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
a
50 reduction germany is going to have a
60
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
it
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
read more about this
go to the website of regeneration
international go to the website
of the draw down project go to the
website of the rodale institute
or organic consumers association get
informed on these issues
vote with your pocketbook get organized
politically
and don’t lose hope because we’re right
on the verge of what can only be
described
as a global revolution or a regeneration
that is a regeneration of the spirit a
regeneration of global cooperation
a regeneration of the soil the forests
the animals our diets and
the way that we relate to one another
thank you very much
[Applause]
[Music]
you