The dominator animal
Over the last decades, we have observed incredible environmental damage through human action, so I have no doubts about our hand in the changes that we observe in our environment.
We have quite obviously grown to be a force on this planet with the ability to tilt its equilibrium, and we have already started to do so quite dramatically. By now, many of us have seen heartbreaking documentaries of our crimes against nature and glimpses of homo sapiens being the worst kind of predator.
Through crisis, insight and ultimately transformation, we now have the opportunity on our hands to create a better world for all its inhabitants, not just human beings.
Picking our battles
I would consider it the ultimate existential tragedy of our time if the dedicated effort of sustainable pioneers and innovators was misplaced.
Whoever is acting on their conscience and from the heart should be empowered to create an impact, not be led astray. That’s why we need to talk about the narrative around climate change and carbon.
There seems to be quite some room for error around a rigid consensus: CO₂ being the right pick for an almost singular focus to address climate change.
It’s a tricky situation for people with a dislike of rigid stances, a difficulty of trusting consensus and suspicion that a simplified narrow focus won’t help in handling the complexity of our age.
Mind and heart
I feel deeply invested not only in an ethical and effective methodology of digital marketing for changemakers, but also with the actual fields of expertise and the bigger picture to the change I want to contribute to.
But I have a confession to make.
While my background is an academic education in the field of Management of Natural Resources, when writing the Carbon Sequence, I wasn't drawing only from rational thinking and research.
I was also drawing from intuition.
»Studying from the outside, many would say, preserves our objectivity. But what kind of objectivity is it when the researcher’s perspective is tainted by so many assumptions and predisgested theories? […]
A scientist can participate from within and yet retain his or her reasoning powers. […]
The intuitive and rational, the inside perspective and science, can easily coexist.«
– Robert Greene in Mastery
Let’s put it like this: When something looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck – unless sometimes, it isn’t.
The duck is science, and my implication is that there is way too much information around to conclusively make sense of, too many contradictory studies, too many scientific studies hopelessly dependend on funding and too much economic interest behind certain fields of research.
Wrong age for pal reviews
With the peer review process being redubbed as pal review by some, there’s room for error and corruption where we seem to be convinced that there’s not.
But the stakes are high and nepotism should not stand in the way of a sincere quest for truth. This is about the survival and potential of our species, about putting our attention right at a pivotal moment of human history.
I will try to connect some dots, weaving natural sciences, psychology, philosophy and personal observations into something that will hopefully live up to the existential edge of 21st century environmentalism.
Will it make sense? You be the judge, but I hope to inch us closer to an understanding of what’s happening around us.
Now, about carbon …
Carbon is not the enemy
If anything, it’s misplaced, ending up in the wrong corners of the system … and it’s only this misplacement that might be creating problems along the way.
Now, carbon is … everywhere. How can it be misplaced?
Soil, water, air and biomass each have their own healthy carbon content, establishing a certain balance with all the other parts. If the balance is off, with certain areas overloaded or depleted of carbon, we run into problems.
Now, through human action in the present age, this seems to have happened. We certainly see the toxic downstream of our impact on the world.
How do we respond? So far, not everyone is on board to rebalance a natural equilibrium and healthy cycles. Instead, some actors just want to get carbon out of the system entirely: Bury it in containers, fly it into space, just get rid of it.
To them, carbon itself is a problem in need of deletion.
Not a new habit
It’s the same pattern of behaviour we run with our own excrements.
Sure, we don’t fly them into space (well, not that I know of), but, you know – flush them away and quickly have the pearl white bowl return to its pristine state.
Over time, while growing ever more affectionate of perfectly straight edges and shiny surfaces, we cultivated a problem with the dirty last part of the cycle. We set things up in a way that it becomes easier for us to ignore the dark matter of our lives that cries out for closure.
The phosphorus and nitrogen and carbon contained should not disappear into a gargling hole in white ceramic, but should instead return to the soil, nourishing soil life and building humus along the ride. This is not a small issue, the health of a whole planetary population depends on it.
It’s one of the – excuse me – pressing problems of our century, slowly culminating into a full blown crisis.
But back to carbon, specifically
Where did carbon come from?
From enclosed containers underground? From outer space? I mean … yeah, in a way it came from space, quite a long time ago. But I am about to get philosophical enough here, let’s not go there.
Those two issues, our excrements and carbon, are connected: The carbon that we attribute climate disruption to once came from a balance between soils and air. Since we seem to have enough carbon in the air right now, it’s definitely the soils of this planet where it needs to go.
Why? Because with a higher soil carbon content, we wouldn’t see adverse effects, but good ones – we would see more resilience, nourishing and abundance.
Because we are carbon based lifeforms, and so are the animals that accompany us. So are the plants that feed and heal us. And so is the soil life that is the very foundation to this more complex life that we so cherish.
On earth, you can't get around it: Everything within and around us runs on a healthy amount of carbon.
A chemical marvel
I will spare you of the nitty-gritty chemistry here, just know this: Carbon is one of the most versatile atomic structures out there.
It’s capable of forming vast amounts of different bonds to itself and other elements, allowing for an array of molecule variations with different properties. Bonds between two carbon atoms are strong enough to be stable, but still weak enough to break and rearrange, making carbon an excellent basic building block of life.
Just by itself, without being paired with another element, carbon can be arranged in different forms: From soft graphite, shaping how we learn in childhood, to diamond, suddenly capable of leading the Mohs scale for mineral hardness and making cutters and grinders significantly more durable.
By manipulating the chemical bonds of carbon, we can design materials like graphene, fullerenes and nanotubes with incredible property combinations of being light, flexible and strong on top of conducting heat and electricity extraordinarily well.
By this outstanding chemical uniqueness, carbon had been capable of creating a foundation for life as complex as us, acting as some kind of chemical lymphatic system for life to thrive on.
Add hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen to carbon and you have the basic toolkit for the vast majority of body tissues, including your DNA.
The One
In movies, computer games and stories we find a recurring theme of The One.
In Matrix, Neo is the one that the whole crew had been waiting for – well, apart from the inevitable traitor. In the Divergent series, Triss is the specimen that the whole experiment was designed to produce. And in Lord Of The Rings, without the tenacity of a little guy with hairy feet, middle earth would have been lost to the dark powers of a giant flaming eye.
Let's put it like this: Chemically speaking, carbon is our real life The One.
Without it, nothing we get fed by, marvel about and build upon would exists. Carbon is an important piece to the puzzle that is our existence, a central building block of ourselves … that we now declare war to.
That doesn’t seem like entirely the right move, does it?
Now, what to do with this?
Is this more philosophical notion of any importance? Trying to make a change, are these thoughts of any value to you?
Probably. They could redirect your focus.
Carbon is not the enemy, it’s a valuable resource that we need to return to its rightful place. We don’t need to get it off our planet – if anything, we need to put in back on our planet. Out of the air, into the ground.
We are in desperate need of healthy soil organic matter, not compacted carbon cookies in underground prisons or outer space vessels. We need to shift our focus toward regenerative agriculture and agroforestry, toward healthy ocean life and healthy forests.
And we need to withdraw our energy from all that is stifling true environmental action – parameters impossible to measure with confidence, corrupted carbon credit markets and pushes for control under the guise of social responsibility.
But I am getting ahead of myself, those are the very topics for the next set of articles in the Carbon Sequence.
Next Steps
Want to read more articles like this? Join our newsletter to make sure you get alerted when the next batch hits the road.
Got feedback on this article and would like to comment? You can do so on my LinkedIn post.
For the very next article of the Carbon Sequence, click here. We will question wether we should focus on CO₂ and global temperatures as criteria for accountable environmental action.
