Global Climate Action
Otto Scharmer, founder of the Presencing Institute, has proposed a 3 pronged approach to reversing global warming, by transforming our economic, democratic, and learning infrastructures to focus on Soil, Democracy and Consciousness.
I’d substitute Inclusive or Individual Participation for his term, Democratic. The role of every engaged individual is key. My personal reluctance with the word Democratic reflects personal frustration with the slow pace of policy change and, perhaps, living in a more culturally and racially diverse part of the world. In either case, we are in agreement that the shift in society’s focus include more individual influence and action in moving towards climate action.
If you are unfamiliar with The Presencing Institute, you may want to expand and look at this complex images, by Kelvy Bird, through which the Institute expresses what it hopes to teach participants:
There are 2 components to improving our global environment. They are both are essential, yet they have different areas of focus: reducing pollutants AND the removal of the unwanted from our biosphere. That is, a reduction of CO2 emissions, as well as other toxins, and a recognition that carbon and water are needed to be moved to where they can be used by plants, soil and living creatures.
All 3 areas, Soil, Democracy, and Consciousness will be important to any successful change in society that meaningfully impacts climate change. We agree on the themes, but more accurate terms for the same themes would be Natural Processes, Inclusion & Individual Participation and Connectedness, which are the same 3 themes needed to move forward, successfully, with climate action everywhere.
SymSoil, like Presencing Institute, is focused on accelerating natural processes to remove CO2 and other greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere, which does not minimize, in any way new technologies and projects to reduce emissions or toxins.
Soil (Natural Processes)
Scharmer’s first component is Soil. We applaud him for recognition of this often overlooked component of nature-based reduction in toxins and greenhouse gasses.
Just before her death, Judith Fitzpatrick PhD had an abstract accepted by the European Geosciences Union, which demonstrated the impact of regenerative agriculture on carbon sequestration — measured in carbon in the microbes per gram of soil.
Using data from USDA reports, she found that conventional farms typically had less than 100 micrograms (µg or a millionth of a gram) microbial biomass carbon/gram of soil (MBC). In contrast, regenerative farms studied by the USDA had at least 200 µg MBC/g soil. She calculated that if 5% additional farmland in the US (out of the 90% currently farmed conventionally) switched to regenerative farming, it would be sufficient to offset the entire US carbon footprint.
So, shifting society’s focus to soil and regenerative agriculture will be essential to the changes we need to survive the coming changes.
The challenge, of course, is that it takes years to restore the soil health and the microbial life without reseeding the soil microbiome. This is a bit like probiotics for the gut biome — and the most complete products are based on indigenous, wild sourced microbes using techniques developed and promoted by Dr. Elaine Ingham, known as Soil Food Web.
Soil Food Web (SFW) is also known as the soil microbe biome or the soil ecosystem. A quick search under the term SFW will show 1,200 articles in peer reviewed journals, over 250,000 citations. Unfortunately, approach taught by Dr. Ingham and the Soil Food Web Institute takes a great deal of skill, experience and manual labor.
SymSoil has a patent on a way to scale and mass produce SFW products, moving it from bench level science to the quantities that would allow it to compete with agrochemical fertilizers for industrial farming.
But trying to explain to institutional investors the value/rationale of locally sourced, regionally specific, indigenous soil microbes — that is, restoring the native soil’s microbiome, as a substitute for chemical fertilizers — feels like spitting into the wind.
Sure, better flavor, higher nutrient density for food and higher profits for farmers, but what investor would care about any of that? (Ah, the last five years of my experience shows…)
Trees, on the other hand, are easier for people to see, understand and relate to. So more recently I have been writing about the benefits of trees.
Trees can’t live without soil with fungi, and support the microbes that remediate the soil and sequester carbon. Planting trees gets us to the same place with respect to healthy soil, but expressed in terms that most people understand and where they can easily grasp the human benefits.
Democracy (Inclusion or Individual Participation)
Scharmer’s second prong is about the collective power of people, working together, to force policy change, Democracy.
Collective climate action has happened in the past. Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River Fire of 1969, catalyzed both Earth Day and provided news cycle and political push that lead to the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Scharmer uses a story of the popular support protecting bees in Germany by influencing political decision-makers. Scharmer writes,
“Direct democracy can be a powerful mechanism for countering the influence of dominant special interest groups.”
Agreed, but often public opinion and political response to that opinion can take an extended amount of time. Sometimes an individual, or politician, can move more quickly and be a powerful driver for rapid change, such as when FDR mandated, then protected and assured funding for, the Great Wall of Trees. In this, he was much like his cousin Teddy Roosevelt, who created the first national parks. In addition to Yellowstone and Yosemite, the earlier Roosevelt claimed 2.5 million acres of forestland for all Americans saving the land from the mega-industrialist of his day.
Today we use terms like inclusion, diversity and environmental justice. Teddy Roosevelt used different vocabulary, but in the role of African American men (the Army’s 24/25th Infantry) in his success, both in the Spanish American War and, later, in saving woodland communities while fighting the 1910 fire, to protect the forestland that TR had set aside, you can see early (and, admittedly, weak) moves towards inclusion.
Each of us has a voice and a role, and our insights come from multiple sources. We need to use those voices and multiple perspectives, resisting the tendency to be moved against our own best interests like a domesticated herd.
Diversity of perspective, for SymSoil, grows out to the different backgrounds of the 4 founders and the value we place on the biodiversity of the soil. All climate action needs to include equity and inclusion in its overall goals.
A number of people who are active in the climate action movement or nature restoration who have taken lessons from the multigenerational perspective of first nation cultures.
Unfortunately, in the mainstream culture, many people have allowed themselves to be polarized, which destroys their voice/vote/autonomy. Big data companies use information (knowledge architectures) in a way that the user’s information is collected. The user sees a small amount of information, while the big data companies on the other side of the mirror watch you and your behavior. They sell your information to third parties who use it to modify your behavior. Scharmer believes:
This will come as consumers opt consciously take control of how they use and react to news, entertainment and social media.
Consciousness (Connectedness)
Reading Otto Scharmer’s third essay, I was sorry he didn’t start at the beginning. So much of his insightful essays are about ecology and ecosystems. He never reflected of the Greek origin of the word “Eco” for home.
All economics, for example, is home economics: the study of how individuals and families cope in social groups. Ecology is about how we, as a community are going to take care of our global home.
Scharmer advocates for change, but reflecting his MIT background, his vocabulary and ideas are highly influenced by technology. He describes the change as a new or different operating systems.
I find it easier to understand when shown graphically as life forms, rather than described as software: Egosystem awareness (the circle on the left) or Ecosystem awareness (the circle on the right).
Changing that operating system from ego to eco would transform the world in almost every way imaginable, and transform one of the most important root issues of these problems.
Scharmer’s Presencing Institute offers a number of new paradigms, including 4 operating systems and stages of evolution that cover Learning, Health, Farm & Food, Corporate Sustainability, Finance and Governance.
He has a strong example in community-supported agriculture (CSA), which connects farmers more closely and more intentionally with those who consume what they grow. Farmer receives a fixed amount of money per week, or month, from the members of the CSA. In return, they receive a selection of fresh fruits and vegetables that are produced locally, with regenerative farming.
The food is locally grown, in season and promotes better health than processed foods. The CSA the model changes how consumers relate to the farm. However, in most CSAs, consumer give up choice, accepting the seasonal crops, but in a society where most people microwave and many young adults don’t know how to cook, it takes some adjustment.
The health and environmental benefits of locally grown food are significant, but widespread adoption of CSAs will require acknowledgement of a current blind spot and change.
The CSA model exists in many places on a small scale today. As society moves towards more extreme weather events, and food security issues, this model of consumer connection to farming will impact the whole system though a societal readjustment.
Each of these three areas, Soil, Inclusion, Consciousness, is important. However, for today, I recommend we default to:
More action is called for, not more ideas and talk. Each tree we plant will change more than these words on a screen or the air that pushes out our voices.
This started as a 3 paragraph response to the first essay, on soil, that I couldn’t get to stick in the Medium comment section. I fear that I extend and expand the noise by participating by writing and publishing, yet I found Scharmer’s 3 essays, listed below, refreshingly thoughtful and encourage you to read them.
Why does SymSoil care? We focus on solutions to environmental issues, with a focus on soil biology. Trees and plants feed, and are fed by, the soil microbiome. Healthy soil influences water, carbon sequestration and human health. SymSoil holds a patent on the first scalable approach to manufacturing Soil Food Web products as an alternative to agrochemicals. SymSoil is a supporter of 100KTrees4Humanity, an urban tree planting project focused on action that moves us towards solutions to climate change with equity and inclusion.
The 3 essays:
