Regenerating Our Way To Gigaton Scale Impact
How can we better understand how nature works in order to change the way we make decisions that affect the environment? This was the topic explored by Peet Denny and Troy Carter of Earthshot Labs in the Cool Hominids podcast.
Earthshot Labs are currently building a global open-source ecological simulator. Troy Carter and his team have a very interesting way of thinking about what causes the climate crisis, and thus how to solve this. He acknowledges that most of the current focus is on decarbonising the environment, whether this is by electric cars or using alternative energy sources; and whilst this is important, there is already huge financial backing for all of these solutions.
Instead, the conversation between Peet and Troy looks at alternative solutions, focusing on ecological collapse, caused by biodiversity, deforestation, soil health, and ocean health. Therefore Earthshot Labs is taking on the role of providing the technology to motivate the world to scale up nature restoration to a level that hasn’t been done before. This is interesting to us, as we’ve spoken before about soil health, but this is taking a step back and taking a holistic approach to the issue.
By taking an integrated approach to looking at the environment, Troy explores how the human network can encourage and support change, whilst also asking ourselves important questions about the impact of the shifts we make on the global community. To do this, Troy has created LandOS, which is an operating system for land globally, which works in conjunction with their app Biome and is built specifically for landowner’s use, where their land is degraded in some way. This is remarkably common, as most land no longer reaches financial and ecological potential, affecting not only the people who rely on it for their livelihood but also those who rely on it for the food it provides. As a company, they can use this data to educate and pay individuals who own degraded land to do active reforestation.
Earthshot Labs have the ambitious idea of creating a gigaton scale impact through their work. This sounds ambitious, but after listening to Troy explain that our world is evolutionarily adapted to change, the goal becomes more achievable.
For example, carbon emissions are decreased regularly by letting trees use carbon dioxide and sunlight to create energy. Similarly to Antony Yousefian from Bx Earth in the first episode of the Cool Hominids podcast, Troy advocates for a ‘let land do its thing’ approach, aiming for equilibrium.
To reach the extreme gigaton goal requires several different ideas.
- Firstly, millions of hectares of land which have been deforested return to their native state, not forgetting ongoing regenerative practices to ensure livelihoods for indigenous / local people. This is part of the holistic approach of understanding how decisions and behavioural shifts in one part of the world affect communities in other parts of the world.
- Equally, restoring arid landscapes like Australia, Southern Europe and the Western US. This includes building landscape interventions with the use of very low technology, e.g. dams and ejection wells to restore groundwater that sustains life.
- Finally, avoiding deforestation in both tropical and temperate forests. Interestingly, Troy acknowledges that the lumbar forests which are in sustainable rotations are a trade-off, as humans still need lumbar for shelters etc. He emphasises that Earthshot Labs are not recommending descaling human activity, due to it not being realistic, but instead focusing on not destroying even more.
If you want to find out more or even contribute to this cause check out their website where they currently are advertising for multiple occupancies.
