Put Carbon to Work

Carbon is the building block of life, not a waste product!

If carbon is the building block of life, then why are we trying to “lock it up in the ground”?

This narrative needs to change. We as living organisms seek life. Humans have an intrinsic desire to participate in biodiverse places; and it serves us well. As we have spread across the planet, we keep looking over the next ridge for our next garden of eden. This is natural. We need a diversity of plants and animals in a healthy ecosystem to thrive. This provides us with our basic needs. In most cases we have been eating ourselves out of house and home while we move. Now that we cover the entire planet, there isn’t another ridge to cross over.

Throughout the process of consumption we have created deserts, degraded water cycles, and emitted huge volumes of carbon into our atmosphere. This is amazing! One species can spread across the entire planet and completely change it in 2-3 hundred thousand years. It is just amazing! With about 8 billion people on earth we are seeing that we need to use our oversized brains and hands to increase the carrying capacity. Some of our consumption is a little overzealous; and for those of us that want our future generations to thrive on earth, we are pretty motivated to figure a few things out.

Atmospheric carbon is just one of many indicators of our overconsumption, but it gets a lot of press. Atmospheric carbon is fairly easy to measure and quantify its effects as a greenhouse gas. This has a lot of people thinking we need to get rid of it. This is misguided. If carbon is the “building block of life”, and we are trying rebuild life on our planet; then carbon is what we want.

Even in my tree hugger circles most people regurgitate the thought that carbon should be locked away in the soil. This is leading to some pretty brilliant ideas to solve the wrong problem. Yes machines built to capture carbon and jam it back in the ground are amazing feats of engineering; but carbon is the building block of life, not some plastic candy wrapper.

Is my math adding up? We want to restore life on earth + We have all of these “building blocks of life” floating around ready to work = Put the carbon to work. Carbon is not a waste product, it is the “building block of life”! Let’s put this shit to work!

I have witnessed both positive and toxic cultural shifts just by the reframing of a few words. When we put blame on something, and refer to it as a waste product; we are becoming toxic. If we look at our situation as an opportunity, (not just a financial opportunity you greedy bastard) it will completely change how we go about our next move. It is an extremely simple paradigm shift that will have huge cascading effects.

Let’s put this carbon to work building more life!

Lunch Break

Leadership comes in many forms.

Lunch break on your first day of work. You’re nervous, no one looks familiar; yet you feel welcomed. The morning was hard but you are already getting the hang of it. The “boss” works alongside offering support, and reminding you that it is more important to be patient, and safe than to be the first or fastest.

You didn’t bring lunch. You never bring lunch. In your family there has never been enough to go around. That is why you are at work. That is why you are in a foreign country thousands of miles from home. You are a teenager now, you need to help provide.

Someone slides a cooler out of a truck and hands you a sandwich with a smile. You don’t know how to speak their language and they don’t know how to speak yours, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Your smile sparks a head nod that says “you’re welcome”.

You have been working in this forest for a month. Part of a team. You work hard alongside your teammates. They depend on you, and you depend on them. You are learning to recognize the plants and animals. It hasn’t been long but you are seeing a change. Some of the areas from your first week look different. Is a change happening, or do you just feel a sense of sentimentality because that is where you started? A connection is being forged.

You are homesick. This place is very different than home. The people, this country; don’t make sense. The forest makes sense. Your work makes sense.

It’s lunch time. You love lunch. It’s a time to relax and reflect. You feel good sitting with your team under the shade of a big tree. There is a new person on the team. They aren’t from here, but you don’t know where they are from. You don’t know what to say, so you hand them a sandwich. They smile, you nod.