Our legacy - taking more than we should (part 2)

We all know it's happening. We read about in journals, see it on documentaries, and may even see it occasionally on our online news feed if we have actually shown interest in the subject before. But the topics are fragmented, and the issues often so grand that for many of us facing them may seem like a lost cause. How can we address the issues of deforestation, desertification, acidification of the ocean, extinction of millions of species, uncontrolled commercial fishing, overfishing, degradation of our ground water, industrial food production, and fossil fuel dependence? The tasks needed to address these seem insurmountable. But are they?

Let's step back for a moment. If we are to believe mainstream media it would seem that the ONLY environmental issue worth discussing in political and public realms is "climate change", which is still being debated in some circles as to whether it's actually occurring or not. The term "climate change" is commonly thought to have been popularized by the late Wallace Smith Broecker when, in his 1975 article discussing global warming and associated effects, he coined the term. Margaret Thatcher brought it into the political realm in 1989, and Al Gore brought it to the mainstream with his famous 2006 film "An Inconvenient Truth."

The terms "climate change" or "global warming", however are less important than the intention of their use. If we are taught and told to only focus on global warming or climate change in our pursuit of environmental protection, then we will completely miss the point. Why? Because climate change and global warming are likely the nicest, least offensive, most passive and least confrontational ways we can say that we are killing our planet and that process is starting to effect everything. By reducing the narrative to a simple, myopic view of what the issues are we miss the important conversation around real issues on multiple fronts that all need addressing. My view on this is a bit skeptical - I see many complex issues being broken down into simple sound-bites and then what follows are the stereotypical debates online between the camps that inevitably firm up against one another. But the bigger issue is not whether we believe global warming is happening or not - it's that we are the problem. All of us. So our point of view matters very little in solving the complex problems needing solving to fix the damage we have done. I'll get into more detail around the dangers of myopic thinking in another article, but its important we recognize the narrative being shared generally oversimplifies the issue, and fails to address the route causes.

One of the best examples of myopia is around beef ranching. We have been taught that beef ranchers are degrading our lands and that consumption of beef is driving the largest portion of CO2 gas growth in our ecosystem. The men below are villains - right?

Well, it turns out that beef ranching done the right way can actually help reduce CO2, not generate it. The CO2 generated from the animals can be offset by the soil improvements they create through grazing across vast spaces. A recent film "Kiss the Ground" narrated by Woody Harrelson helps to tell that story, and goes deeper into the topic of soil degradation. Over-farming, farming the wrong items in the wrong areas, and industrialization of food production are the main contributors discussed in causing soil degradation. And they go as far as discussing how important the soil is to CO2 capture - the biggest CO2 capture outside of the ocean. The soil is critically important, and we are killing it through irresponsible farming practices.

So who are the villains there? Again it's the farmers, but this time it's the almond farmers using huge amounts of water in areas that are arid, save for the massive irrigation enabling it. Industrial farming is destroying the soil, which releases CO2 back into the atmosphere. Healthy soil stores CO2 and unhealthy soil releases it - it's that simple. And governments who have supported wide spread irrigation and irresponsible industrial farming should take credit because they have enabled this process to take place. The United States is among the worst culprits through its widespread acceptance of pesticides that are readily banned elsewhere, taking from the ground water table, mass irrigation from critical rivers, and providing tax incentives for increased food yield / production.

Palm oil production is also a major concern. The biggest consumers of palm oil are China and India and the largest producers of it are Indonesia, Thailand, Columbia and Nigeria - Indonesia being the biggest by far with over 50% of the world's supply. But why is palm oil so destructive? In a word - deforestation. Palm oil producers are ripping out diverse, ecologically important areas and replacing them with palm oil production. This deforestation removes important habitat for plants, animals, insects, birds and all kinds of wildlife, but it also degrades the soil. The soil releases CO2, and then is unable to store as much as it did before. So the soil in those areas go from CO2 storage units to CO2 producers - much like farming land in the United States. Starting to see a trend?

The ocean is in worse shape. I've had the pleasure to fish in the Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Southern Ocean, and Caribbean Sea in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Cuba, United States, Bahamas and Fiji. I've had days on the ocean that are teaming with life with thousands of birds, whales, dolphins and fish. I've also seen days where it's like being in a desert. The areas I have returned to fish repeatedly I have seen degradation over time. Less fish, smaller fish, and less bait fish. More fishing boats using better technology covering larger areas. And it's sad because the way I fish with rod and reel is selective - we only take the fish that are ok to harvest and with the appropriate size, where applicable fishery laws dictate that. And I only take what I can eat. But not everyone has the financial means to charter a boat and do what I have done - so what is the answer to fishing? Should we stop? Should we only allow indigenous and sport fishing? Should we ban certain types of fishing?

The biggest challenge with our oceans is the lack of political will to fix what we are doing to them. The recent documentary "Seaspiracy" has done a great job bringing awareness to this issue. It approaches the issue of commercial fishing, and the gross negligence happening on our open oceans, either just beyond legal limits of countries or within them directly breaking local laws. The lack of protection for pelagic species like tuna which travel vast distances across multiple oceans has resulted in the destruction of those species - some with less than 1% of their original numbers remaining. We are on the brink with many species of fish, and we are wiping out entire micro-ecosystems within the ocean through irresponsible fishing. But what's the answer? In the film it references stopping eating fish. But I have another view - let's stop taking more than a natural ecosystem can replenish. Let's enforce laws too. The sheer fact we see shark fin soup being legal anywhere is a testament to the utter failure of the global framework around commercial fishing.

Input. Output. What we take we need to give back. What we consume, we need to protect enough to allow for the ecosystem to produce enough to replace what we take, and what we produce must be done in a way that protects the overall ecosystem rather than directly taking away from it. It's not much more complicated than that, but it's also not as simple as eating farmed fish, or eating only organic food. The current narrative focuses on punitive discussions around carbon tax, oil & gas production, what car you drive, or whether we eat meat or not. Why can't we focus on the industrial system of food production and address how we are creating food in destructive ways because we are solely driven by SHORT TERM profit? Profit is an allusion because these practices create short term results, but are destroying the resources we wish to benefit from long term which is resulting in permanent losses.

Sustainability is a heavy word. A word fraught with baggage. Perhaps balance is a better word. But in either case if we continue to take more than we give back we will leave our children with nothing. So I'm certain we need to take decisive and controversial actions to bring the pendulum back to balance on a number of fronts. And in the short term perhaps we have to swing much further to the other side of the pendulum to help rectify the destruction already done in order to have a chance at balance in the future for our children. I think they deserve that - don't you?