent in two weeks

now this is not the ideal way to do it

but one nice thing is that

it does show us that it’s possible to

rapidly reduce

fossil fuel emissions okay but

you know even being quite reasonable

quite practical

uh looking at 50

reduction by 2020

uh 2030 excuse me we’re going to have to

draw down the other half

and how we’re going to do that we have

22 billion acres of farmland on the

earth

crop land 4 billion acres we’ve got 8

billion acres of

pasture land and rangeland and we’ve got

10 billion acres of forest

we used to have 6 trillion trees on the

earth we got 3 trillion now

as people are now recognizing all over

the world we can literally

plant 1 trillion trees over the next

10 to 20 years and draw down a very

large

quantity of carbon from the atmosphere

the excess carbon

we can also start to grow our crops

organically instead of in a chemical

intensive manner

about 10 percent of the farmers all over

the world are already doing this

but we must change the way that we raise

livestock

we’ve got 70 million animals farm

animals on the planet

a full 70 percent or 50 billion of them

excuse me 50 billion out of 70

billion are in factory farms and a huge

amount of our farmland

is being used to grow grains to

feed these animals in factory farms we

literally

have to get the animals back on the land

grazing in landscapes that have trees

and perennials as well as grass

we need to do things the traditional way

that we used to do them there’s already

millions and millions

of acres being done like this we can do

but this requires changes in consumer

consciousness as well

we have the solution to the climate

crisis

at the end of our forks and knives

underneath our

feet and as close as the nearest voting

booth in our voter precinct

but we have to engage in a massive

education

program we’ve got to mobilize

as we’re starting to see people do

around the world

we’ve got to bring together the climate

movement and the food and farming

movement

into a synergy we’ve got to bring the

peace movement

together into this we have to have

global cooperation

all these things are really required to

solve the

the pandemic as well what people are

starting to write about the last few

weeks is that

why are these emerging diseases uh

appearing in far

greater numbers than ever before well

it’s because we’re destroying their

habitat

we’re whacking down the forest for palm

oil

and for genetically engineered soybeans

we’re impoverishing the people who live

in these habitats so they have to eat

bush meat and sell wild animals you know

in markets

we can solve this problem we are going

to solve this problem

partly because the pandemic has awakened

all of us to the fact that we’re all in

this together

that there are ways that we can preserve

nature and respect nature and work

together

and i believe we’re going to do this

regenerative food farming and land use

along with alternative energy and energy

conservation

provide the solution to the climate

crisis and a lot of other

of our crises as well if you want to