I’m at heart a scientist, and science is at heart a search for truth. And the truth is that we’ve been pooping in our beds on a planetary scale! We’ve lost half the world’s species in one human lifetime, the oceans are on track to die as a human food source in one more lifetime, and the last time the planet warmed 2 degrees it took 100,000 years, not 200.
Anyone who thinks human industrialization is not destabilizing planetary systems towards environmental collapse is not paying attention to the data. Our government and media are designed to feed sound bites to simpletons, so debate rages about “climate change”, enabling leaders to ignore all other forms of pollutive destruction – much as they argue about a “wall” to block tiny parts of the US/Mexico border, while all the other glaring and absurd problems in our immigration system are ignored. Meanwhile, by 2050 our oceans are expected to contain more plastic than fish! How many millions of refugees will that cause?
Moving the species of humanity from destruction to sustainability and beyond that to regeneration is the grand challenge of this century. This means inventing regenerative solutions is the worthiest mission I can pursue to leave a positive legacy for my children’s children.
So, what to do? I start with basic scientific principles, like “in nature, every organism’s wastes are other organisms’ foods” – the ultimate recycling system, that we mess up by introducing nasty chemicals and compounds which nature knows not how to process. Another base postulate is “in environmentalism, there is no absolute good or bad, just better or worse options” – and we need to start picking better ones!
Once you cut through the crap and agendas, natural gas really is cleaner than coal, solar is cleaner than gas, wind is cleaner than solar, and geothermal or micro-hydro are the least environmentally damaging of all – with nuclear a wild card that offers an extremely tiny footprint, until it becomes really big.
But people don’t want science, they want money! Thus we need to align human nature (greed) with Mother Nature (ecology). To do this, I’m creating two regenerative tourism projects to demonstrate how treating the planet right can be MORE profitable than trashing it, not less. Both will measure causes and effects scientifically.
The first is an innovative eco-tourism destination where guests don’t just watch wildlife, they save it. Every aspect will push human eco-footprints not just down to zero, but beyond zero to positive – even our soil will be naturally improved over time, not degraded.
We will endeavor to restore a sensitive wildlife corridor between a precious wetland nature preserve, and the main nesting beach of the endangered Leatherback Turtle. This turtle is the world’s largest marine reptile and the last true dinosaur, growing to the size of a VW Beetle. It thrived for 200 million years but is nearly extinct after just one human lifetime of damaging fishing practices. For more information, please visit www.TurtlesFirst.com and soon, visit The Villas at Turtles First yourself!
The other project is a 650 acre permaculture paradise, where we plan an artisan village, intentional community, permaculture farm, and eco-tours. All resources from building materials to water and power will come from the land. We will explore new ways to integrate retirement, tourism, and farming in harmony with each other and with the land.
Here we will endeavor to show how organic multi-crop permaculture farming can:
In short, one of the main keys to saving the planet AND living healthier lives is simply re-connecting humans to nature’s food chain in a bio-positive manner, instead of relying on an ever more industrialized travesty of cost-driven fake foods. Inventing scalable, enjoyable, and profitable ways to prove that is a legacy I hope to leave when my personal adventure finally ends…
(Appreciation for many images on this page to Eduard Muller of the University For International Cooperation, San Jose Costa Rica)