Monday, January 15, 2018

Solving the Big Problems

This right here. We need to find a way to sustain this.
A couple of years ago I joined the Sustainability Committee of the local chapter of the American Public Works Association (APWA). I have been interested in sustainability and following it for some time, but joining this group made me really look deep at what it means for a society to be sustainable, what makes us unsustainable, what the core problems are, and how we might solve them. Naturally, my perspective is that the only way to really be sustainable is to make full use of ecological cycles. With this perspective, I started to notice some interesting patterns. If you look critically at our current society, with an understanding of what actually helps things, you notice that in many cases, our problems pair up nicely and sort of solve each other. By looking at it in this way, the solutions become pretty thoroughly evident, even if the application of those solutions is a little trickier. What do I mean? Allow me to explain.

Problem #1: Industrial agriculture is damaging our soil to the point that we currently rely on heavy inputs of damaging chemicals just to produce any food at all, and we are looking at losing the ability to produce food at all in the next 60 years, according to some estimates. Problem #2: Improvements in artificial intelligence (AI) over the next 20 years promise to automate enough jobs that some people anticipate up to 60% unemployment in that time frame. The problem with industrial agriculture is that we rely increasingly on monocultures so that we can efficiently harvest larger and larger areas with fewer and fewer people. The needs of automation are fundamentally incompatible with the needs of a natural system, which relies on diversity for health. At the same time, the best plan anyone has come up with for preventing disaster in the wake of massive technological unemployment is a Universal Basic Income (UBI). A UBI basically pays people just to exist so they will have money to live and use to buy products from industry that no longer pays them to produce those products. What if we put these people to work? Let’s put them back on the land to have them repair the land while producing the food we are going to need to feed a growing population.

Let’s try the next pair: Problem #3: The grasslands of the world are rapidly turning into desert, causing increasing droughts and floods, releasing carbon previously stored in the soil into the atmosphere, and causing world-wide erosion problems. Problem #4: A growing population needs ever more space to live. We are actively cutting down forests to build more houses. Plus, (bringing in problem #2 from above) technological unemployment will leave urban and suburban populations unemployed and people who have nothing to do tend to cause problems. Holistic Management helps with the solution for this one. The natural grassland ecosystems all over the world rely heavily on impact from massive herds of hoofed herbivores reacting to pack hunting predators over huge areas of land, at the least thousands of square miles. And they need us pesky humans to butt out and not get involved. The problem is, something as simple as a fence or a road can disturb those interactions, effectively managing them. Time and experience has shown that every unintentional management technique, and even most of the intentional ones, break the cycle and cause desertification. Livestock is capable of providing the animal impact needed if managed properly. By breaking up the land into manageable blocks and reengaging humans with livestock, we can restore the proper impact and repair deserts back into grasslands. But there are hundreds of millions of square miles that need to be fixed in this manner. Maybe we need to offer people a better life on the land than the one they have in cities.

On to the third pair: Problem #5: The current economic system is the biggest threat to any real change. People will always stick with what they know and cling to the little bit of security they have. Problem #6: The current system is unsustainable and is beginning to crush under its own weight. Well, this one is easy. The two pretty much cancel each other out. The trick is to let the old system fail while gently sliding a new system into place to minimize the impact on individual families.

Here is the fourth pair: Problem #7: Animals raised for meat are predominantly raised in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) lots, creating a concentrated source of animal waste, which pollutes the land and waterways, releasing a huge amount of carbon dioxide and methane, which are both greenhouse gasses. Problem #8: Land degradation due to industrial agriculture has led to increased need for synthetic fertilizers, which are typically manufactured from fossil resources and applied to the land at a cost to the farmer. These fertilizers don’t bond very well to the soils and are prone to running off and polluting the rivers and the oceans they feed into. The problem here is not having the fertilizer necessary, but rather a problem of location. We have all the resources we need to solve both problems, but they don’t work well with industrial agriculture. If we put the animals back on the land, the fertilizer they produce will be distributed evenly exactly where it is needed and will have a regenerative effect on the land.

The fifth grouping is actually a trio: Problem #9: For the last 30 years, the wages of lower and middle class workers have stagnated, leading to a reduced standard of living for the majority of the population. Problem #10: Urban areas have a number of environmental challenges. Concentrated burning of fossil fuels lead to an increase in air pollution. The increase of paved areas causes increased runoff, which increases flooding, as well as increased absorption of the sun’s energy, causing Urban Heat Island Effect. Problem #11: Food security is increasingly a worry in populated areas. Food is shipped from far off and grown on land that is rapidly degrading and doused with toxic chemicals. The solution for these two is truly local food, produced right in the cities. Have you ever had that one neighbor who is always trying to give away extra zucchini or tomatoes? How would life be different if there those people were living every couple of houses? Maybe we could set up a new system that allows them to sell that produce at a local market and earn additional income. With advances in food production methods, such as garden/mechanical hybrids such as hydroponics, aquaponics, and automated systems such as FarmBot, people could produce fruits and veggies enough to feed their families with extra to sell, all on a quarter acre suburban lot. With advances in technology, they can do that without even having to spend that much additional effort. As systems get put in place to encourage this sort of behavior, like friendly zoning and markets for additional produce, people will put more area into production. Roofs become prime real estate for growing produce. Denver even requires green roofs on new buildings. Imagine that area producing food. Yard area not in production for annual vegetable crops can be planted in a food forest and allowed to be natural. With hard spaces minimized, rainwater captured, additions of photosynthesizing plants, and food production abounding, every one of these problems gets significantly minimized.

Let’s look at one last pair: Problem #12: As the soils that produce our food degrade, they have fewer nutrients to put into our food. By some estimates, our food has 60-70% fewer nutrients today than it had a hundred years ago. The impact on our health is undeniable, but hard to accurately estimate. Increases in mental disorders, cancer, allergies, and possibly even obesity could all be related to reduced nutrition in our food supply, and also likely even increased amounts of toxic agricultural chemicals. Problem #13: Municipalities are spending ever more money on maintenance and construction due to increased flooding and erosion. The problem is, drainage solutions are being designed in an attempt to solve a soils problem. As natural cycles that build soil organic matter are disturbed or broken entirely, the soil loses its organic matter and thus its ability to absorb water. As rains hit, more water runs off and faster, taking soil with it. When that water hits roads, it closes the road, first because of the running water, then because of the sediment it drops as the floodwaters recede. City and county governments spend tens of thousands of dollars either cleaning up after every single rain storm or tens of millions of dollars designing catchment structures to mitigate the problem. That money could instead be allocated to help people engage with the land in regenerative practices. By growing vegetation in a way that regenerates soils, the water would better infiltrate the soil, the soil would be less erosive, and the plants would bring more nutrients up from the deep soil, increasing the nutrition of any food crops grown there. The best part is that with an investment of three hundred thousand dollars, a family can be set up to manage 200 acres and be financed for a couple of years until they become profitable on their own. For the cost of a regional detention basin, which can run in excess of $12 million, you can do that for  8000 acres. With careful placement of these homesteads along critical washes, this solution can be used to permanently solve drainage problems at several stream crossings rather than just one while providing employment and economic growth.

Of the big problems, the only one that doesn’t have a convenient pairing with its solution, or at least a common solution that solves the two together is the increasing levels of carbon dioxide and methane in the air. But the rest of these solutions hit this problem as well. As a society, we tend to look primarily at the source of all that carbon in the atmosphere, such as our energy consumption. But it runs like a budget. When your household is overdrawn, you can work on curtailing your rampant expenditure of money all you want, but until you begin to pay down the debt, the problem will never get any better. Soil is our best and least used carbon sink. Until we start storing all that carbon safely in the soil, we’ll never truly get a handle on climate change.

The problem with our current system is that we are actively using things up. Put differently, we are extracting the wealth with little regard to what is left behind. We are extracting it from the land, from the soil, from the biosphere of the world, and from our fellow human beings. There is a whole lot of momentum behind this system. It is the only one we know. More importantly, the people who are currently doing very well for themselves off of this system of exploitation and destruction are actively throwing a portion of those profits at the effort of making sure it doesn’t change. That makes actual, lasting change very difficult. The only real way to do that is to show regular people that there really is a better way to live. There is a way to live that will give more satisfaction, put money in their pocket (or at least allow them to spend less of what they have), and give their children better nutrition so they can grow strong and healthy.

It is possible to do all this through one seemingly simple, but very important medium: soil. Soil is the basis of all terrestrial life and the single most important substance for human life on earth. As Franklin D. Roosevelt famously said, “A nation that destroys its soil destroys itself. Or, as I always, say, my job as a gardener is not to take care of my plants. I take care of the soil and the soil takes care of the plants. The soil is alive. It plays a very active role in the cycling of nutrients and keeping plants healthy. Those plants, in turn, perform nearly every function we need performed. They make the oxygen we breathe, pull carbon dioxide out of the air, shade and cool the ground, turn the sun’s energy into something usable, produce the food we eat, produce the food our food eats, make medicines, make the materials we build our homes out of, and the list goes on. All that depends on healthy soil. While some of those functions can be performed without healthy soil, as they are now, they function at a much lower efficiency. By simply focusing on the soil, we can improve so many things.

Growing up, my father always told me that Mother Nature takes thousands of years to produce one inch of healthy topsoil. I know he meant it to point out that it is a precious resource and we should treat it as one, I guess I always took it as a challenge. By carefully applying a range of techniques I have covered previously on this blog, you can make that inch of topsoil in anywhere from a couple of years to just a couple of months, depending on the scale of your operation and your dedication to the task. I will note that hydroponics and aquaponics do not actually produce soil, though the remnants of the plants can be used to do so. Instead, I focus on these techniques because they offer options for urban dwellers that might not necessarily be available otherwise.

More importantly, careful use of the set of these techniques that is appropriate to each individual’s situation can help them personally while helping the world at large. There is nothing quite so effective for solving big problems as showing people how meeting their rational self-interests can make a significant difference on the big problems.

Monday, January 1, 2018

Moving Towards a Sustainable Culture

In the South, they say eating greens on New Year's Day
will bring you wealth in the new year. I say do it every day.
Happy New Year, everyone! 2017 was an interesting year for me. In June, I left my job to pursue intellectual property, but I will talk more about that in the coming months. I still need to finish and file the patent. But I also did a lot of reading, research, and ruminations on the subject of sustainability. Through that process, several things became very clear to me. One of those is that, despite the fact that there are more people passionate about sustainability than ever, the availability of information on what they can do to make a difference is pretty slim. It is even harder to find ways to make a difference while making your life better, not worse. The dominant narrative is that of what we all need to give up.

We have reached a point where mere sustainability isn't enough. We don't want to sustain what we have. We need to be regenerative. They tell us things to do, but most of them are either not regenerative or make such a tiny impact that they are all but inconsequential. Recycling your trash? That's sustainable, but not regenerative. Reducing carbon emissions? Sustainable, but we need to sequester them if we want to be regenerative. Turning off the water while brushing your teeth? Well, that's a good idea, but just about inconsequential in the bigger picture.

I also noticed that there are some really great books out there on sustainability, but all the ones I have found so far fall into one or both of two traps. The first is that they are written by academics for academics. I am an engineer by profession and an avowed autodidact. I had trouble slogging through a couple of the books. The second is that they have a wonderful vision for what a sustainable society would look like, but offer no real plan on how to get there. They often offer some vague governmental policy changes as the impetus to move us in the right direction. Personally, I think this is the wrong way to go. All change starts at the bottom, with the people. The status quo is maintained by the people who made vast sums of money on the status quo and have no interest in changing it. The people in charge have an economic base that is sustained by keeping things as they are and will always be resistant to changing it. So the real question is how do we get average, middle class people to truly adopt a sustainable lifestyle?

The important thing to remember is that a person who is prospering on the current system will resist changing it. What about the people who aren't prospering? What about the millions of Millennials who are in their 30s and still can't afford to buy a home? What about all the people who have seen their wages stagnate while prices rise, watching as their standard of living slowly erodes? What about the estimated 60% of people who will see their jobs evaporate to automation in the next 20 years? One of the constants of the human condition is that we are always looking for a way to improve our lot. We need to find a way to use the regenerative and productive aspects of nature to improve the lives of people who are struggling. If you bring prosperity to those who have found it elusive, others will want a part of that.

The thing is, nature is regenerative. Every single natural system knows how to regenerate itself from damage to return to health and prosperity. If they didn't they'd have never survived all of the natural disasters that every single environment is subjected to somewhat frequently. These environments do this while providing bounty for all who live in them and they do it because every organism has a role to play. If you haven't already seen it, I strongly recommend checking out the video on how wolves change rivers for a beautiful example on how all of the organisms interact in an ecosystem. And this video only shows the interactions among animals and some plants. When diversity is increased and the full contribution of plants, fungi, and microorganisms in the soil is understood, the results can be mind-blowing.

How, then, are ecosystems degrading across the entire world simultaneously? It's quite simple, really. They are being managed incorrectly by people. It doesn't have to be this way, though. There are numerous examples from tropical areas of food forests that have been managed by the people who live in them for thousands of years. The problem is, to the uneducated, the food forest and the forest are indistinguishable and we tend to label people living in these food forests as "savages" and the areas they live in as "third world countries."

So here we are, living largely in urban and suburban sprawl. A friend once told me that suburbia is the most unsustainable thing ever and asked me how we'd change it. That's easy. Let me offer an analogy. When white people came to North America the bison herds were massive. Some estimates put them at 60 million strong. Most people think that it was over hunting, with millions of animals killed every year, that decimated their population. I read recently that this likely had little effect on the population. In a herd of 60 million, a couple of million lost every year aren't going to even offset the birth rate. It was habitat loss that did it. They depended on the grasses of the prairies for their food source. By fencing and burning that food source, then tilling it up to grow our own grains, we deprived them of their livelihoods and the great herds dwindled and disappeared.

That is exactly how we are going to get rid of suburbia. It is only through the loss of the habitat that supports the suburban sprawl that we are going to get rid of it. The problem is, nobody wants that. Well, nobody with a heart anyway. Do we really want hundreds of millions of people to lose everything and die or move on? I don't. I really think there is a better way, and suburbia may be just the place to start it.

Let me ask you a question, for those of you who grew up in suburbia. You remember that crazy lady down the street with the big garden? Remember how she kept knocking on your door to try to give you zucchini? Why was she giving it away? Simple, she had more than she could eat. Let that sink in a minute. She. Had. More. Than. She. Could. Eat. And she grew it in her yard, in suburbia. She was likely using some version of conventional or organic agriculture, with crops in the ground grown with loving care and fertile soil. That, there, is our new model. You want to reduce your footprint? Make it as big as your yard.

Now, granted, she spent an ungodly number of hours a week out in that garden, and she did it because there was no place she'd rather be. The problem is, not everyone wants to be like her. We have this amazing technological life. We have culture and theater and reality TV that we'd so much rather be participating in than mucking around in the dirt. So how do you transition from that one person in every neighborhood to nearly everyone? Technology.

Yeah, I know. Technology is bad. We all know that's what ruined the environment in the first place. I learned an important lesson from Allan Savory on this point. A resource and the management of that resource are two very different things. To be fair, he'd probably bristle at the thought of my applying his maxim to technology, as he does tend to view technology as bad. But I really think that technology applies as another resource that can be part of the solution if managed properly.

Over the last several decades, there have been many new innovations in the realm of growing food and repairing ecosystems that have a huge amount of potential. These include the understanding of tropical food forests and the development of temperate food forests, mushroom growing, biochar, and garden/mechanical hybrids (like hydroponics and aquaponics). We have developed effective frameworks for managing natural systems like Holistic Management and Permaculture. These are all really great innovations, but I really think that we are just scratching the surface. There is another leap in understanding that we need to take before we can really make the magic happen.

Most technology is used as a replacement. I don't want to water my garden, so I install an irrigation system. I don't like paying workers on my assembly line, so I install robots to assemble the cars I sell. Often the thing being replaced is human labor or natural systems. Industrial agriculture has taken this replacement model to new heights and the destruction has been vast, with the UN estimating that we have a mere 60 years of agriculture left. I don't think we should get rid of the technology any more than I think we should get rid of the cows. Instead, we should manage it differently.

Before I jump into what that would look like, let me throw another concept in the mix: systems thinking. Put simply, systems thinking is the process of understanding a whole system by examining all of the connections between functional parts of the whole. Ecology is, by necessity heavy in systems thinking. The problem is that science is typically not strong in systems thinking. The scientific method is typically a reductionist process where variables are removed as much as possible so specific tests can be performed. Any more than 2-3 variables and the results are questionable. So while the data and understanding gathered by science is incredibly valuable, it is important to use science as a starting place, not as the whole process. Science tends to be reductionist. If we are going to build something, we need a constructionist method. Engineering, which uses the information gathered by science, is constructionist. Holistic Management and Permaculture are both also constructionist methods.

The thing I have found in learning about all of the advanced techniques of growing things is that very few people are combining them. Those that are are typically combining only one or two of the items. I think that widespread use of these techniques, combined with technology would be a way to really create something truly regenerative. The important step, though, is that the technology needs to be viewed differently. The natural systems are complex and interrelated in ways that we don't fully understand, so these processes get first priority. If nature CAN do it, something natural SHOULD do it.

What role, then, should technology serve? Technology should be used to pick up the tasks that humans would normally do. This is obvious. After all, this is what technology normally does. But more importantly, technology should be used to support, intensify, and accelerate those natural processes. After all, technology cannot ever be truly regenerative. Only nature can do that.

I believe that if we use technology to support and accelerate natural processes, in turn using the result to build urban ecosystems, we can turn suburbia into a ridiculously productive wonderland. And I believe that those who pioneer this process will bring themselves enough prosperity that others will take notice and want to participate. The benefits of this are multi-fold and include things like carbon sequestration, restoring healthy water cycles, reductions in air pollution, increase in habitat for urban wildlife, a booming local food community, and so much more. I will talk more about what this might look like and how we get there over the next several blog posts. And yes, the intellectual property I am working will be a big part of that. Just be patient with me. I'll tell you all about it as soon as I can.