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Biodiversity for a Livable Climate
Loss of Biodiversity: Consequences
1.Freshwater: Reduced Availability & Quality
2.Food: Reduced Availability & Quality
3.Disease Processes in Many Species (including Humans)
4.Loss of Climate Stability - Global Warming
6th Extinction ? - Soil ?
“Big animals are like the nutrient arteries of the planet and if they go extinct it is like severing these arteries.” Chris Doughty - University of Oxford Environment Change Institute
In the late Pleistocene, 97 genera of large animals (megafauna) went extinct, concentrated in the Americas and Australia.
Nature Geoscience 6, 761–764 (2013)
“Poop Paucity Predicament” - David Biello, Scientific American
Carbon Lost / Acre?
Soil Extinction 1.MegaFauna Extinction in Australia and Americas
2.Barbed Wire - Herds Can’t Move to “Sweet Grass”
3.Plow - Fragment and Oxidize Soil “Dust Bowl”
4.Pesticides & Chemical Fertilizers
We are now inhibiting Photosynthesis by tolerating bare ground. (10 to 15 billion acres)
We are inhibiting Humificationwith agricultural chemicals.
CO2 levels rise
rapidly >>>
Loss of Polar Ice
>>>OceanAnoxia>>>H2S
bubblesout of
oceans.
“When you understand the power of self-organization, you begin to understand why biologists worship biodiversity even more than economists worship
technology.”
“Hierarchical Systems evolve from the bottom up. The purpose of the upper layers of the hierarchy is to serve
the purposes of the lower layers.”
from Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows
Places to Intervene in a System12. Numbers - “Mostly, the numbers are not worth the sweat put into them”
(I’ll skip a few.)
4. Self-Organizing Systems (John Todd & Eco-Machines)
3. Goals (What do you want? - Allan Savory & HM)
2. Paradigms (Lynn Margulis - Microbial Symbiosis)
1. Transforming Paradigms (questioning your own beliefs and paradigms)
Lynn Margulis - Symbiosis is a key to evolution.
More Poop
More Possibilities
and
More Fungi
More Future
15,000 / square mile
Greg Judy’s Goal: 25 earthworms / sq. ft.100 tons castings / acre
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6HGKSvjk5Q
http://www.greenpasturesfarm.net/
Long stickymolecules
outside the cell.
Humus
Glomalin
Paul Stamets
Jerrie Tipton - 1989
Thanks toPeter
Donovan
Methane?Methanogens produce
methane in anaerobic conditions.
Methanotrophs eat methane in
breathing soils.
Where Cow patties?
Dung BeetlesConcrete Floor
Wastewater Lagoons Bury 3 feet deep
