Windward Action with Dr. Rob Moir, President & Executive Director of the Ocean River Institute
Dr. Rob Moir is a nationally recognized and award-winning environmentalist and president and executive director of the nonprofit Ocean River Institute. He continues his several decades of tireless efforts to make the planet bluer and greener. Rob and Ocean River Institute has assisted environmental groups on a local, national and global scale including Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, the Coastal Bird Program of Cape Cod, Sunshine Wildlife (Florida), the Campaign for Environmental Literacy, the British Virgin Islands Environmental Council, and Sea Change, Friends of the Wester Ross Marine Protected Area (Scotland).
▶ Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3zDOjEs
▶ Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3BM3MUY
▶ Anchor: https://bit.ly/3kZZcfA
Episode 157 with Dr. Rob Moir
Excerpts from a conversation on the Bigger Than Us podcast.
About Ocean River Institute
The Ocean River Institute was created to help people make a difference in cleaning up the environment, especially clean water and wildlife. And so we’re looking for opportunities where there are bills or their efforts to make a difference. And we bring people together and we try to push in that direction. And we have our setbacks. But overall, we’ve been moving windward to clean up the environment.
One way is that I’m in communication with decision-makers. For example, in Washington, now, they want to do an ocean-based climate solutions bill. And so I learned the details of the bill. And then I explain that to people.
I started in Massachusetts. My son and I were sailing in a small boat, and we got halfway to Nantucket and the wind died. I had a paddle. And when you put your hand in the water five miles out — the water got to my elbow — I couldn’t see my fingertips for all the blooming algae in there. The green-brown algae stuff. So I’ve made it my mission to try to be able to see my fingertips when they’re up to my elbow in the water. And so one of the sources is fertilizer. The other is septic and sewage. And the third is agriculture. So they’re working on the other two. So I made it my business to look at the fertilizer.
I was contracted by a bunch of organizations to gather people in that residence of Massachusetts to support an ocean planning bill. And so these three organizations — Conservation Law Foundation, Mass Audubon, and the Ocean Conservancy — worked with the politicians who were writing the law, and I was to get everyone to support the bill. So that’s when we started, you know, with a petition. Sign the petition and start commenting. So I was the first one to get people to write about it. And I also set up evening gatherings with different community groups to talk about the bill and also support their work. And eventually, I rented the statehouse. That was the clincher when they said, “Yeah, rent the statehouse and bill us for it.” And I said, “Okay, I’ll be my own nonprofit. And we can do that.”
The Vision: Subsidiarity
Subsidiarity is an old term that developed at the same time as federalism. And basically, federalism was top-down management or governance. And subsidiarity was to respect the smallest unit, and then help them as they need it.
That was another reason for starting the Ocean River Institute: these small organizations are living hand to mouth. And suddenly they have a budget snafu or the equipment breaks. We can step in and help them through that period and then step away because they have the capacity to continue on without us.
Oddly enough, the first group that needed that help was the big Mass Audubon because they had a shorebird program. The shorebird person became the shorebird person for the state of California. And she left in January, and they decided they’d bring in their new employee in June to write the grant reports. But meanwhile, the birds had to be managed for the breeding seasons. Ocean Rivers got to step in and help coordinate the volunteers and keep that program.
Bidding Against the Wind
Two motivations. One is the love of sailing. It’s fun bidding against the wind. Each one is an interesting challenge and how you find solutions where it’s easy for people to do. So the lawncare natural lawns for healthy soils campaign. Here’s the situation, whereby not spending money on lawn care, you’re doing good. And the other part that keeps you really going is the relationships, starting with the relationships of being able to have student interns. I meant to have them say where they went to school. Susanna Buckley is at Connecticut College, Jackie Norris is at Bridgewater State University, and Adibah is up at UMass and Lowell. And so both UMass Lowell and Bridgewater State have university teams that work on vital action teams. And so it’s really fun to get in some of that energy. And then on the flip side, all the decision-makers I’m working with, I have relationships with. So when I go to talk to senators and congressmen in Washington, I’ll meet with the environmental legislative aide. And as a former science teacher, that’s like a parent-teacher conference where I’m learning the legislative style of the legislator.
Verdict on Lawns? Hold the Fertilizer
If you don’t put the fertilizer on, instead, the grassroots go down into the soil and develop symbiotic relationships with the fungi and the bacteria so that the bacteria fix the nitrogen and send it along its way through the mycorrhizal roots to feed the grass.
A lawn that’s not fertilized can build an inch of soil in a year by pushing out of the root tips liquid carbon, in the form of carbohydrates. And to do that, to put out a ton of carbohydrates through photosynthesis, the grass plants are pulling four tons of carbon dioxide out of the air. So if we could just turn our lawns into natural lawns, we would dramatically increase the drawdown of CO2 out of the atmosphere and also build more soil, which then holds more water. So four inches of healthy soil will hold seven inches of rainwater. And so this is protecting our homes from extreme weather events.
But people are told that lawns are bad. They blame the grass for polluting, and for needing lots of water, when it’s actually the fertilizer we spread that causes the thirstiness and is the pollution. So it’s not the lawn’s fault, but it’s a huge sea change for people’s way of thinking. A lot of environmental groups say, “Pull up your lawns and put in, you know, plants and gardens and stuff.” However, lawns take the trampling on and when you step on the grass, it signals through the mycorrhizal root system that it needs more nutrients and other elements. And it increases photosynthesis when it’s been disturbed or when it’s fighting something off. So by walking on the grass, you’re helping to clean up the air.
In Massachusetts, we have over 2000 square miles of lawns, a residential lawn. So if we could turn those into drawing carbon dioxide out of the air, and increasing our water retention, and restoring local water cycles, that would be enormous. And then, if other areas could follow suit and treat their lawns more naturally.
How to Deliver Maximum Impact
You don’t ask your decision-maker, “Do you believe in climate change?” You’d say, “I am upset with climate change because the crocuses are coming up early. Can you do something about them?” And that way, the politician will indicate they understand the problem. So that’s one example. Whether or not they move is another thing.
The people writing comments are so effective because the decision-maker knows that comment Person A has thought about it, and has friends, family, religious groups, those are the tip of an iceberg for different people. And our politicians never hear from their constituents except for the top three issues. And they are so thrilled to get feedback to hear ways to serve.
We set up a competition, where we ask people to comment on the bill. And this is important, is that 90% will just sign it, and that doesn’t mean much. But when people take the time to understand the issue, and ask the decision-maker to do something that he’s thinking of doing anyway, and giving him more reasons for it, that personal relationship helps us to get bills passed.
The less comprehensive the bill is, the more precise, the more likely you can pass.
We did this in Florida. And there, the fertilizer is made up of nitrogen and phosphorus. And rather than saying to just use nitrogen and don’t use phosphorus — because you don’t need the phosphorus. In Florida, there’s so much phosphorus in the ground that they’re mining it to put into the fertilizer.
So rather than have a list of items to do, which is making the perfect the enemy of the good, I guess we just said three things: don’t spread in the summertime, use some slow-release fertilizer, and respect the setbacks from the waterways. And so the decision-maker, the county commissioner came back and said, “Okay, we expect the setbacks, we’ll use at least 50% slow release. And we won’t fertilize from June first to September 30.” So that’s four months. I wouldn’t have known to ask for that.
The Full Transcript
Before we go, I’m excited to share that we’ve launched the Bigger Than Us comic strip, The Adventures of Mira and Nexi.
If you like our show, please give us a rating and review on iTunes. And you can show your support by sharing our show with a friend or reach out to us on social media where you can find us at our Nexus PMG handle.
If there’s a subject or topic you’d like to hear about, send Raj Daniels an email at BTU@NexusPMG.com or contact me via our website, NexusPMG.com. While you’re there, you can sign up for our monthly newsletter where we share what we’re reading and thinking about in the cleantech green tech sectors
