Presentation at the 2019 Massachusetts Green Careers Conference

1. Sustainability is a Myth
without Transformative Change:
Be this change in Career and Jobs
Biodiversity for a
Livable Climate
www.bio4climate.org

2. The Existential Threat

6. EARTH’s SITUATION IN 2019 IS CRITICAL
• Atmospheric CO2 415 ppm as of May 11, 2019
• Rising temperatures (the six warmest years on record
have all occurred since 2010)
• Rising sea levels (already about a foot; several more feet
possible by end of century)
• Weather extremes, severe storms on the rise
• Major extinction in progress (one million species at risk)
• Soil erosion > 75 billion tons annually
• Land desiccation and fires (water tables dropping)
• 400 Dead Zones (anoxic regions) in the ocean
• Coral reefs bleaching and dying around the world
• Arctic Ocean free of summer ice for the first time in
recorded history!

7. Now we are in a runaway
warming.

8. This warming is a symptom of an
underlying “disease”:
Planet-wide losses of biodiversity
and ecosystem integrity/health.

9. The treatment, the cure?
Get really serious about
emissions reductions.
Ramp up protection and
restoration of nature.

10. The Biodiversity
Solution

11. Two landmark reports underscoring biology’s
protagonist role in climate and other global goals
Released in May, 2019
Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity
and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)
➢ Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history.
➢ The health of ecosystems on which all species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever.
➢ Through transformative change, at every level from local to global, nature can still be conserved,
restored and used sustainably.
Global Deal for Nature (GDN)
➢ Science-driven plan to save the diversity and abundance of life on Earth.

12. The power of biology explained
To have a chance at maintaining a livable climate,
we must protect the nature that remains:
1. Halt destruction of the forests that represent the
largest land-based carbon stores on the planet.
2. Protect at least Half Earth, including half or
more of our communities, regions, states,
countries.
3. Practice minimum disturbance development.

13. The power of biology explained
We also have to restore degraded or lost nature
everywhere we can:
1. Restore ecosystems that are primary carbon
sinks (5 types)
2. Restore small water cycles

15. The power of biology explained
For any ecosystem, including
grasslands…
Restoration =
healthy carbon, water, nutrient, and
energy cycles

16. Pick your habitat to re-establish and make
healthy again, and there will be –
• soil biology
• water cycle
• Keystone species/predator-prey relationships
• photosynthetic processes
that need to be restored.

17. The key ingredient in the “recipe” for
restoring high carbon sink habitats, with
their attendant photosynthesis, is water.
Water, or more precisely, the water cycle,
figures prominently in reversal of climate
change.

20. Causes of the loss of
small water cycles
• destruction of native landscapes -- on house lots and other
development sites, including trees and native plants with invaluable
evapotranspiration function;
• excavation of native soils -- for sale to nurseries, etc. and
replacement with biologically impoverished, invasive-seed infested,
non-native soils that can’t absorb water (the water just runs off to
streams and rivers rather than recharge soils and groundwater);
• sewering of densely developed lands -- which returns water to the
environment great distances from the source;
• chemical fertilizer and pesticide application -- that destroys soil
biology, notably the Mycorrhizal fungi network that has a 10-fold or
higher water absorption rate over soils without healthy microfungi;
• historic loss of beavers as keystone species -- now returning in
abundance to MA, helping us to weather drought;
• loss of wetlands in terms of acreage and/or function.

21. NEW WATER PARADIGM MANAGEMENT

24. If we rehydrate the continents,
we can restore
the climate!
Carbon
follows the
water…

25. In present time, a well hydrated and vegetated earth
can cool the climate and regrow ice in the Arctic,
setting us back on course for a livable climate.

26. We humans evolved in an ice age; now we
are in a desiccation age. Without
biodiversity – in the soils and throughout the
Biosphere -- the land can’t hold water.
Without water retention on the landscape,
we can’t sustain healthy photosynthesizing
vegetation and the attendant carbon
drawdown, evapotranspiration, and nutrient
cycling that sustain us.

27. Carbon follows the
Water that follows
the Biodiversity.

29. Without
biodiversity we
can’t restore our
climate.

33. Photo collage slide of larger
restorations

34. Which shall we choose?
Scenario 500: “Business as usual” will take us to
CO2 levels exceeding 500 ppm by the return of
Haley’s Comet in 2061.
Scenario 300: “Nature’s potential realized”
through protection of intact ecosystems,
restoration of lost/damaged ecosystems, and
recovery of small water cycles.

35. Transformative Change
(You participate in the context of the
career/jobs you choose)
• Commit to greater vigilance in reducing CO2 emissions, developing
renewable energies, and improving energy efficiency.
• Commit to protecting and restoring nature everywhere possible.
– Restore the five high carbon sink habitats/ecosystems
– Restore small water cycles
– Minimum disturbance development
– Net carbon sink status
• Act to realize a rapid shift in ethics, to a “nature first” morality.
– Frontload biodiversity and ecosystem considerations in all decision making

37. Contact
Sharon McGregor
sharon.mcgregor@bio4climate.org
info@bio4climate.org
www.bio4climate.org
Visit us on Facebook,
www.facebook.com/bio4climate/