Our Approach to Climate Impact: Focus on Causes, not Symptoms
At Spirals, we’re building regenerative financial infrastructure to support the emergence of an ecological economy. To do so involves weaving together cutting edge blockchain technology with high quality, on-the-ground climate impact projects. But what do we mean by climate impact? What does meaningful climate action look like?
Increasing climate volatility is putting our global life support systems to the test, and it’s clear that these systems are fragile and failing. That’s why at Spirals we believe that maximizing impact means shifting our focus from the symptoms of a changing climate to the causes of these system failures, and supporting innovative projects that are furthering resiliency and positive feedback loops.
Shifting Focus From Symptoms to Causes
Climate action can broadly be broken down into two categories: symptom management and causal change.
Most of what we’re used to identifying and associating with climate change are symptoms — droughts, floods, crop failures, wildfires, habitat loss, extreme temperatures and increased greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. On the other hand, causes are more nuanced, harder to pin-down and more complex to address. Extractive economics, lack of education, loss of connection to the natural world, a poorly built human environment and destructive agricultural practices are all contributing causes to the negative symptoms we associate with climate change.
As we go through this necessary paradigm shift towards systems that are better suited to support human civilization, it will undoubtedly be necessary to address these acute symptoms we are experiencing. But just like with any illness, symptom management without a conscious effort to remedy the root cause(s) of said illness is just a temporary solution.
So what does a more permanent solution look like? Can we ‘solve’ climate change? To seriously answer those questions we need to take a holistic look at observed patterns of our planets climate.
Climate Change Cannot Be ‘Stopped’
Climate Change is commonly thrown around as an all-encompassing term for the negative consequences of natural events happening on our planet. It often comes with misconception that the climate has been stable and predictable up until recent history when humans started pumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. This cannot be farther from the truth. In reality, climate change is the standard on our planet.
There is ample evidence across all academic disciplines that our planet has gone through massive, cataclysmic changes over and over again. Take, for example, the fact that the entire planet fluctuates between glacial and interglacial periods (1). Or Dansgaard–Oeschger events that describe rapid climate fluctuations of temperatures increasing around 8 °C over 40 years (2). Or we can look at Earth’s rapidly weakening magnetic field and the related pole shift (3,4). Looking for hands-on evidence? You can go explore the sunken cities and temples of lost cultures who existed in modern history and are now completely underwater (5)!
All that is to say: climatic stability is an illusion, and if ‘stopping climate change’ is our primary objective then we are completely missing the point. If we look at civilizations of antiquity and learn from the past, it is clear that climate volatility exacerbates systemic weaknesses and brings critical vulnerabilities to the forefront.
So what will it take to secure our future?
We need to create anti-fragile, resilient systems that can effectively buffer climate volatility, while regenerating the damage we have done and preventing further ecological destruction.
Damage Control
As we work towards building systems that are better suited to support humanity on a planet with volatile weather, we need to successfully wean ourselves off of these archaic systems of the old paradigm. There’s a lot of damage control for us to do, addressing the symptoms and stopping further destruction of the environment. After all, what’s the point in removing one ton of CO2 from the atmosphere if elsewhere we are releasing ten, or planting 100,000 trees when elsewhere a forest is being torn down for cattle to graze?
Healthy, in-tact ecosystems act as a natural buffer to climatic shifts. Trees, biodiversity, soil and groundwater all act to negate large weather events, be it drought, flood, heat or cold. A healthy environment is the foundation of resiliency for any system and it’s absolutely critical that we stop destroying these ecosystems. A changing climate might be the norm on this planet, but polluted waterways, loss of topsoil, clearcut forests and depleted fisheries are human-driven and not at all the norm.
As we put out the proverbial (and literal) fires, it’s critical that we’re not continuing to make things worse. This requires a reorientation of our impact measurements from over-simplified, symptom-centric metrics like ‘tons of CO2 sequestered’ and ‘number of trees planted’ to more holistic, causal measures of essential community-oriented life support systems like watershed health, ecosystem biodiversity, and affordable housing opportunities.
Building Resilient Systems
Shifting from symptom management to solving the cause of problems exacerbated by climate change means building new, resilient systems to replace our fragile, extractive legacy systems.
At Spirals we strive to support the creation of resilient, regenerative systems that relate to the fundamental systems of food, water, shelter, power, and human connection. Breaking down the many issues we are facing as a global community to their first principles and taking action at a local level provides a powerful clarity about what matters the most, and how to maximize impact.
By supporting resilient local food systems; communities can eat healthier, remediate their local environment with regenerative agriculture, reduce the reliance on energy-intensive, industrially produced imported foods.
By supporting resilient local water systems; communities can recharge groundwater, bring springs back to life, and build critical buffers in-to place for both drought and flood conditions.
By supporting resilient local shelter; communities can create a built human environment that harmonizes with the local environs, provides passive heating and cooling, uses place-based and up-cycled materials, and reduces stormwater runoff.
By supporting resilient power systems; communities can use distributed micro-grids to reduce power outages, and can shift to clean renewables to ensure that the use of electricity doesn’t require further pollution of the environment.
Finally, by supporting human connection; communities can build resilience into their relationships and strengthen local networks so that when major climate events do occur, nobody has to go at it alone.
Regenerative Economics for Climate Impact
Spirals is committed to working on the causal level to shift our economic systems from extractive and degenerative, to regenerative, while simultaneously supporting high quality climate impact projects that are working on the causal level in their own ways.
Our technology connects the growth of blockchain ecosystems to the growth of support for climate impact and regenerative projects on the ground. We are excited to support projects in the early stages when activation capital is most needed by using forward contracts and other means of pre-purchasing tokenized impact before it occurs.
Ultimately, the goal is to create a value aligned, resilient financial system where incentives support the future we all want to see: one of healthy ecosystems and thriving, resilient communities.
Website: Spirals.so
Twitter: @SpiralsProtocol
