Ted Geltz has learned a hard lesson about land in Florida. It’s only good for two things: citrus and real estate.
“If you can’t make it in citrus, then you sell it for houses,” Geltz, the business development director for Locus Agricultural Solutions, told NationSwell.
Geltz, who has been in the citrus industry for more than four decades, has watched as acres of orange trees become apartment complexes, storefronts and suburban mansions. Florida’s citrus production has declined 70% since 2005 due largely to an incurable citrus disease, but Florida’s land value has remained strong. It’s a circumstance that’s pushed thousands of citrus growers to sell their land.
For the few growers that remain, Geltz knows that their value isn’t just the land itself— it’s the soil.
Without the right soil, a citrus tree won’t have the nutrients it needs to stay healthy and produce juicy fruit. But healthy trees do more than just grow delicious food. They absorb carbon from the atmosphere and that carbon eventually cycles back into the soil, creating a carbon sink.
The planet’s soil has already stored an estimated 2,500 gigatons of carbon — four times more than the amount stored in all plants and animals and three times the amount currently in the atmosphere. By cultivating healthy soil, researchers believe there’s potential to store much more.
It isn’t just dirt that stores carbon — it’s the millions of microbes living in the soil. “In a handful of soil, you’ll find tens of thousands of different types of bacteria, fungi, archaea, viruses and a whole soil food web,” Matthew Wallenstein, a professor of soil microbial ecology at Colorado State University, told NationSwell.
When plants photosynthesize, they take in carbon. That carbon is used to help grow every part of a plant, from its roots to its stems and leaves. Excess carbon is released as carbon-rich compounds through the root system, and when a plant dies, the microbes take in additional carbon from the dead plant material.
However, a long history of poor land management has created microbe-lacking soils and erosion. Many farm practices disrupt topsoil, where wind and water can sweep it away and release stored carbon. Since humans first began farming, there has been an estimated 133 gigatons of carbon released from the soil.
“The fact that we’ve lost a lot of carbon suggests that there’s a really big capacity to restore those soils,” Wallenstein said.
One way to mitigate climate change is to stop soil erosion and focus on restoration. Around the world, people are approaching ways to sequester carbon in soil from all angles.
A common strategy being used to restore soil and stop its erosion is regenerative agriculture. Practices like rotating which crops are grown, using compost or cover crops help rebuild the soil’s biodiversity and allow it to store larger amounts of carbon.
“There’s no silver bullet. It’s going to take a lot of different approaches, but soils offer one of the most scalable, practical, economical solutions today,” Wallenstein said.
The startup Locus Agricultural Solutions believes it has one solution to help mitigate climate change and increase farmers’ yields. Locus Agricultural Solutions developed a combination of bacteria and fungi called Rhizolizer. When added to crops, it targets roots and root growth. This allows the plant to take in more nutrients, grow stronger and produce higher yields.
“If the roots are healthy, the plant is healthy,” Karthik Karathur, the president of Locus Agricultural Solutions, told NationSwell. “It’s just like our gut, if we have a healthy gut, you predominantly are going to be healthy.”
The bacteria and fungi in Rhizolizer are traditionally found in soil. “It’s just that with industrial farming and the fact that we have done so much to the soil, the soils are not that healthy anymore,” Karathur said. While regenerative farming practices can help restore the soil, Rhizolizer accelerates this process, he said.
Locus Agricultural Solutions isn’t the first company to develop microbial additives, but it is the first to ferment the product in highly concentrated small batches and ship it in a refrigerated system.
That approach has led to hopeful results. An acre with Rhizolizer sequesters 8.6 more tons of carbon each year than an acre without. With 40,000 acres across the U.S. using the technology, it’s the equivalent of taking 47,000 cars off the road.
But the startup’s initial goal wasn’t to combat climate change. It was to help citrus growers in Florida.
In Florida, the citrus belt has long been known as the country’s provider of the tangy fruits. The Valencia oranges used for juice, the navels found in school lunches and the grapefruits for breakfast all likely originated in Central Florida.
In the 1970s, often referred to as the heyday of citrus, 941,000 acres of Florida were dedicated to producing 200 million boxes of fruit. Florida had well earned its title as a worldwide leader in citrus.
Then disaster hit. There were the freezes in 1983, 1985 and 1989, which damage the cold-intolerant trees. Citrus canker, a bacterial disease, infected the groves, and citrus blight followed soon after. Hurricanes struck.
But perhaps the worst challenge has been citrus greening.
In 2005, Florida saw its first symptoms of citrus greening, also known as huanglongbing or HLB. The disease attacks the tree’s vascular tissue, impairing its ability to take in nutrients. The trees weaken, growth slows and the fruits that develop never ripen. Today, citrus greening is present across the entire state — leading to a 21% decrease in the fresh fruit market and a 72% decrease in the production of fruits used for juicing.
“In a period of about five years, it just devastated the industry,” said Geltz. “And a lot of people just threw their hands up and said I’m done.”
The growers that didn’t leave have tried everything to cure greening.
Chris Troesch, a grower at Simpson Fruit Company, first tried targeting the psyllids, the insects infecting the citrus trees. But that didn’t work.
Then helicopters sprayed insecticide at night. No luck.
Troesch applied other microbial additives to the trees, which ended up being “snake oil.” Microbial products have a historically bad reputation because they’re often transported thousands of miles. By the time they reach the farmer, they’re no longer fresh and no longer have the positive results.
At one point, he was spending $2,500 to $3,000 per acre to keep the trees alive and productive, while the industry standard was closer to $850. It wasn’t a sustainable business model.
“Our standard as Florida, we’re supposed to be number one on taste, and we lost it all,” he told NationSwell.
Geltz convinced Troesch to give Rhizolizer a shot. He added it to his irrigation system and it helped. Troesch has used the product for two years and production is up 25%.
Rhizolizer isn’t curing the trees of citrus greening, but it does have a positive effect. “It’s not that we’re eliminating the disease,” Teresa DeJohn, the director of marketing for Locus Agricultural Solutions, told NationSwell. “It’s that we’re able to keep the roots healthy and improve root growth, which is very rare with that disease.”
The result? Higher yields and hope that citrus still has a future in Florida.
Kris Sutton, a farmer at Faryna Grove Care and Harvesting, faced a similar reality two years ago.
Born and raised in Florida, he started working at Faryna in 2005. Between 2008 and 2009, citrus greening hit his 850 acres.
The trees shrunk in size, and the little fruit that the tree produced wasn’t edible.
He, too, tried countless solutions with no success. Geltz persuaded him to try Rhizolizer instead, and it worked.
“The last two years have been the first time I’ve seen the production go up,” the 41-year-old said.
Sitting behind the once unproductive grove in Umatilla, Florida, is a trailer park. Sutton thinks about what the grove could’ve been if Rhizolizer hadn’t helped. “It’d be motor homes.”
With healthier and more productive trees, Sutton said he doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon. He hopes the land stays in the family, and with a tractor-loving 6-year-old, there’s a good chance it will.
Fifteen percent of Florida’s remaining citrus acreage is using Rhizolizer. The citrus community is tight-knit and word travels fast, which has helped focus Agricultural Solutions.
Tim Whitaker, a grower at May Brothers Citrus, watched neighboring groves grow and strengthen. “Well, what are they doing? What’s making the difference?” he asked.
It was Rhizolizer. Over lunch, Whitaker pulls out his phone to show pictures of a healthy, productive tree completely covered with healthy Hamlin oranges.
“The tree can’t hold much more fruit than that,” he said. “But just a few years ago, you could count the number of fruit on a tree with two hands.”
Outside of Florida, Locus Agricultural Solutions is working with farmers who grow everything from cantaloupes, to potatoes, to apples and strawberries.
Depending on the location and crop, farmers have seen a yield increase between 5% and 45%, said Karathur.
Since Rhizolizer is fermented in small batches, the goal is to have a microbrewery in every farming community.
Those breweries, Karathur believes, will support rural communities, restore land and build a future for the planet.
“Human beings, plants, everything is dependent upon the soil, healthy soil,” he said. “The soil needs to go back to being the carbon sink that it always was, and that it’s made to be.”
More: The Key to Healthy Cities and Hearts Might Come From the Ground
Tag: Climate Change
Government Alone Won’t Save the Redwoods — It’s Taking a Village to Raise This Forest
The redwood trees on the Northern California coast are the tallest trees in the world and some of the oldest to still be standing — aged anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand years old. But not that long ago, the redwoods were nearly decimated. Before 1850, there were 2.2 million acres of redwood old-growth forests. Today, only 5% of the original old-growth remains, due mainly to heavy logging in the area. And redwoods are essential in combating climate change in America — an acre of redwood trees absorbs enough carbon dioxide as the equivalent of driving a car 8 million miles.
Enter Save The Redwoods League, a nonprofit that has been working since 1915 to protect and restore redwood forests and connect people with the trees’ peace and beauty. By teaming with the National Park Service and California State Parks, Redwoods Rising was born to help restore the scars left by years of logging and accelerate the pace of redwood forest recovery within the parks. The end goal: to protect the area’s remaining old-growth groves and usher in a healthy, new generation of redwoods.
Still, as more threats persist, like wildfires raging longer and wider throughout California, there has never been a more pressing time to act. With Redwoods Rising, the future of the redwoods seems bright, and the trees’ lasting impact on visitors will continue to inspire future generations to preserve the redwoods.
More: Adobe Houses Are Made of Mud and Straw — and Some Now Cost $1 Million Because of Rising Taxes
Joaquin Phoenix Isn’t Joking: It’s Time to Take Climate Change Seriously
Rainn Wilson wants you to cut back on meat consumption.
Susan Sarandon is using reusable bags, straws and cups, and she’s hoping you will, too.
Michael Greyeyes is urging you to compost and donate your old clothing.
And they’re not the only celebrities encouraging you to combat our climate crisis.
A new campaign, “The World Is in Our Hands,” captures celebrities in black and white photographs holding a pristine globe in their hands. Each photo is paired with action items anyone can add to their daily life. Whether it’s traveling sustainably, using less energy or demanding action from leaders, the featured celebrities are advocating for everyone to take matters into their own hands.
“We chose people from all walks of life, from all different ages and different ethnicities,” Justin Wu, the photographer behind the campaign, told NationSwell. “I think if they can all come together for one unified message … that is amazing.”
Launched on September 18, the campaign is a partnership between Wu, the UN Environment Programme, social impact company The Krim Group and Accor, a hospitality company.
The campaign builds upon the UN’s ActNow initiative, a global call to raise awareness and spur action around climate change.
“With climate change, the world really is in our hands,” Todd Krim, president and CEO of The Krim Group, told NationSwell. “It’s up to those of us that are old enough to actually do something active to save the planet.”
In a pop-up studio at the Toronto International Film Festival, Wu and Krim recruited actors and actresses who are already invested in tackling climate change.
From there, interest in the campaign snowballed, Wu said. Word spread and other celebrities were eager to get involved.
The end result is a series of photographs featuring Antonio Banderas, Joaquin Phoenix, Rosario Dawson, Neve Campbell and Alfre Woodard, to name a few.
Krim and Wu both have a history of working with celebrities and know the influence they can have on the general population.
“There’s a connection they’ve already made with the audience because they’ve already made audiences cry, they’ve made audiences laugh, and intrinsically, the audience already feels that much closer to the celebrity and so that kind of bond really resonated,” Wu said.
But Krim stressed that this is just the beginning.
Krim and Wu plan to continue the photo series through the fall and into 2020. This week, at UNEP’s Champions of the Earth gala, they’ll be taking photographs of individuals from grassroots and corporates sectors.
“We don’t just view this as a ‘campaign’. We’re trying to create a movement here,” Krim said. “We want to inspire action.”
More: ‘Climate Apocalypse Chic’ and 7 Other Ways Art Tackles Climate Change
New Season, Old Threads — This Group Aims to Make September the Month to Buy Less
Innovations in online shopping have made it easier than ever to buy a new dress for your best friend’s wedding or grab a crisp white t-shirt the second your current one starts to fade. With the click of a button, people with means can have new clothes immediately — all without ever stepping foot inside of a brick-and-mortar store. The result makes sense: Because shopping has never been easier, people are shopping more — even if their needs remain the same.
But Oxfam, an international group working to end poverty, wants you and your fellow consumers to (deep breath!) curb your shopping habit for the month of September. The group launched Second-Hand September, an initiative that encourages people to not buy any brand new products for 30 days.
Your bank account won’t be the only thing thanking you — the planet will, too. Especially if you tend to partake in fast fashion.
Believe it or not, the fashion industry is one of the leading contributors to the growing climate crisis. As a polluter, it’s the second most egregious next to oil, Forbes reported. The industry emits 1.2 billion tons of greenhouse gas annually, creates nearly 20% of the world’s wastewater and America alone sends over 10 million tons of textiles to landfills each year. That’s in large part due to fast fashion, the trend of making clothes cheaply and readily available as the market changes. The trend isn’t only bad for the environment — it is bad for labor, too. Perhaps because of fast fashion’s emphasis on speed at a bargain, labor conditions for workers often aren’t safe. On top of that, many factory workers are working long hours and at unlivable wages.
And it’s a trend that’s growing. According to The University of Queensland, the world consumes 80 billion new clothing pieces ever year, which has skyrocketed 400% in the last 20 years.
“The damage of fast fashion is far-reaching – from extensive use of water in production to poor pay and conditions for workers,” Fee Gilfeather, head of audience and strategic planning at Oxfam, told Retail Gazette.
So skip the brand-new, low-quality clothing and opt-in for thrift store looks. Vintage and thrift stores are home to affordable, quality clothing. Plus, it’s a great way to support local businesses.
If you don’t have access to thrift stores, try shopping resale online at stores like Etsy, eBay or Poshmark. There are also organizations out there ready to change the industry. If you have a toddler or baby, UpChoose is a place to start. Since children grow so fast, a lot of their clothing is only used for a short amount of time. UpChoose allows you to buy clothing and exchange them later for bigger sizes as your child grows.
And if you’re itching for something new, look at sustainable retailers like Everlane, ADAY or AmourVert, which sell quality, ethical and sustainable clothing that will last.
It’s not easy to shift your mindset and actions, but as we look for ways to combat our climate crisis, a simple change, like where you buy your clothing, adds up.
Second-Hand September has a nice alliterative ring to it, but that doesn’t mean the challenge has to last just this month. Since we’re nearly halfway through September, challenge yourself for the rest of the year. What if you could do it for all of 2020?
More: The Sneaker Saint
There’s a Way to Plant Trees Every Time You Search the Internet — and It’s Free
What if the next question you asked a search engine could help save the planet?
That’s the idea behind Ecosia, a free browser extension that uses advertising revenue from basic search queries to reforest our planet. Once the extension is installed on their browser, users are free to search the internet as they usually do — all while Ecosia collects a few cents from every click on a sponsored search result.
For every 45 searches, Ecosia earns enough money to plant a tree. Through their efforts, they’ve been able to plant over 62 million trees since first launching in 2009.
Though the act of planting trees may sound simple on its surface, at scale, it might be one of the most effective means of stemming the catastrophic effects of carbon emissions on our planet. According to a July 2019 study in the journal Science, a sustained worldwide effort to plant 1 trillion trees is the most powerful lever we can pull to limit further global temperature rises and protect human life on our planet.
Planting a forest roughly the size of the United States is an undoubtedly daunting task, but Ecosia makes it free and easy for anyone who uses the internet to play her part — and it’s catching on. According to Forbes, in 2018 Ecosia more than doubled the number of trees it had planted since its founding.
It’s on track to beat that record again in 2019.
The company currently has tree-planting projects in 15 countries with strong forest ecosystems, including Brazil, Nicaragua, Haiti, Uganda and Indonesia. They partner with local organizations that have the expertise to plant and foster healthy new trees in their respective environments, helping to ensure the trees’ survival, improve biodiversity, and create employment opportunities in impoverished agricultural regions.
Ecosia also built its own solar plant to run all their servers on clean power, making the company carbon negative. “This means that if Ecosia were as big as Google, it could absorb 15% of all global CO2 emissions!” says its blog. “That’s enough to offset vehicle emissions worldwide.”
Of course, reforestation cannot solve climate change in a vacuum (and certainly one company cannot solve it alone). Global leaders will still need to focus on ending emissions from coal and gas while curbing deforestation so the influx of new trees won’t be negated by the rapid depletion of the world’s forests.
But in the toolkit of environmental solutions, reforestation has the potential to be the most powerful, cost-efficient and scalable option we have.
“The beautiful thing is that it is a universal issue,” Jean-Francois Bastin, the Science study’s lead author, said in an interview. “It can unify us against a common threat, where anyone can have a role to play, by acting on supporting the restoration of ecosystems, but also by changing the way we are living on the planet.”
More: Sucking Carbon Out of the Air Is One Way to Help Save Our Planet
This Group Is Documenting Ancient Murals in Texas Before They’re Wiped Out by Climate Change
In Texas’ Lower Pecos Canyonlands, Shumla Archaeological Research & Education Center has been documenting some of the oldest narrative mural paintings in North America. Shumla is racing against time to document these murals, as local rivers that surround them are rising at an alarming rate, due to the changing climate, and are slowly degrading the original artwork.
Because of their location and condition, Shumla hopes that these murals, some of them 4,000 years old, might one day be displayed as 3D models or with the help of VR, in museums around the country, to raise awareness about their degradation.
To learn about the four-year program, called the Alexandria Project, watch the video above.
More: Why Facts Don’t Work With Climate Change Deniers
People Are Helping Animals Cross Highways — and That’s Great for Humans, Too
Drive south on U.S. Route 441 from Gainesville, Florida, and you’ll come across vast expanses of wetland. In the morning, the spiky purple flowers of pickerelweeds bloom as the sun rises over the horizon of Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park. Come sunset, the sky turns into a watercolor of pastels where sandhill cranes fly in search of a place to rest. And lurking among it all, tucked among the grasses and slithering beneath the swampy water, is a who’s-who of Florida’s finest: the American alligator, mole salamander, Florida softshell turtle and green anole lizard.
But divert your eyes to the pavement barreling by, and you’re bound to see casualties. Frogs, salamanders, alligators and other creatures risk their lives crossing the highway while on the hunt for dinner or when traveling to mate and lay eggs. For years, thousands of animals were killed along the route, and the road gained a well-earned reputation as a death zone.
So to prevent the high rate of animal casualties, the Florida Department of Transportation in 2000 built eight wildlife culverts for the animals to crawl through.
It worked.
A year after installing the underpasses, mortality rates had dropped drastically, from 2,411 to 158 animals — a decrease of 93.5 percent.
The tunnels underneath U.S. 441 are known as wildlife crossings, and they allow animal populations to safely migrate across habitats without the constant threat of speeding vehicles. Each day more than 1 million vertebrates are run over in the United States, and an estimated 1 to 2 million collisions happen every year between large animals and cars.
But the crossings, which can also take the form of under- and overpasses, serve a more important purpose than keeping individual animals alive and your car dent-free: Each wildlife crossing connects islands of isolated habitats intersected by roads, bridges and other manmade structures. Florida’s efforts are part of a bigger push by conservationists to protect wildlife corridors, or stretches of habitats that connect populations of animals, which in turn helps protect the region’s biodiversity.
After a recent United Nations report found that roughly 1 million species worldwide are threatened with extinction, constructing wildlife crossings has become even more urgent. After all, the main drivers of extinction are man-made (think exploiting natural resources, climate change and pollution). Shouldn’t the solution also be?
Ron Sutherland, the chief scientist at the Wildlands Network, an organization that fights species extinction, highlighted the ways habitats are currently fragmented: Roads often cut across wildlife corridors, agriculture has cleared tremendous amounts of habitat, and urban sprawl keeps, well, sprawling. The goal of wildlife crossings is to reconnect habitats with their native animal populations. Doing so allows for gene flow, an essential ingredient of biodiversity. Without different populations to mate with, animals are forced to inbreed, leading to the eventual collapse of their population.
“We really do see wildlife corridors and road crossings as a core solution for stopping the biodiversity extinction crisis,” Sutherland said in an email.
SAVING MONEY — AND BIODIVERSITY
If protecting species isn’t enough, Sutherland emphasized the financial incentive to build crossings. The price of hitting an animal can cost motorists and taxpayers a pretty penny — deer collisions run about $8,000, elk an average of $25,000, and moose upward of $44,000 when factoring in things like human injury and vehicle repair, according to the Western Transportation Institute.
“So even a million-dollar wildlife road crossing structure can pay for itself in public benefits over the course of just a few years,” Sutherland told NationSwell. “They’re in the public interest, and they’re in the interest of saving biodiversity.”
From salamanders in Massachusetts to cougars in California, researchers have recorded lower collision rates and high animal usage after crossings are built.
Perhaps the most popular and well-studied example is the network of wildlife crossings at Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies. In the 1980s, due to increased traffic on the Trans-Canada Highway, officials expanded the road from two lanes to four. Transportation planners and scientists drafted a solution to minimize the effect the expansion would have on wildlife. From 1996 to 2014, six wildlife overpasses and 38 underpasses were built along the border of Banff and Yoho national parks.
Subsequent studies showed that the designated crossings reduced animal-vehicle crashes by 80 percent. Since 1996, an estimated 150,000 animals have used the crossings, including grizzly bears, wolves, coyotes, cougars, moose, elk and deer.
Wyoming is home to another successful project. The Path of the Pronghorn, a 170-mile wildlife corridor, gives pronghorns, ungulates and other species a safe way to cross a major highway as they migrate each spring to give birth and seek out the freshest, most nutrient-rich food. After two wildlife overpasses and an underpass were built, animal-vehicle collisions were reduced by 70 percent.
Wildlife crossings are achieving their goals, said Sutherland. “Species are moving across them, and the economic data indicates [the crossings] basically pay for themselves if you put them in the right places.”
PROTECTING HABITATS THROUGH POLICY
But crossings are just one stick in a bundle of solutions, said David Willms, senior director for Western Wildlife and Conservation at the National Wildlife Federation. He stressed that it’s challenging and costly to build enough of them to completely mitigate the effects of new roads and other construction projects.
It’s clear that crossings work. But just as important is passing legislation that protects habitats before roads are built and wildlife is disconnected. For example, the Wildlife Corridors Conservation Act, introduced in Congress in May, would establish, protect and maintain corridors at the local, regional and national levels. If passed, it would establish a science- and data-driven system of designation for land that would prevent activities like oil drilling and mining. It would also create funding for wildlife crossings and other projects.
Laws protecting wildlife are already being passed at the state level, including in New Mexico and New Hampshire. A handful of other states are considering similar legislation.
“We have the technology now to identify those spots, and we have the case studies now to show that those crossings work,” said Willms. “Those are two bigs pieces of the puzzle. Now you just need the political will to get the funding in place to get more of them.”
Because corridors often overlap with publicly and privately owned lands, other solutions rely on the support of landowners — for example, working with farmers in a way that protects the wildlife habitats on their lands without affecting their business operations. “I haven’t found a landowner yet that doesn’t recognize the value of these wildlife corridors,” Willms said.
Sutherland said it’s an issue that people across all regions and political beliefs are supporting. In more conservative western states, “there’s been an increasing recognition that elk, mule deer, pronghorn antelope and other species need to migrate in the interest of saving biodiversity.” In response, those states are working to identify and protect the large expanses of land that still exist. In the east, where habitats are particularly broken up, he admits the approach is more piecemeal. In those states, Sutherland said, it’s more a question of, “Can we stitch things back together again into a network of habitats that would be enough to save species?”
Still, Sutherland has faith. At the Wildlands Network, he and other conservationists are working to create the Eastern Wildway, a habitat network that extends from Florida to Quebec. “It is a grand and ambitious plan that would take decades to achieve, but the benefits for nature and people would be immense,” Sutherland said. A stretch of land like this would protect thousands of species.
But Willms countered that there often isn’t enough research to know what specific routes and corridors need protection.
For example, a key migration corridor for mule deer in Wyoming was accidentally discovered just seven years ago. Researcher Hall Sawyer believed a herd of mule deer was residential. He put GPS collars on a few deer and discovered that the animals were actually migrating a grueling 150 miles each year, from the Hoback region near Jackson down to the Red Desert. On the journey, the deer were met with man-made obstacles like fencing, roads and urban sprawl. That data helped push the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission to designate the area as a migration corridor, which informs land management decisions such as adding animal-friendly fencing and creating protected areas.
“We’re closer to the beginning than we are to the end, because there’s just so much more research that can be done,” Willms said. “These crossings are invaluable and certainly scalable.”
CORRECTING FOR A CHANGING CLIMATE
Part of that research involves understanding how climate change will impact animals’ migratory paths. Historically, species respond to changes in the climate by moving and migrating to other areas in search of their preferred conditions.
Climate migration has been on the radar of scientists for decades, said Sutherland, but the issue has become more central as the pace of climate change accelerates. “Not only are humans causing climate change to happen much faster now, but we’ve broken up the landscape into small pieces where there are not very many opportunities for species to migrate like they used to.”
That means that in addition to protecting existing wildlife corridors, conservationists and their allies need to find ways to reconnect swaths of land that have been siphoned into ever smaller slices.
According to Sutherland, it’s not enough to simply fight climate change in an effort to stymie it. “It’s already happening,” he said, “and so we need a network of habitats to allow for that adaptation.”
More: Montana’s Progressive Road Design Accommodates Wildlife
‘Climate Apocalypse Chic’ and 7 Other Ways Art Tackles Climate Change
When scientists, activists and journalists talk about climate change, they tend to use alarming numbers, large statistics and scary graphs. But around the world, some artists are working to translate intimidating facts and figures into something understandable on a human scale. Whether it’s via theater, fashion or street art, these artists challenge how we look at our world’s future and our role in it.
Saving Coral Reefs
Jason deCaires Taylor’s underwater sculptures support the conservation and growth of coral reefs around the world. DeCaires Taylor, a marine conservationist, sculptor and scuba diver, has planted his work in places like the Maldives, Florida, Grenada and the Bahamas.
Many of his sculptures are shaped like humans — an intentional visual connection between people and marine life. The sculptures are made from a nontoxic pH-neutral concrete, with rough textures that encourage coral to grow. The sculptures start as stone but within just a few years, the work comes to life. Coral flourishes, fish find homes and crustaceans settle into the statues, sustaining life in areas where the reefs are vanishing.
Hadestown
Written by Anaïs Mitchell and directed by Rachel Chavkin, Hadestown brings an unlikely subject to a large stage.
The latest Broadway hit is rooted in climate change mayhem. It’s a 21st-century spin on two classic Greek myths, where Hades, Persphone, Orpheaus and Eurydice all head to the underworld and back.
“Strange things happen in the world these days,” Eurydice sings in her opening lines. “Fall comes early. Spring comes late. One day summer comes, the next she goes, any way the wind blows.”
Before It’s Too Late
Climate change is expected to hit Miami especially hard.
Before It’s Too Late is a Miami-based initiative that sits at the intersection of art, technology and science. One of its projects, Miami Murals, uses augmented reality to transform Miami street murals. Hold your phone up, and the mural comes to life. Ocean waves slowly fill the screen and a yellow canary warns you about upcoming environmental threats. The user has two choices: They can look at our projected bleak future or pick “Be the Change,” which illustrates a healthy future, complete with wind turbines and smiling manatees.
The project started when Before It’s Too Late founder and CEO Linda Cheung noted a divide between scientists and citizens. Her murals are a place where those populations can connect and ignite social change through empathy.
Unfortunately, Ready to Wear
During February’s Fashion Week, Milk Gallery in New York hosted a new line of clothing called, Unfortunately, Ready to Wear. Created by Luka Sabbat as a collaboration between the Natural Resources Defense Council and Milk Studios, the conceptual line was designed as clothing for a future impacted by climate change. The collection is complete with fireproof jackets, storm-warning headphones and a backpack that transforms into a sleeping bag.
“We’re going at this from a different angle than I think most environmental organizations have ever done,” Rhea Suh, president of NRDC, told Fast Company. “Honestly, I think we need to be a lot more creative about how we reach out to new audiences.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BZ6i12HHIO_/
Sean “Hula” Yoro
Street artists around the world are using art to raise awareness of climate change, but Sean “Hula” Yoro incorporates an element of nature into each of his works. His more famous murals involve tidal waves: Yoro sits on a surfboard and paints as the tides rise and fall. Yoro also paints on natural surfaces, like glaciers and trees, where the art quickly weathers away. Each piece is intended to spark a sense of urgency.
“It is important now more than ever to try to circulate positive environmental messages through art in order to combat the recent oppression of climate change research,” he told CNN. “I worry that we have taken for granted our natural world and if we wait any longer the negative effects will be irreversible.”
HighWaterLine
It’s hard to understand how rising water levels will directly impact a city simply by looking at a map. When you can physically stand in a place that will someday be underwater, it becomes a lot more realistic.
HighWaterLine is an attempt to do just that. Artist Eve Mosher, with the help of a line marker (the machines used to paint football fields), walks across cities, in her wake a blue line marking each city’s flood zone.
“I realized that while I didn’t have the skills to be a lobbyist, lawyer, or politician, I didn’t have the money to make huge investments or sway opinion, but what I did have was creativity and my art,” she writes on her website.
Mosher started the project in 2007 in New York City. Since then, HighWaterLines can be found in Philadelphia, Miami, Delray Beach and Bristol.
Chart Art
Jill Pelto’s art draws from her scientific research around the world. Whether it’s studying mountain glaciers in British Columbia or the Transantarctic Mountains of Antarctica, the destinations paired with climate data inspire her art.
“I make and read a lot of graphs, yet I forgot that many people do not,” Pelto told Vice. “Using actual information … provided an intellectual context to my work while my illustrations around the graphs created an emotional story that can inspire people to promote environmental justice.”
Support
In 2017, Italian artist Lorenzo Quinn installed a pair of giant hands in Venice’s Great Canal. The hands appeared to “support” a building that dates to the 14th century. The installation, entitled Support, was part of the 2017 Venice Biennale, and it represented the threat climate change poses to the city and the power humans have to stop it.
Venice is highly vulnerable to climate change and sea-level rise. It frequently experiences “acqua alta,” or high waters, where the city floods up to 60 times each year.
Quinn’s hands, which were based on the shape of his children’s hands, symbolize unification and the work we have to do to support future generations. “At once, the sculpture has both a noble air as well as an alarming one … the hands symbolize tools that can both destroy the world, but also have the capacity to save it,” Quinn writes on his website.
More: 5 Very Simple, Practical Things You Can Do to Curb Climate Change
5 Ways to Stop Killing the Planet With Wasted Food
One-third of the food we grow is wasted every year. That adds up to 1.3 billion tons of food thrown in landfills around the world. And that food, instead of feeding hungry people, sits in landfills and slowly releases methane, a greenhouse gas 23 times as potent as carbon dioxide in trapping atmospheric heat.
And food is wasted at every level of the food-distribution pyramid: Farmers don’t harvest misshapen yet perfectly tasty vegetables; truckers’ loads are rejected by stores; and spoiled produce ends up in trash cans around the globe.
Some individuals and organizations are now fighting these trends. Here are five ways to combat food waste at every level.
Pick Up a New Hobby
Americans throw out about a pound of food every single day. And, somewhat surprisingly, the higher quality your diet, the more food you are likely to waste. That’s because health-promoting vegetables and fruits also require substantial resources to bring to the market.
Composting is a simple solution to fight food waste. Whether it’s apple peels or egg shells, composting offers a use for food scraps that would otherwise sit in a landfill. Composting speeds up the natural decay of organic waste and creates a nutrient-rich soil great for gardens. Cities across the country offer compost collectives where people can learn the basics of composting. Many composting organizations pick up scraps and offer drop-off locations for food waste. Cities like Seattle, Denver and San Francisco all have curbside compost pickup and other cities are following their lead.
Another easy hobby: making jam, pickles and preservatives. Jamming and pickling are simple strategies to use nearly spoiled produce. Cucumbers about to go bad? Try pickling them. Or maybe a few apples are past their prime — try turning them into apple sauce.
The National Center for Home Food Preservation is a good resource for how to make jams, jellies and preservatives.
Buy Ugly Foods
People tend to buy the prettiest peaches and the most vibrant peppers, leaving their “ugly” brethren behind. So companies like Imperfect Produce and Hungry Harvest are changing the norms about what food should look like.
Hungry Harvest is an “ugly” food subscription service. They purchase unsellable produce directly from farmers at low cost. The company then ships it to customers in a weekly subscription box. The customers save money, the food ends up in bellies and the farmers make a profit from what might have otherwise gone to waste.
Imperfect Produce offers its produce at a 30 percent markdown.
“Hopefully it’s a pipeline to get as much of that food as possible out of that field and into people’s fridges across the country,” says Imperfect Produce CEO, Ben Simon.
Support Food-Donation Nonprofits
Grocery stores have the final say when produce is dropped off. If the bananas are overripe or the tomatoes too small, then the produce might be rejected. Truckers are on tight schedules, so they don’t have many options on what to do with unwanted food. Sometimes the simplest solution is to drop it in a dump, but that’s usually associated with landfill fees, not to mention a terrible environmental impact.
Food Drop, a pilot initiative by the Indy Hunger Network, is intervening. Food Dump reaches truckers before the truckers reach the dump. By pairing truckers up with the nearest food banks, they save the truckers’ time and money, cut back on food waste and provide people in need with fresh food.
In the five-month pilot, the initiative saved 87,000 pounds of food. The programming is now expanding across the entire state of Indiana.
Other organizations have similar programs. Food Cowboy has a hotline where truckers, caterers and events can offer leftover food to charities in need.
Leverage Technology
Technology is becoming a popular tool in fighting food waste. Everything from mobile apps to software can be used to track and reduce waste.
Copia, a technology company focused on food recovery, works with cafeterias, caterers and other business to redistribute food to food banks. Copia redirects about 60,000 pounds of food each month.
“We’re a tech-enabled logistics company, like Uber, that matches people who have excess edible food with people who need it,” says Copia’s CEO, Komal Ahmad.
Copia’s software analytics can also help businesses understand where there’s consistent surplus, so that they can adjust their orders. So far Copia has recovered a million pounds of produce and served over 900,000 meals.
Push Policies
Several organizations are kick-starting movements to change policies around food distribution and waste on local and national levels.
For example, Food Policy Action tackles food waste on a national level. Its mission is “to promote positive policies, educate the public, and hold legislators accountable for their votes on food and farm policy.”
The Food Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard University is an opportunity for students to use legal and policy tools to interact and effect change within the environmental, economic and health sectors of our food systems. Students work with individuals and communities to help them understand and improve their food systems, as well as help shape food-waste legislation.
More: 6 High-Tech Innovations That Could Solve Our Food Waste Woes
Kids From All Around the World Have an Urgent Message for Adults on the Fate of Our Planet
Call it the sit-in heard around the world.
Greta Thunberg, a ninth-grader from Sweden, began protesting her country’s lack of action on the issue of climate change last summer. Thunberg sat on the steps outside of the Swedish parliament in Stockholm holding a protest sign, one small 15-year-old against some of the most powerful industries and political forces on the planet. “The politics that’s needed to prevent the climate catastrophe — it doesn’t exist today,” Thunberg, since nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, told The New Yorker. “We need to change the system, as if we were in crisis, as if there were a war going on.”
Thunberg may not be a politician (yet), but her words have helped kickstart a global student movement, if not an all-out war, against the fossil fuel–guzzling status quo. On Friday, March 15, youth all over the globe walked out of school and took to the streets to raise awareness of the all-too-inconvenient, all-too-easily-skirted issue of climate change. An estimated 1.6 million students in more than 300 cities joined the protests, geographically dispersed but united under a single hashtag: #FridaysforFuture.
Protests in New York rolled out over the five boroughs, attracting students of all ages, though the younger ones were chaperoned by parents and teachers. A few thousand mostly high school–aged students in Manhattan gathered first at Columbus Circle, then walked up Central Park West to the Museum of Natural History. On the front steps of the museum, they unfurled signs with slogans like THERE IS NO PLANET B and chanted “Climate change is not a lie / We won’t let our planet die!”
NationSwell joined the protesters, seeking answers to one critical question: How do you think we can fix climate change and save the planet?
One of the youngest protesters, a kindergartner named Nico Pascarella from the nearby Hudson Valley, was accompanied by his mom. He was aware of some of the problems caused by a changing climate, if a little short on actual solutions. “There’s trash in the ocean,” Nico said. “It can kill the animals, and if we throw out straws, the turtles can die.”
Lucy Blum, a sophomore at Beacon High School in Manhattan, told NationSwell, “We’re going to grow up in this world, so we need to make it the way we want it.”
Some students were more blunt. Anthony Prudent, a 10th-grader from Laguardia High School in Manhattan, had a message for adults not present at the protest and/or in denial about the catastrophic implications of global warming: “Show your fucking selves!” He went on, “Sorry to be selfish, but I want to have a future. Also, elect people who listen to people and not to their wallets.”
Zero Hour NYC is a climate-justice nonprofit that helped organize the protest. Natalie Sweet, a sophomore at Horace Mann in the Bronx, volunteers with Zero Hour NYC and said that these strikes were an important first step, but that much more needs to be done by our government. “The IPCC [says that] we have 12 years to live, which is backed by science-based evidence,” Sweet said of the global-warming report released last year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“We need reminders like these climate strikers to help push forward legislation, like a 100 percent switch to renewable energy by 2050,” Sweet added. The strikes are only as important as what happens afterwards. Call lawmakers and tell them the facts. It’s a bipartisan issue — it doesn’t take [just] Democrats or Republicans. To show that we have a common goal is an extremely powerful thing.”
Ajani Stella, a 12-year-old seventh-grader at Hunter College High School in Manhattan, is already an experienced activist. He runs his own informational website and is also a youth advisory board member of the Human Impact Institute. “We need to divest from fossil fuels now. By keeping our money in them, we’re basically saying that we don’t care,” Stella said. “Well, stop not caring!”
Stella said that when he grows up, he wants to be a climate engineer and work on designs for an electric aircraft. “Batteries are heavy, but so is gasoline,” he said. “Once we switch to a clean-energy grid, the transportation sector will be close to zero emissions. Events like these make me hopeful that the next generation of voters and politicians are going to work to fix [climate change].”
The next youth-led global protests are scheduled to take place on May 3. Keep up with the latest news on the strikes here, and watch NationSwell’s video above to learn about what solutions the next generation has to fight climate change.