On Earth Day: A Message from the Future

On Earth Day, A message from our Future By Susan Jennings

The decades before and after the first Earth Day in 1970 were filled with seminal events and publications that set the stage for the environmental movement—and the pushback against it. From Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962, to the founding of the EPA and the Clean Water and Air Acts, there was a growing recognition that humanity could be big enough to negatively impact earth systems—and thus that we had the responsibility for retreat and repair.

This recognition of our essential oneness with the planet was perhaps most globally felt when our 1968 astronauts sent back a picture of Earth as a shining blue marble suspended in space. Later, Lynn Margulis and James Lovelock explored our interconnectivity with their Gaia hypothesis, which posited the Earth as a synergistic, balance-seeking system deeply responsive to the biological and energetic interplay of its inhabitants.

The Limits to Growth, based on the groundbreaking computer system World3, showed how unfettered growth in population, food production, industrialization, pollution, and consumption of nonrenewable natural resources could lead to overshoot and collapse. After its publication and over the past several decades, many economists and believers in the American way of life as non-negotiable have chafed against the notion that we are not able to endlessly grow. In this view, competitive constructs such as the economy vs. the environment or people vs. the planet mandated that we continue on our linear path, and consider the environmental consequences of our actions as externalities that could be ignored.

Now--50 years since that first Earth Day and just a few decades short of when World3 predicted cascading systems collapses--we are seeing the limits of mechanistic thinking. From rising seas and flooded fields to wildfires in California, Australia, the Amazon and the Artic, Earth and its systems are in a paroxysm of change. One million species are in waves of extinction, coral reefs are dying, our oceans are filled with plastic, and plagues of biblical proportions, including locusts in Africa and the coronavirus everywhere, are reminding us of our vulnerability.

Yet we have a path forward.

It’s been blazed by indigenous peoples, and those in the last several decades who have been exploring the possibilities of designing and working in cooperation with nature. From an explosion of research and implementation of renewable energy and battery technologies, to greenscaping and green roofs, to natural building and water systems, new ideas of how to live lightly on the planet have been piloted globally. Simplicity movements and community explorations of an Economics of Happiness are merging with structures like public banks, workers cooperatives, and alternative currencies. On the manufacturing end, closed loop systems and designing with natural principles-- including the practice of biomimicry--are suggesting ways that we can continue to construct the new while enhancing rather than destroying ecosystems. Groundbreaking ideas of zero waste and reuse, including the recent discovery of an enzyme that breaks down plastic bottles, are giving us a sense of how to clean up our past.

Perhaps nowhere have our learnings so multiplied than in our understandings of the substance for which our dear green planet is named. The surprising life within soil that’s been detailed in an endless stream of books and movies, including the recent Fantastic Fungi, gives us an almost magical sense of the possibilities of partnering with the Earth in the repair of all of us. The Secret Life of Trees, and the Secret Life of Plants expand this notion, describing a quantum and energetic world where communication of all kinds—through light, scents, sounds, and electrical impulses—connects us all.

It was the promise of soil that led us to purchase Agraria three short years ago with the help of community members, and to begin its development as a Center for Regenerative Practice. Since then we have been on an exponential learning and action curve-- nurturing our soils, developing educational programs and infrastructure, and partnering with multiple organizations on the restoration of the farm. Just as importantly, we have been visiting and learning from partners across the planet who have been regenerating and rewilding landscapes while also repairing regional food systems and local communities.

Our learnings--together with the long-time interests of Community Solutions in local economics, appropriate technologies, energy-efficient buildings, distributed energy systems and Quaker simplicity—suggest tantalizing possibilities for a post-coronavirus future.

They cause us to ask: Is the coronavirus a black swan, or a message sent back from our future giving us an opportunity to choose again? Our suddenly-blue skies and clear waters, wandering wildlife, and the audible to seismologists hum of the earth suggest that we might yet pull back from the brink.

Now, during this collective pause, we have the opportunity to explore what comes next. Can we re-localize our food systems, plant flowers to attract pollinators, vote for a Green New Deal, and join in the call for a planetary ceasefire? Can we create an updated version of the CCC and teach our young people how to plant trees and replace lawns with food forests? Can we collectively vision what Charles Eisenstein called The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible?

If not in our communities, where? And if not now, when?

A version of this essay appears in this week’s Yellow Springs News