00:05:17.900And through the last 10 years with the work,
00:05:20.560I've now got this appreciation and insight that that impact can be beneficial as well.
00:05:26.880And it could be a good thing. And so the idea, when we started this work 10 years ago, there was a range of options. There's adaptation, there was mitigation, but very few people were talking about solution.
00:05:40.140And the IPCC, International Panel on Climate Change, fifth assessment, the most recent one, has made it very clear that mitigation will no longer achieve a version of this runaway global temperature.
00:05:54.640We must remove carbon from the atmosphere in an ongoing way that is sustainable.
00:06:01.100And that's what the Marine Carbon Project has established.
00:06:03.260We now understand that managing for carbon, and by managing for carbon in grazed rangeland systems to start with, we've now observed that once you manage for carbon in that system and other systems, you can solve for energy, water, nutrient cycling, and all these other things.
00:06:22.300So it's the organizing element or the essential element for these natural systems.
00:06:27.460And when you pay attention to carbon, everything else starts to make sense in terms of water cycling and nutrient cycling and other processes.
00:06:35.020So when we look at Earth's managed natural systems and human influence, the potential through managing for carbon is to actually balance Earth's carbon cycles.
00:06:43.960And in doing so, potentially lower the planet's temperature and also beneficially affect the pH of the oceans and stop ocean acidification.
00:06:53.460So this could scale all the way up to everything we need to achieve.
00:06:57.700So it's a great inquiry and a great exploration.
00:06:59.980Well, speaking about scaling up, can you give us a sense of the range of political routes that you could envision for scaling up the Marin Carbon Project's work to a state or national level and ultimately a global level that can make a dent in the roughly 410 parts per million of CO2 we have in the atmosphere?
00:07:23.200or are political solutions too unlikely
00:07:27.160and are community-scale efforts a better bet at this point?
00:08:19.600is it going to be global or is it going to be federal? It's a both and answer. I think here
00:08:25.300in California, we've seen great success working with many partners in this space, from nonprofits
00:08:31.360to ag advisors to agencies, state and federal agencies that support our agricultural producers
00:08:39.080to scale up this work. And you can see that in the state's new Healthy Soils Initiative,
00:08:44.100which has launched this year and will be providing $7.5 million to California farmers to implement practices that sequester soil carbon.
00:08:52.980Along those lines, also recognize that organic matter or compost is a very important part of carbon farming,
00:09:01.000although it is definitely not all of it.
00:09:03.680Things like riparian restoration, cover crops, biodiversity, these are all things that can enhance soil carbon.
00:09:09.340But the state is also supporting the creation of really what is new earth or the medicine for the planet to heal in the form of compost with a grant project upwards of 80 million for new compost facilities in the state and then another 50 million to dairymen to implement practices that will reduce emissions from their manure and also help produce amendments that can get out on soils and help them sequester more carbon.
00:09:37.820So I think we're seeing great progress here at the state level. There are also, at this point, six other states that have taken action to support healthy soils or carbon sequestration and agriculture. And the Center for Food Safety has some great information about that if anyone wants to check it out.
00:09:55.260There are a couple of other states, maybe three or four more, that are considering taking action or that have initiatives at the local level that are pushing for state action.
00:10:04.820So you're seeing some big uptake at the state level.
00:10:08.060And at the federal level, we have a farm bill that's coming up, and we'll have some great opportunities there to help support this work, hopefully through the alignment of crop insurance programs with healthy soil practices.
00:10:21.100And then finally, at the global level, I think you're seeing this beautiful connection between the global and the local. So during the Paris Climate Agreement, a four for a thousand was an initiative that was signed by many countries, but not the U.S. And that was an initiative that pledged that countries would increase their soil carbon, this four parts per thousand.
00:10:42.400And essentially what they're saying is we're going to use our agricultural systems to sequester soil carbon.
00:10:47.820And even though the U.S. was not signatory to the 4 for a Thousand initiative, many local communities, including our fiber shed community here in California, are considering voluntarily signing up for that and committing to those types of soil carbon sequestration numbers.
00:11:04.800And I believe it's over 130 other countries in the world have signed up for that initiative.
00:11:09.660So in reality, we're seeing a lot of movement from the local state up to the federal and global on this area.
00:11:18.160And I'm really hopeful that we're going to see a lot more in the coming years.
00:11:25.540Yeah, thank you so much for taking us through this matrix of connections.
00:11:30.640And to move on to another topic, evolutionary biologist and climate researcher Guy McPherson published a 90-page meta-analysis that connects important dots about climate from scientific literature of the past three or four years.
00:11:48.960and what he describes in this paper is abrupt climate change that will gain momentum over the
00:11:56.620next several years as tipping points are reached and feedback loops are triggered. The concept of
00:12:03.320feedback loops is nothing new but what's new is that there are 69 distinct feedback loops many of
00:12:10.420which scientists have not anticipated as recently as a few years ago and which have only become
00:12:15.800clear as they happen. McPherson is an evolutionary biologist and is able to explain how living
00:12:23.360communities relate to climate, which is tragically lacking from most climate discourse. And it takes
00:12:29.920some commitment to look beyond the censorship and political pressures that dilute IPCC reports and
00:12:37.180media coverage. But this essay, which is available at guymcpherson.com, is a really great jumping
00:12:43.320off point. It's fully referenced with hyperlinks, and it cites only mainstream academic literature.
00:12:49.460But so anyways, here today, I'd like to bring a few of these feedback loops from McPherson's essay
00:12:54.480into the discussion and see how carbon farming fits into this rapidly unfolding situation.
00:13:02.120So there's been a lot of focus on CO2, a fair amount on methane, and very little on nitrous
00:13:09.160oxide. And in fact, climate and atmospheric conditions rely on all three of these greenhouse
00:13:14.620gases being absorbed or released by terrestrial communities. Human disruptions in the biosphere
00:13:21.360have altered these mechanisms and have led to increased release and decreased absorption.
00:13:27.860And this study found that the cumulative warming capacities of concurrent biogenetic methane and
00:13:34.300nitrous oxide emissions is a factor of about two larger than the cooling effect resulting
00:13:39.940from the global land carbon dioxide from 2001 to 2002.
00:13:44.920So to look beyond CO2, can you address the whole trio of greenhouse gases and how animal
00:14:22.700Where I go, rather than mapping and measuring the increasing disaster, which is really true
00:14:29.540and well studied, what's the potential of intentionally creating beneficial feedback loops
00:14:38.540that fully recognize these fluxes of greenhouse gases and water vapors and start to rebalance
00:14:45.520these cycles through the increased management of natural cycles and systems like grazed rangelands
00:14:53.920or row crop systems or urban soil systems.
00:14:57.500And so what we're really talking about is looking at the different forms
00:15:01.600that carbon takes on Earth as the lever that can solve
00:15:07.180for the other greenhouse gases and water vapor.
00:15:10.080That was what the Marine Carbon Project did as an experiment,
00:15:13.380which is the lever that we can manage that will solve these other problems.
00:15:18.680Every farm, everything we do is actually carbon farming.
00:15:21.860conventional farming is carbon farming and in conventional systems our management of carbon
00:15:28.920is to till it in the soil system oxidizing it and releasing it to the atmosphere and there's
00:15:35.960what we've discovered is there's another version of that cycle where rather than tilling and
00:15:41.100disturbing the soil rather promoting conditions for life in the soil we can use a feedback loop
00:15:49.300that's a good one. And what we experimented with was, can we add carbon to soil without tillage?
00:15:55.820Can we detect it? And what happens if you do? That was the question that we asked in the very
00:15:59.900beginning of this. To our surprise, once we added carbon, and we were just simply looking for a
00:16:06.000stable form of it, and we found that in compost, once we added compost to the top of soil,
00:16:12.880what we witnessed and measured for five years was that that addition of compost in this
00:16:18.700biologically stable molecule, which is what compost is, it excited a state change in the
00:16:24.060soil system, creating a beneficial positive feedback loop. So the net increase of carbon
00:16:30.500that was photosynthetically derived from the atmosphere through plant exudates and soil
00:16:35.900processes was significant and important. It was at least a ton of carbon was added to the system
00:16:42.000net, accounting for all of the methane emissions from the grazing animals, the fuel burned managing
00:16:48.600all of the resources, the biomass eaten by animals, the normal respiration of soil systems
00:16:55.020in terms of nitrous oxide emissions, methane emissions, and CO2 emissions.
00:16:59.800And what we witnessed scientifically was that putting carbon on top of the soil caused more
00:17:05.640carbon to come into the system on its own for several years.
00:17:08.720And our computer models at Colorado State University show that that phenomenon will
00:17:13.500continue for 30 to 100 years from a single act of generously providing compassionately some nice
00:17:20.520resources for degraded soils and these resources are in the form of of medicine which is what
00:17:26.600compost is so that single event of applying a single application of compost ignited a state
00:17:32.380change that resulted in a beneficial feedback loop that solves for the flow of carbon from the
00:17:39.340atmosphere through plants into the soil. And the more you do of it, the more resources you create
00:17:45.000to do more of it, which remove more carbon, and it goes on and on from there. This is a good thing.
00:17:52.120And so rather than conventional pillage and these other approaches to agriculture,
00:17:56.580what we've created now is an understanding that there are a variety of practices available to
00:18:01.460ranchers and land managers that remove carbon from the atmosphere while also producing an
00:18:06.680abundance of healthy food and safe fibers and renewable fuels and interesting flora.
00:18:14.780So there are seven plus billion people on the planet. We're all busy having meaningful lives,
00:18:23.020doing good work. Our idea is that that effort, that energy could be done using materials derived
00:18:30.840from restorative agricultural systems that rebalance the carbon cycle and solve for your
00:18:36.160methane and nitrous oxide emissions and these other things. I'm not delusional. I fully understand
00:18:42.340how huge the problem is and how these tipping points are rushing past us. And it's scary.
00:18:50.140The thing I'm excited about is how quickly these natural systems responded to a little bit of
00:18:55.220generosity and a little bit of kindness. And once you were working with the system, or we did,
00:19:01.800And once we were working with them, the system response was so exciting and demonstrated for me personally on my own ranch that if enough of us do this, that we could actually affect the entire planet.
00:19:15.900And it is based on positive feedback loops instead of the negative feedback loops that Guy McPherson is describing.
00:19:23.060I want to offer a short version of that, which is when John was talking about our planet being a system of systems, what we're advocating for in this work is really looking at climate change in a new way.
00:19:38.920And instead of looking at these greenhouse gas emissions, carbon, methane, nitrous oxide as pollutants, we want to look at them as elements within this system and how they stack upon each other and therefore how we might begin to manage this large system of systems that is our planet for health and for abundance and for climate stability.
00:20:02.080and because carbon is the building block of life on this planet and there are these other elemental
00:20:08.520cycles sort of follow it so when you begin to manage for carbon in the ground what happens is
00:20:14.640you get more water in the ground which makes in turn the ground temperature cooler because there's
00:20:20.860more water for longer and that creates a smaller microclimate which might be able to actually then
00:20:26.780attract more water back to the system the other wonderful thing that happens is when you get more
00:20:31.980carbon in the ground and you have water passing through it, it also helps stabilize and transform
00:20:39.440nitrogen. So you can begin to fix more nitrogen in the soil once you have more carbon and more
00:20:46.620water in that soil. So this kind of an example of a way that we look at these things, not as
00:20:52.880pollutants, but as elements that stack upon each other within our terrestrial and atmospheric and
00:20:59.520oceanic systems on the planet. It's a complex idea, but it's actually pretty simple. We're
00:21:05.260just looking at these things as cycles. In terms of methane specifically, the wonderful thing is
00:21:12.160when you start to solve for soil carbon upstream, you begin to also address the methane emissions
00:21:19.560that are bad now, but can actually be helpful in the long run. So for example, instead of sending
00:21:26.240organics to landfill where they cause a lot of methane, we're talking about getting that organic
00:21:31.720waste, your food waste, your yard waste out of the landfill and into compost. That compost then
00:21:38.620enhances soil carbon sequestration and water holding capacity and nutrient retention. Likewise,
00:21:45.000upstream with animal waste and human waste, you also can get a creation of methane and these other
00:21:52.420gases like nitrous oxide in the decomposition process.
00:21:56.120So when you actively and proactively manage for what we call waste right now, and you
00:22:03.380do it in ways that minimize emissions and maximize the beneficial potential of the organic
00:22:09.780amendments of the products like compost that come out of that, then you begin to not only
00:22:16.020enhance your soil carbon, but also upstream reduce these very powerful greenhouse gas
00:22:22.320emissions like methane. I would also like to add in that methane is a naturally occurring
00:22:27.960essential element. It's where it is and how it got there that's of interest to us right now.
00:22:33.480But termites produce methane, and the system that I myself am working in historically has been the
00:22:40.520grazed rangeland system, and I'm a rancher. And what I've come to appreciate is that grass
00:22:47.020grows in grasslands. Grasslands occur in rangeland systems, which have mostly grassland,
00:22:53.780but some brush and some forest canopy. And they are the single largest cover type on earth.
00:22:59.660Now, it's very important to appreciate that grass co-evolved with grazing. Grass is different than
00:23:05.200trees. Trees shed their leaves, or deciduous ones do certainly. And grass can't. It actually relies
00:23:12.020on an herbivory event like grazing. And it doesn't matter to me who eats it. It could be
00:23:17.600camels or yaks or rabbits or whatever, whomever. But it's important to a grass plant that at some
00:23:25.460point, some removal of biomass occurs. And this causes a whole cascade of benefits for the plant.
00:23:33.340So grazed rangeland systems on earth, the single largest cover type on earth, rely on a grazing
00:23:39.080event. Animals who graze rangelands emit methane. It's a naturally occurring rebalancing of these
00:23:47.080cycles. So over-focusing on methane in those systems is not necessarily our best strategy.
00:23:55.440Could we put our energies into thinking about what thing we can do with which lever, and we've
00:24:02.760chosen carbon as the lever, that will affect methane and affect nitrous oxide and affect
00:24:07.920water vapor in the atmosphere. So by finding a benefit, a good lever, which is carbon,
00:24:14.280it solves for these other issues and creates that self-seeding beneficial system that Guy
00:24:19.680McPherson is looking for. To continue on this track of grazing and animals that are eating
00:24:27.800these grasses, the extinction of megafauna on land and sea has led to a shortage of megamanure as
00:24:34.840a result of the planet's composting and nutrient recycling system which breaks because of it and
00:24:42.040very few studies have been done around megafauna manure in ecosystem function and lands did evolve
00:24:48.500with grazing like you were saying bison on the prairie pronghorn antelope elk on the central
00:24:54.680valley of california and these are deep and evolved relationships so i'm wondering how closely can we
00:25:02.080or should we replicate those relationships?
00:25:25.560And it's his suggestion that American forest systems
00:25:29.200did not have tree canopies that touched
00:25:31.380and there was space, a lot more space between trees.
00:25:35.560And so as humans entered the system 60,000 years ago
00:25:39.280and ate their way down through the larger, slower-moving animals,
00:25:42.560so all that was left were the ones that we see today,
00:25:45.520they changed the biomass system on the entire continent.
00:25:50.380So here we have now the loss of a huge grazing component
00:25:54.280that managed the tree canopies to start with.
00:25:58.060So the opportunity right now is, are there proxies for those ancient events?
00:26:07.380And humans are capable of mimicking a lot of the things, at least to get the system rebalanced.
00:26:13.940And then if we can find an appropriate population of organisms who can perform the same functions as historically were present during the evolution of the system, that would be interesting.
00:26:24.620But the challenge is that this is a new world.
00:26:26.880We're in the Anthropocene. We're in the sixth extinction. So we don't have the organisms
00:26:34.640present that were present during the evolution of the system. So we are kind of in crash mode
00:26:40.800right now. We are losing a lot rapidly. And it's a lovely idea that we could reestablish
00:26:48.220wilderness and all these ancient systems. But right now we've got some basic repair to do
00:26:55.800to get function happening in all our basic systems and save the planet from overall global
00:27:03.920extinction. So that's kind of the bar that is set. And it would be lovely to have all those
00:27:10.920animals present that were here over 60,000 years ago. That's not readily available. So what can we
00:27:17.420do as a society now? Well, let's look at the flows of materials under our influence, and most of them
00:27:22.640So when we look at human waste, we have a population in the Los Angeles area of almost 11 million people, and most of their waste goes in a pipe. And what happens to that waste is an opportunity. Are there choices we could make? Could we come up with solutions that remove water from the transportation of human waste?
00:27:42.320and then so remove the conditions that create methane because we won't be supporting
00:27:47.840methanogenic bacteria. So there are a lot of wonderful opportunities to revisit how we do
00:27:54.560everything. And so for me and the work that I get involved with, we try to identify low-hanging
00:28:00.360fruit. What are the largest systems we can have the most impact with, with the simplest changes?
00:28:07.000So the description of applying compost to soil is exciting because we've measured benefits to that.
00:28:14.380In your earlier question, you suggested that the large megafauna contributed compost to the soil system, but actually they had manure, not compost.
00:28:25.080Compost is actually a very rare thing on Earth.
00:28:28.060It happens in Australia where you have long-legged turkeys managing a biomass pile for incubation, so they keep it.
00:28:36.240aerated and managed for temperature. When you have a river expanding its banks and detritus
00:28:42.980accumulates in enough of a volume, a minimum of a cubic yard, and you have the ideal moisture
00:28:49.380and air, carbon and nitrogen combination, you get thermophilic bacteria. And it's their presence
00:28:56.720and their consumption of the feedstocks to build their bodies and their populations
00:29:01.000that results in temperature increases.
00:29:05.240And so composting, in most cases, is an intentional human-managed operation.
00:29:12.180And it's really exciting because when we use biological processes like composting,
00:29:17.180we can create a biologically stable carbon nitrogen molecule
00:29:21.020that works really well in healthy soil systems or actually creates healthy soil systems.
00:29:26.820So field deposition of manures from megafauna is wholly different than applying a biologically stable molecule of compost.
00:29:36.380And the difference is in what we're seeing is that it's like medicine to the soil system so that we can restore function so that later manure deposition could help maintain and manage that system going forward.
00:29:48.880But there's some serious repair work that has to be done right now.
00:29:52.620And I'm looking to grazed rangeland systems as the first place to start conducting that activity.
00:29:58.980Well, is there a critical point where if enough rangelands are restored with either a combination of wild or domestic ungulates and compost, and the nutrient cycles would be repaired and self-sustained?
00:30:12.480so is there enough to actually remove enough carbon from the atmosphere to cool the planet
00:30:19.100and affect the ocean pH and therefore stabilize our whole system yes okay so I think it also I
00:30:26.560think it's important here to point out some science that's still really being worked out
00:30:31.420with warming temperatures and changes in land management like over grazing and species
00:30:39.300composition in more intense droughts, soils across the planet are actually losing carbon now.
00:30:46.280So you're looking at systems that are going to be and are already losing carbon and will be losing
00:30:51.640more under higher heat scenarios. So for this to work, it's going to take not just some better
00:31:00.960maintenance, but active repair. And the role of animals and their manure in that is incredibly
00:31:07.860important. And we are going to have to see some pretty rapid stabilization in the face of climate
00:31:15.240change. So it may take, you know, five to 10 years, maybe 15 to restore soil carbon in a grazed
00:31:22.160system in more permanent pools of carbon or more permanent forms in the soil. You can achieve that
00:31:28.340stabilization from riparian restoration or compost application much more quickly. So the right
00:31:35.900solutions for each of the systems, it's important to really point out, understanding that we really
00:31:42.000have to shift away from thinking this is a one thing is going to solve it. It's really solving
00:31:47.140for carbon in these systems very actively that's going to do it. And it's also important to note
00:31:52.560that we might have to do more than we did in the past because of how rapidly our climate system is
00:31:59.300destabilizing and because of the types of heat and drought we are already experiencing and that
00:32:04.800are going to be exacerbated in the future. So within the scientific community, there is a lot
00:32:10.760of conversation around, are the soils going to continue to lose carbon and are they going to
00:32:15.880reach a point where they are just going to lose carbon and not be able to have more carbon in
00:32:21.760them if it gets too hot? And then what type of management practices could we do in the face of
00:32:27.500climate change that might both prevent that soil carbon loss and actually enhance carbon sequestration?
00:32:33.340It's a little bit more technical, but I think it's important to understand that the system that we're operating in looks and behaves a lot differently on a very different timescale than the one that we've been in before.
00:32:48.260So we're stepping into a system that's trending in a very bad direction, and it's huge.
00:32:54.220And the challenge is the longer we take to organize ourselves, the harder the job will become.
00:33:01.260But there are so many elements under our influence right now that we could change our behavior around. And so for me, the takeaway from any conversation usually ends up being, what can I do? And my suggestion always is, put it in the green can. And if you don't have a green can available, call your county supervisor or your mayor's office and try and get composting up and running in your community.
00:33:24.740That's the single actionable item that everyone could participate in right now.
00:33:29.760And then that beautiful material that comes out of a composting operation currently in California is sold before it's even made.
00:33:40.840The opportunity now is to identify what are the other available feedstocks that could be made into compost.
00:33:47.040And Caleros spoke earlier about the landfills and the organic materials going into landfills.
00:33:51.780And also there's this opportunity of managing the dairy manure in California and everywhere else.
00:33:57.620But so for our work, we're looking at what are the alternative feedstocks that could be added to the composting stream to increase our capacity to heal more and more land.
00:34:11.140And then there's a bigger question about which land and what management holds the highest potential to start this positive feedback loop for carbon sequestration that's ongoing.
00:34:20.240And so fortunately for us, we have a wonderful group of scientists who can help us achieve data measurement from the basic science in these different systems.
00:34:32.580And there's research happening now across the state of California to secure data from practices like compost application on great rangeland in different soil types, in different bioclimactic zones.
00:34:44.200that data can then be fed into different types of models to help us do different scenarios and
00:34:52.480start looking at which system under what management holds the highest potential to
00:34:57.720move enough carbon to actually cool the planet and change the pH of the oceans so fortunately
00:35:03.620for us we have scientists who have the capacity to not only collect the data analyze the data
00:36:52.220So I would just add to this, to what John's saying.
00:36:54.760you know john's approaching this this problem that we have which is catastrophic climate change from
00:37:01.740the perspective of a builder you know what do we need to build who do we bring in to build it how
00:37:07.180do we change the way that we're managing this system in order to make it healthy and functional
00:37:13.560and abundant and the way i tend to approach it is looking at the types of tools that we have out
00:37:20.460there that the marine carbon project that john wick that many others in the space are developing
00:37:25.240is how do we relate to each other so there's also a huge portion of this that's not just about
00:37:30.860what's the scientific question around what's the best system to manage when and where but also
00:37:37.600how how is it that we can do this from a political perspective from a social perspective
00:37:43.180how do we change the way we relate to each other and the way we reward our relationships to each
00:37:49.280other such that there is enough energy to go around. And really, in this space, I don't think
00:37:58.600that we're going to get there just by managing for the science of it. We're also really talking
00:38:04.020about changing the way that we look at the world from a view of needing to control things because
00:38:10.940there's a scarcity of resources towards a view of acting in reciprocity within our relationships
00:38:17.300with each other because we understand that if managed in that relationship of reciprocity,
00:38:24.060there is actually more than enough. There's abundance in the system. So I just want to add
00:38:28.800that our approach is not entirely mechanistic, although it's based on understanding the mechanisms
00:38:34.140of the planet. It's also relational. So I want to, let's expand on that idea of abundance. And
00:38:40.560At least from my experience, our society, basically our social behavior is based on the competition for resources that are depleting.
00:38:52.640And what we've discovered here is that there's an entirely different version of our relationship to this planet.
00:38:58.740And if we learn about and appreciate living systems and living system-sourced solutions for our material cultural needs,
00:39:08.060And you can actually determine what those are if you can compost them.
00:39:11.440So anything that was ever alive can be composted.
00:39:14.640And if you use that as your standard and live within that so that everything you touch can be infinitely recycled, which is what composting is, and the energy you enjoy comes from as close to the sun as you can get it,
00:39:30.840I believe we can actually have wonderful lives that enhance the planet. So the more we do of
00:39:40.140carbon management to produce carbohydrates that also sequester soil carbon, the more resources
00:39:47.940we have to do more of it. Where else can you do something and get more to do more with by doing
00:39:54.300more. It's a self-feeding increasing system. So it's solar driven, photons come into the system
00:40:01.420and then life complexes on life. So living things produce more life. So as long as we live within
00:40:08.580the living biosphere and use wood and fibers and enjoy good foods and stay within that realm,
00:40:17.720the more we do, the more there is to do more with. It's really an exciting idea. And so
00:40:23.240this is the vision that we have for Earth with soon to be 9 billion people. There is a version
00:40:30.200of this Earth with 9 billion people all working and living and participating actively in a
00:40:36.300harmonious way with the managed natural systems upon which we rely, we will create more and more
00:40:41.660abundance for more and more to happen. And this benefits all forms of life on the planet. And as
00:40:49.140we enter the sixth extinction, it's my fear that we actually have less biomass of life on Earth in
00:40:55.480the last 200 years than we had historically, which I believe has increased over the last
00:41:01.360three billion years. And then starting 200 years ago, we're actually seeing loss of the mass of
00:41:07.820life on Earth under our influence. That's interesting and important. That suggests to me
00:41:13.340that we can influence how much life there is on earth. So let's manage our systems
00:41:18.280to create the conditions for more life to occur. And out of that, we get diversity and complexity
00:41:24.840and a variety of interesting things. So that's my philosophy. Manage for more and you get more.
00:41:32.820Well, it's actually quite ironic and funny because as we're speaking, outside my little
00:41:39.660cabin window was a huge delivery of compost from Cold Creek Compost up here in Mendocino County
00:41:47.700and I'm just watching this beautiful dark recycled life be spilled out as you both are speaking so
00:41:56.700eloquently about this integrated system so I just wanted to mention that and also John to go back
00:42:04.060to what you were saying about your when you were not managing your range lands wanting it to I
00:42:11.060think you said go back to wilderness I'm just wondering a clarifying question were you trying
00:42:16.060to bring back native species or were you trying to restore a redwood forest again or what was your
00:42:23.420hope and why isn't that a possibility okay so that's a great question and so not being
00:42:33.140informed and being very naive, it was my wife and my expectation that nature would do better
00:42:43.240without us. And it was our assumption that if we just simply backed up, these natural processes
00:42:49.560would achieve some kind of wilderness. And we didn't know what that would look like,
00:42:54.060but we thought it would be really interesting. But there are elements present in the system now
00:42:59.240that weren't there, that weren't present during co-evolution of all of the elements that would
00:43:04.020have been in a natural system. So there's no way there could be balance like we anticipated.
00:43:09.640It also has become clear to me that grass grows in grasslands, which are part of rangeland systems,
00:43:18.280which are the default cover type where there's not adequate water to support a forest.
00:43:24.780So there's no way that a redwood forest is going to occur in an area where there's not adequate water for it.
00:43:31.320What we have, where we're working, is mostly grassland.
00:43:36.120So the species and species composition that we've come to seek are the native deep-rooted perennial plants.0.95
00:43:45.820But there are other non-natives present too.
00:43:48.480And what I've come to appreciate is that there are these functional roles performed by a variety of organisms.
00:43:55.880And as long as there are enough elements present representing all the essential functional roles, we achieve a certain threshold of health.
00:44:04.500Now, you know, idealistically, there would be all native species present in that system.
00:44:10.100But that's very hard to achieve because of the loss of so many of them and the presence of these other ones who can find equilibrium in there.
00:44:18.480So our vision for our ranch currently, and we call it the Nicasio Native Grass Ranch, is to promote the conditions for the native species communities to occur and not be so prescriptive about which ones are present, but just do our best to try and make health in the system and kind of celebrate the good things that happen after we put our intention in that direction.
00:44:49.460Well, I'm working with carbon sequestration in forests.
00:44:56.640The drought-induced tree mortality is up around the world, which of course means CO2 releases, leading to more drought.
00:45:05.160And the stress is not only from climate conditions, but also from the pests and diseases that thrive in these conditions.
00:45:13.180The Amazon is one of the critical examples of this, where drought and deforestation have led to a drying effect that outpaced all predictions.
00:45:23.480You know, the Amazon released more carbon in 2010 than the entire United States, industry, cars and all.
00:45:30.700And because of all the tree mortality and slowed growth, the Amazon is no longer a net carbon sink.
00:45:38.100A 2014 article in the journal Nature suggests that dry lands are surpassing tropical forests as the primary driver of atmospheric CO2.
00:45:49.460A paper from December 2015 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, quote,
00:45:56.780In contrast to existing predictions of either stability or catastrophic biomass loss, the Amazon forest's response to a drying regional climate is likely to be an immediate, graded, heterogeneous transition from high biomass forest to transitional dry forest and woody, savannah-like states, end quote.
00:46:19.060And then in other research, the boreal forest to the north, which makes up 30% of all Earth's forest cover, is also experiencing a tremendous shift.
00:46:28.780Boreal peat is decomposing at unthinkable rates.
00:46:32.680An ecology professor at Trent University of Ontario, Dennis Murray, who studies the mysterious disappearance of moose,
00:46:41.080describes a huge forest ecosystem that is rapidly shrinking,
00:46:46.020drying, flooding, and otherwise changing.
00:46:49.280And he says that, quote, boreal forest is breaking apart.
00:46:53.320The question is, what will replace it?
00:46:56.500So most of industrial civilization has happened between the tropics and the boreal
00:47:01.880in the temperate zones where biomes have largely collapsed already.
00:47:05.920and the Marin Carbon Project and other restoration efforts are a response to that.
00:47:12.480So can any of the principles of carbon farming be applied to forest systems
00:47:17.400that are ailing but still intact to boost their resilience?
00:47:22.780And is there anything from your experience or research that could help confront
00:47:27.200the impending state change of the Amazon or the boreal or the montane forest
00:47:33.720or any threatened forest type for that matter?
00:48:48.340So as the planet warms, elements that normally had a place in the system are out of whack.
00:48:53.620For me, the action item is to work in soil carbon because it's stable and not subject to burning. So the issue of forest systems, if we're going to help the forest, I believe the approach is through other systems and to cool the planet, to recreate freezing conditions, to stop the beetle kill and go from there.
00:49:18.360I don't think as a management opportunity, I can't see personally, other than responsible forest management, how to increase carbon in the forest system. Does that answer your question?
00:49:31.200Yes, it's a huge question. And I just wanted to ask both of you your thoughts on the state of the forest and this carbon solution. And Kala, Rose, please, if you have anything that you'd like to add, I'd love to hear it.
00:49:48.360You know, as you're reading through all those forests that are dying, my heart sinks, of course, because we are really witnessing a massive transition on our planet, where a lot of the life and the life forms that we know are not now currently surviving.
00:50:05.500And I think our forests are really showing us that. So in my personal life, I've done a lot of ceremony or grieving over the transition of the forest because they've kind of gone beyond what we can actively stop at this point, as far as I understand it.
00:50:25.000Now, that being said, there is so much that you can do in regenerating forests under active management.
00:50:32.700When you keep and take care of those mother trees, the trees that are supporting the other trees in the community, the trees that are going to feed nutrients to the young trees, you can enhance your rehabilitation of the forest.
00:50:46.560You can enhance your soil carbon sequestration.
00:50:48.840And we will lose the forest in the southern Sierra as we know it, and there will be another forest that replaces it.
00:50:55.920But I think in the meantime, we really have to be honest with ourselves about the type of management it's going to take physically to get that wood out of there where we can and put it to good use so that it doesn't just burn.
00:51:10.180And the type of work that we can do to actively rehabilitate those systems.
00:51:15.380Again, the Marin Carbon Project was concentrated in rangeland systems for a lot of the reasons that John just described. So we are less familiar with the forest system. It's an incredible chance to return carbon either to the soil or to our built environment. Otherwise, it's going to go back up in the air when it burns.
00:51:35.440But I just would say that I think that we're witnessing a grand state transition in our forest systems, and that has to be acknowledged with the proper amount of, in my opinion, grief that that's what's happening.
00:51:49.440And then we need to really look to priorities for how to address that and where we can address it and where we can stabilize things as quickly and as rapidly as possible.
00:52:01.020And grassland systems and marshy systems, wetlands, coastal systems have a very quick response to regeneration.
00:52:08.900and so early on when we started working with dr wendy silver uc berkeley biogeochemist
00:52:15.980she didn't her background was tropical forest systems and tropical forest soils
00:52:20.660and she was not familiar with grassland systems it was a new territory for her and when she looked
00:52:27.280into it my memory is that she discovered that grasslands have the potential to hold more carbon
00:52:34.720than forest soils do so managing an annual system that cycles carbon rapidly and what we've
00:52:42.640discovered is sequesters massive quantities of carbon in a stable full is a much more readily
00:52:49.320available system to manage for carbon in than forests are forests are very important and and
00:52:55.900i actually looked it up while we were talking it's on the project drawdown list tropical
00:53:00.760deforestation is number five it's after reduced food waste eating a plant-rich diet
00:53:08.240and wind turbine energy and then number one being refrigerants but the idea that deforestation is
00:53:15.600something we can address it's really important clearly but where do we focus our energy on soil
00:53:22.160carbon sequestration i would suggest it's grasslands because of how quickly we've measured
00:53:26.900massive quantities entering the system in a stable form.
00:53:31.920And so we have to stop the bad behavior.
00:53:36.240I'm just going to interrupt you really quickly because I think it's important for listeners
00:53:39.360to realize that the Marin Carbon Project was a group of people, including land stewards
00:53:45.140and landowners like John and Peggy, who came together to say, what can we do in our space
00:53:51.900to really arrest this issue of climate change?
00:53:54.360How do we stop and reverse global warming?
00:53:56.900And so I just want to offer to the audience that when people hear like, well, grasslands are better than forests at this, that's kind of the wrong conversation to be having.
00:54:07.840Grasslands have a huge potential for carbon sequestration and for communities like yourself and your neighbors that are living in forest systems, there should be organization around what can we do to support this system?
00:54:21.760How do we help this system fight the effects of climate change? Or how do we actively help transition it and create a new system or a new forest in this place? Because it's people coming together who are working on the land, who care about the land, who are managing it, that can really come up with the solutions that are going to work within their landscape.
00:54:43.420And the Marine Carbon Project did an incredible job of engaging very high-level science alongside everyday land managers to help answer those questions.
00:54:52.900and in terms of grasses in grasslands and rangelands i think about with plants requiring
00:55:03.300thousands of years to slowly adapt to climate changes every plant community on earth is
00:55:09.680potentially threatened by temperature rise whether it be over the next few years or 100 years
00:55:15.400so i'm wondering how resilient are the native or introduced grasses used in the marine carbon
00:55:21.140project in the face of extreme temperature anomalies. For instance, is there any data
00:55:27.420that indicates how much temperature rise grasses can survive? Or what can be done to aid their
00:55:33.360survival, like interplanning drought-resistant shrubs or trees or something like that?
00:55:41.320I'm actually not interested in that question at all. You are talking about adaptation,
00:55:46.060And that's a non-starter for me. We can't adapt our way out of this. We have to solve the climate crisis. We have to remove enough carbon through photosynthesis in an ongoing way to lower Earth's atmospheric CO2 levels.
00:56:01.640So our mission is to figure out ways to shift where the carbon is between carbon pools and cool the planet and avoid this whole idea of having to adapt to a warming planet.
00:56:22.920We have to stop and reverse global warming.
00:56:25.680And that's what's exciting about what we've done.
00:56:28.100We've shown that you can actually remove carbon from the atmosphere.
00:56:32.440And once you do, the system itself continues to do it.
00:56:36.480And the species of grasses that are thriving are the normal grasses.
00:56:41.560And where we have managed for carbon, the soil is actually cooler in the summer.
00:56:47.780So the idea here is to not have to adapt to the problem, but rather fix it and make this planet a really cool, lovely place again, and hopefully get the winter freezes back up and running to kill the beetles to save the forests.
00:57:04.920so my last question for you both is about soil microbes and just like plants vertebrates are
00:57:15.080slow to evolve and soil microbes are similarly slow to evolve scientists often presume that since
00:57:22.400soil microbes have a relatively simple genome they would fare better in rapid climate shifts
00:57:28.420there was a paper published in march of last year that looked at the possibilities of
00:57:32.780transplanting soil microbes to different elevations in the dryland ecosystems of
00:57:37.500eastern Washington. And the scientists, quote, resampled the original 1994 soil transplants
00:57:43.480and controls measuring CO2 production, temperature response, enzyme activity, and bacterial community
00:57:50.240structure after 17 years, end quote. And the bottom line is that scientists found less
00:57:55.700adaptability than they expected, signaling that such geoengineering feats such as soil transplants
00:58:01.940will be problematic. So since soil microbes create the conditions that plants and trees need to grow,
00:58:08.400does this present a challenge for land restoration, assisted migration, or other
00:58:12.960last-ditch ways of aiding a landscape? And I know, John, you said that you weren't interested in
00:58:17.360the adaptation question, but if we were just to consider these other thoughts,
00:58:24.000what could you see as a solution? I'd like to address that.
00:58:29.720For me personally, it's an interesting frame of question. So they're looking at soil microbes
00:58:36.980that do a certain thing in one system and moving them up in elevation, anticipating that that
00:58:42.880elevation will have a similar climate to what the microbes are used to, and not looking at
00:58:49.200the entire system, right? They've, you know, what plants are there? What minerals are in the soil?
00:58:55.500What's the history of that system? So I think that really the scientific paradigm today has by and large not yet delivered the type of thinking that's actually going to really solve this problem.
00:59:08.520What I love about very simple soil microbiological health is phrases like feed them and they will come, give them homes and they will thrive.
00:59:20.600So when we talk about compost as being good for the soil, we're talking about the fact that it feeds the microbiological community, the fact that it creates housing or structure for the microbiological community to live in, the fact that it allows more air and more water to be in the soil, making that community even healthier.
00:59:42.200And I think it's that type of thinking where you begin to look at the whole of the system and the synergistic functions within the system that's going to help us get out of this problem.
00:59:53.300I think that individualized solutions that just take something like just temperature into account, but not the entirety of the system, or they want to replicate the system exactly somewhere else, are failing to acknowledge the reality that it's changing now, but that if you provide it with what it needs to be healthy, to thrive and be strong, that it can right itself.
01:00:20.300Now, I'm not saying that we know what that is under all conditions. We definitely don't. But what I am saying and what I think the body of science that comes out of the marine carbon project and other similar projects is showing us is that by managing for carbon, we can begin to manage for the health and therefore the resilience and then the stability of those systems.
01:00:43.680So I, like John, am not interested in solutions that kind of look at a linear progression and not at the synergistic functions within our planetary system.
01:00:55.860I really loved how you answered that, Kala, because I think so much in science is extremely compartmentalized.
01:01:04.460We're taking these very focused approaches. We're missing so many points.
01:01:12.360yeah and it's both more complex and more simple than we might think it is you know i think the
01:01:20.360beauty of the marine carbon project in large part became or was created because you had
01:01:28.080john and peggy who are very interested dedicated uh landowners very smart well educated and john
01:01:35.800who's a builder meeting with dr jeffrey creek who's a rangeland ecologist who has worked in
01:01:41.780biodynamic systems who has always been outside and understood how to make the best compost and
01:01:48.100how to increase soil organic matter on organic farms coming together with this biogeochemist
01:01:54.400very high level academic uh scientist and saying and looking at it all together and that it it was
01:02:01.780really their three perspectives and the perspectives of the people around them like
01:02:06.380Nancy Scolari from the Resource Conservation District who's, you know, providing active
01:02:11.160technical assistance to farmers. It was those perspectives coming together and deciding which
01:02:17.180questions to ask that were important for all of those perspectives, that were going to be
01:02:21.460interesting, that were going to be meaningful, that yielded the type of science that they created
01:02:26.680and also yielded the type of strategies that they're now deploying to actually implement
01:02:32.640these solutions. So I really think that it's a combination of these types of thinkers coming
01:02:38.860together and asking these questions that really gets you to a point of something that's both
01:02:44.000real and meaningful from a scientific perspective, but also very actionable from a regular person
01:02:51.020or a policymaker's perspective. And I would suggest that this idea of transplanting
01:02:58.660a form of life into a foreign system, even though it may seem similar to where they came from,
01:03:05.240might be lacking community and functional guilds of things we don't even see or can't even measure.
01:03:13.360So for instance, there are viruses present in healthy soil. There are nematodes. There are
01:03:19.020fungi. There are bacteria. They all actually interact with each other. And they probably do
01:03:26.280it in pulses and in waves in response to environmental conditions that change day by
01:03:32.680day, hour by hour, minute by minute. And so for us, the exciting thing is to just simply
01:03:39.160manage for the environmental conditions that we think will favor a variety of life forms to
01:03:47.780express themselves. And what we witnessed was that a lot of good things happened, a cascade
01:03:54.340of good things happened that resulted in increased forage production, increased water holding
01:03:59.160capacity, increased diversity of organisms present in the system. And so managing the
01:04:07.660environmental conditions for good things to happen is our strategy. And looking at carbon
01:04:13.640as the lever that begins that process is what we've chosen to do. And now we're exploring how
01:04:21.640that works across the entire state of California on 15 sites where we're controlling for the same
01:04:27.140compost and seeing how all of these different soil systems respond to that compost. And this
01:04:33.620time we are actually looking at the microbial communities and the nematode populations at
01:04:38.720depths down to a meter deep across the entire state of California in all of the major bioclimactic
01:04:44.020zones and major land resource areas. So our new insight that will come as a result of this project
01:04:50.500that was started last fall will be a deeper understanding of who's present in these systems
01:04:56.640during the phenomenon that we would consider to be healthy soils. And so when is a system
01:05:03.640healthy soil? What's the threshold and who's present and what are they doing during that
01:05:09.820moment when a system goes from depleted to healthy? And once we understand what that is,
01:05:16.140then we can experiment with what other things can we do to promote good health.
01:05:21.660And what is good health and what can we do to promote good health
01:05:24.220across the soil systems of California to start with?
01:05:35.180And I am so grateful for your dedication in looking so deeply and lovingly
01:05:42.660into these systems and finding these solutions and i would just like to allow either of you to
01:05:50.420have any closing remarks you'd like to make and perhaps as well where we can find you where we
01:05:56.800can learn more about the marine carbon project and support both of your work i'll take that first
01:06:02.680yeah sure i i appreciate you so much for uh interviewing us today and having us on your
01:06:09.380podcast. It was really a pleasure to speak with you. And I always enjoy learning from John. I
01:06:16.840usually hear something new that I haven't heard before. So I guess I'd like to close with two
01:06:22.520things in mind. One is that we're really asking the question about how nature would do it and
01:06:29.520what nature needs. And that doesn't mean creating hard technology in the form of nature. We're not
01:06:38.220talking about, you know, building plants that are going to sequester carbon. We're talking about
01:06:44.740supporting a technology that nature already has, which is photosynthesis to increase carbon
01:06:52.020sequestration. So we're not talking about making technology that mimics nature. We're talking about
01:06:57.700supporting nature's own inherent technologies for healing and self-balancing and life.
01:07:04.560And I think that's really important to understand here. And then secondly, I just want to acknowledge the fact that there are many traditional cultures across the world that have in their histories practiced some form of understanding of what it means to be in balance, to be reciprocal, to give back at the end of life, to create the beginning of life.
01:07:28.460And so we're not claiming discovery of that in any way, but what we are saying is that with the current scientific paradigm that leads us in our culture today, we have discovered and can point to research that shows that it's possible to stabilize the climate through soil carbon sequestration if we are an active and positive participant in that system.