Incipient Transformation in times of Environmental Crisis and Climate Emergency
By: Matěj Prokop
Tags: Climate Change, Crisis, Findhorn, Regenerative Agriculture, Environmental Issues

Report with insights and reflections from the recently convened Climate Change and Consciousness Conference (CCC19) at Findhorn.

What can we learn from indigenous cultures, activists and wisdom keepers? How do we generate inspiration for a grassroots upsurge to reclaim our future? How can we build and rebuild communities as functional entities? Political, legal and social activism. Networking for social change. Alternative energy sources and appropriate technologies. Soil restoration, organic food production and community-scale agriculture.

These and many others were the core questions and topics at the recent Climate Change and Consciousness conference at Findhorn — a renowned ecovillage, spiritual community and learning center nestled on the coast of Northern Scotland.

CCC19 was an intimate week-long gathering of an unusual and innovative format with over three hundred participants coming from all around the globe setting out to explore the role of consciousness in a rapidly changing world threatened by climate change. (read also — environmental crisis, spiritual crisis, political and economical climate)

The Universal Hall, the conference's main venue (Photo: Findhorn Foundation)

The Great Transition, A New Story, a Life-Affirming Culture or New Earth were just a few amongst many of the overarching and somewhat conceptual narratives, that you could hear participants talking about throughout the week, as we outlined what a new planetary transition might look like, on both individual and collective levels.

Along some of the most renowned activists and speakers, the conference brought together numerous representatives of grassroots organizations, alternative educational institutions, people from the media, science and banking sectors, impact investors, lawyers, representatives of spiritual foundations, youth and several indigenous elders.

Keynote speakers at the conference — some of the world's most-recognized thinkers and environmental activists

A truly interesting blend of people coming from different cultures and backgrounds created a space of unprecendented synergy and formed the atmosphere of the most humane non-linear conference possibly imaginable. Put differently, a kind of unconventional version of a United Nations congress meeting infused with dance, performances, ceremonial singing and morning somatic practices.

In the rich array of conversations had over the week, ranging from intellectual and rational with more of an pragmatic approach all the way to the other side of the spectrum with more spiritual and esoteric view — I always found one bonding element — a sense of inclusivity, mutual support and deep respect for the uniqueness of each one of us. A fertile ground for diving into the architecture of broader contexts with the core theme of consciousness that seems to lie at the heart of it all.

Feeling into the collective atmosphere throughout the week, I perceived a space of unrepentant joy, and a community that leads the way in showing what could once be achieved in a bigger scheme in our civilization — if we start with ourselves.

The Singing Bowl, a ceremonial place with a firepit, outside of the Universal Hall (Photo: Hugo Klip)

“This week is an inquiry into how to heal our relationship with the Earth.“ — Stephanie Miles, organizer of the conference

Each day of the conference was charged with fluctuating emotions and energies. Many of the keynotes and other talks of these diverse voices were particularly insightful and uplifting — leaving one hopeful about the role we can play in regenerating our beautiful planet, while others were rather alarming — illustrating that humanity's greed, selfishness and apathy knows no end, and that we might in fact be wiped out within a couple of years if we don't take immediate actions.

The opening Keynote by Bill McKibben, one of the world’s most respected environmental activist and leader of 350.org, was another stark reminder that the time to act is now. “What was a warning 30 years ago is now the brute fact of daily life for hundreds of millions of our brothers and sisters on every corner of the planet,” he said, reflecting on his career and where climate change has gotten since he started.

Without debate, we find ourselves in a truly unique moment and a tipping point of our and the planet’s history. The health of the ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. Direct evidence of this is shrinking freshwater supply, rapid desertification of fertile land, ocean acidification, disappearing wildlife, air pollution, deforestation, extreme weather events, and many others. A sequence of processes, of which we are — aware of it or not — inevitably a part of, but that do not always have a compatible root cause.

“What we are really good at is reducing something complex into one thing. We want to find the cause, to find the bad guy — the evil in the world. The problem with that is that it enables us to ignore what might be other causes that might actually more intimately involve ourselves on a local level. It exports it all onto this one global thing that can only be solved by global institutions.” — Charles Eisenstein, at CCC19

Our social media, still being useful in many other ways, has in part become a constant flood of a seemingly dystopian picture of the state of our world. Random videos and articles with oftentimes catastrophic scenarios are served disordered in our news feed, rarely offering an implementable solution to the problem. As a natural consequence of that — with a sense of the enormity of what is being spoken about — we oftentimes end up feeling paralyzed, helpless or downhearted.

It is important to realize that even that phase is a part of the whole process. To offer some perspective, the ancient Greeks had two words for the concept of time. One being “chronos “— the sequential, quantitative, chronological time — and the other “kairos” — meaning literally “the right, critical, or opportune moment”. It refers to extraordinary periods when the whole culture transforms qualitatively and profoundly. We live in this time right now and the transformation is already underway.

“Mindset determines the result. Being optimistic is a choice and its an input to a challenge, it’s not a result of a success, it’s an input with which we go into the world.“ — Christiana Figueres, at CCC19

As the collapse approaches, we see a dramatic upsurge in citizen action. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide are already working towards one of the biggest shifts in the history of humankind. The shift in awareness, catalyzing small actions, swirling the waters, and gradually leading to a whole-system change. Just a few days succeeding the conference, parliaments of England, Scotland and Ireland announced a state of Climate Emergency, after the activist group Extinction Rebellion non-violently closed down large parts of central London for a week — which was a direct answer to their demand.

Now, this is indeed a massive step forward, but a series of questions arise. How do we collectively and individually navigate through an event of such magnitude? An event, which requires major systematic changes across most sectors on a global scale. Are bioregional design and local action the key to success? In reality, we are so close, yet missing so much to get it right.

“Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness the catastrophe toward which the world is headed will be unavoidable.“ — Vaclav Havel, past president of The Czech Republic, addressing the US Congress.

“Light Work” painting by Autumn Skye

Is the fossil fuel industry slowly coming to an end? “Divestment is material risk to its business.” — Shell Oil

In his presentation, Bill McKibben revealed that 350.org’s efforts in divestment campaigns over the last decade have resulted in a $6.2 trillion investment withdrawn from the fossil fuel industry. “The CEO's and heads of the coal industry report they can no longer attract investors in order to capitalize on new mines and other ecocidal projects — Just too many people had pledged not to do it,” he added.

His brilliant speech carried on with an unexpected twist: “What all these activist are working toward is less particular pieces of legislation and more a shift in the Zeitgeist — a shift in our sense of what’s normal, and natural and obvious. If we can win that shift in Zeitgeist then we can win all the pieces of legislation and things we need.”

Bill McKibben's Skype call to the Universal Hall (Photo: Hugo Klip)

“ If you come up with answers that solve Climate change, but take 50 years to do it — they aren’t actual answers. Winning slowly is a different way of losing. “ — Bill McKibben, at CCC19

We need to disrupt “Business As Usual”.

One of the main points being talked about at the conference was an urgent call to disrupt “Business as Usual”. The phrase refers to the normal conduct of business regardless of current circumstances, especially difficult events which pose a potential negative impact. In the context of climate change, denialism simply can’t be tolerated anymore.

Powerful corporations need to be held accountable and pushed to change their motivation from “destroying the planet for profit” to having to find new solutions and new markets that are more sustainable, humane and ethical. In order to succeed, we need to work with existing legal and capital market structures, but with a whole new mindset.

“The man who now sits in the White House operates under the belief that Climate Change was a hoax manufactured by the Chinese, as he put it. A belief so odd, that if you were sitting on a public bus and heard someone muttering it, you would get up and change seats. “ — Bill McKibben, at CCC19

The main underlying vision behind this call is to collectively change the way we think about business and move beyond the concept of endless economic growth. From small choices to bigger issues, it is an invitation to take matters into our own hands and build new structures that will not only disrupt the status quo but replace it with a new paradigm and fundamentally change the way we see and inhabit this planet.

Christiana Figueres (Pic: UNFCCC/Flickr)

“Fact is that climate change cannot be the sole responsibility of national governments, because national governments are not the highest emitters, and we tend to forget that the highest emissions are actually coming from subnational territories and from corporations.” — Christiana Figueres, for CCC19

In times when old and rigid systems set by a handful of powerful societies are failing at providing the most fundamental things to human life, we can see a wave of emerging grassroots initiatives and movements, from which many have already changed the world for the better. They are weaved with a series of common themes — cooperative structures based on circular or gift economy, bioregional design and decentralized blockchain technologies (allowing each community to base their local economy and currency on their own values and principles, not the values and principles set by authorities).

Ecocide, ‘the missing International Crime of our Time.’

One of the best examples of a fierce resistence and a extraordinary strength to fight against these powerful, life-annihilating corporations and secret societies was Polly Higgins. Building on her professional experience in court and her legal rigour, in 2010 at the United Nations she presented a proposal for criminal law of “ecocide” to impose a legal duty on governments to protect the public from dangerous industrial practices.

Since then, she focused on advocating for this law to protect the Earth from ecological and climate ecocide (ecosystem loss or damage caused by corporate and/or State senior officials). “If the evidence shows that continuous industrial activity known to adversely affect climate breakdown has been permitted, then both the Dutch government Minister and Shell’s senior officers could be held responsible for pervasive impacts on the world’s population at large, including the systemic and wide-spread collapse of ecosystems.”, she said.

“Together, they’re working on total ownership of the world in a period of crisis, where every crisis they have caused creates a new monopoly market.” — Vandana Shiva, at CCC19 “We need leaders to tell the truth about the world’s biggest problems, but even more urgently, we need people to know the truth about the world’s actual biggest leaders.” — MP

Despite the unfortunate timing of Polly passing away (on account of being seriously ill with a fast-spreading cancer), her legal and campaign teams are fully committed to carrying her work forward. One of the ways to get involved and continue the legacy is to join the Earth Protector's movement.

“By signing up as an Earth Protector you are clearly stating that you believe that damage and destruction to the Earth and its inhabitants is a crime — and you will have a unique Trust Fund document in your name to show this, which carries legal weight. It can be used in court as primary evidence that you are not a criminal — you are a conscientious protector.”

“Her transition was into a bigger service… I know she’d never give up halfway.” — Charles Eisenstein, at CCC19

Polly Higgins (Photo: DesmogBlog)

The wrong narrative — and the New Story.

“Our geological climate, political climate and social climate and our psychic climate are all connected. In ways that we can barely begin to understand. In ways that do not register on our carbon metrics.” — Charles Eisenstein

In Charles perspective, climate change is a symptom of something much deeper — a symptom of disequation of life, of seeing Earth and all of its beings as less than full beings. During his Keynote at the conference, he particularly stressed that: “The story that we hold about the world is obsolete. The dominant culture relying purely on its carbon metrics is missing the point, and it's missing out the things that are hard to measure.”

He further explained “If we use policy on the carbon metrics, we end up doing things that fit into the metrics. Some of these practices are actually damaging the organs and tissues of the living planet. One of the things which is justified in the category of “renewable energies” is hydroelectric. All over the world dams are being built on rivers that are disrupting the hydrological cycle, flooding some places and draining other places of their water.”

Charles Eisenstein's Keynote at the CCC19 conference. (Photo: Hugo Klip)

“We are in a system that economically, for instance, distances us from the places around us and from the people around us, and encourages us through its commoditization of everything to see the world as a commodity. It makes the world in the image of the ideology of a world reducible to numbers because the commodity is defined by certain measurable (standard) characteristic.”

“Climate crisis is an initiation. What is the climate crisis initiating us into? I don’t think it is initiating us into being a little bit more clever about how we dispose of natural resources. — Initiation is into love for a living Earth, into participation rather than extraction and exploitation, in order for that to happen we first and foremost need to see Earth as a living being.“ — Charles Eisenstein

Soil not Oil — Earth is most alive with healthy soil.

It is a known story that nearly every civilization that has gone, went because they failed to prevent the degradation of the soils on which they were founded. The modern world could suffer the same fate. It is no coincidence that many speakers at the conference presented or at least marginally mentioned that the ruining of our land is by far the number one contributor to climate change.

“Fifty percent of the greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change come from a fossil-fuel mode of farming. Industrial agriculture is nothing but use of fossil fuel for the energy, or use of chemicals made from fossil fuels as inputs.“ — Vandana Shiva

Vandana Shiva, at CCC19 (Photo: Hugo Klip)

In her powerful Keynote, referring to old Vedic texts and some of her books, Vandana presented climate change as a symptom of a mindset of the fossil fuel age, of violating the “dharma”— engaging in wrong actions. In her perspective, the western society, meaning the dominant culture, operates with a mechanistic worldview (a viewpoint in which nature is dead, everything is separate, and nothing can change without force) with the idea of violence rooted in it.

“This universe is the creation of the divine — it is sacred. And it’s for the benefit of all species. In India we never diferentiated between humans and other species, we never had anthropocentrism as a disease. ” — Vandana Shiva

Vandana Shiva in the Universal Hall (Photo: Matej Prokop)

Vandana has spent much of her life in the defense and celebration of biodiversity and indigenous knowledge. Central to Shiva’s work is the idea of seed freedom and the rejection of corporate patents on seeds. Her graceful and intransigent ways of oppressing some of the most powerful players in the fields of agriculture and politics are truly remarkable and worthy of recognition.

“6th mass extintion is not an accident, it is not a side effect, it is a result of militarized monoculture, claimed to supperiority. We created tools from fossil fuels with a militarized mind to push nature to extinction.” — Vandana Shiva on insecticides

Intellectual property rights, biodiversity, biotechnology and genetic engineering are among the other fields where she has fought through activist campaigns. In 1991, she established Navdanya — the Earth University, and along with it a national movement to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources, especially native seed. Since then she has been working on promoting biodiversity in agriculture to increase productivity, farmer’s incomes and educating the world on the topic of climate change.

Vandana Shiva on a farm in India (Photo: Google Images)

“Nitrogen fertilizer has emitted greenhouse gas nitrous oxide. 300-times more damaging to the climate stability than carbon dioxide…There’s silence on nitrogen. Nitrogen is not just destroying our atmosphere, it is killing our soils and it is now the single biggest reason for desertification. And according to the UN, the destruction and degradation of land is the single biggest reason for refugees.“ — Vandana Shiva

Increasing awareness of the significance of biological processes

With the sudden shift in our worldview, there seems to be an increasing awareness of the significance of biological processes, of the importance of all the incredible systems that nature invented. As if something burst back from within our genetic memory.

Trees are solar-powered machines that build themselves from thin air. The soil has the capacity to store atmospheric carbon. In a teaspoon of healthy soil, there are more microbes than there are people on earth. On the undersurface of every leaf millions of movable lips are engaged in devouring carbon dioxide and expelling oxygen. Trees and plants communicate through mycorrhizal networks. Carbon is not a pollutant, but a building block of life on which all living things are based on.

What needs to happen to us so that we start looking at these intelligent and self-inforcing systems as sacred? How do we preserve them and find ways of cooperation with humanity instead of seeing them as a mere commodity?

Trees rhizosphere is an intelligent ecosystem. Mycorrhizal fungi form the highway of the soil.

Scaling up Regenerative Agriculture

Overheard in many conversations at the conference, the word “regenerative” is becoming increasingly more popular and is oftentimes used in context, where it loses its true essence. In biology, regeneration is the process of renewal, restoration, and growth that makes cells, organisms, and ecosystems resilient to natural fluctuations or events that cause disturbance or damage.

Regenerative agriculture describes farming and grazing practices that, among other benefits, reverse climate change by rebuilding soil organic matter and restoring degraded soil biodiversity — resulting in both carbon drawdown and improving the water cycle. Specifically, it is a holistic land management practice that leverages the power of photosynthesis in plants to close the carbon cycle and build soil health, crop resilience and nutrient density.

Currently, most agricultural land is a net carbon source. That is, the soil is losing more carbon than it is sequestering. A biology-friendly approach to crop production — and carefully planned grazing of pastures and rangeland — enables agricultural land to become a net carbon sink (that is, soil sequesters more carbon than it loses). If all farmland was a net sink rather than a net source for carbon, atmospheric carbon levels would fall at the same time as farm productivity and watershed function improved. This would solve the vast majority of our food production, environmental and human health ‘problems’.

“If all farms and ranches switched to regenerative agriculture practices — 100% of the world’s carbon emmissions could be recaptured into the soil within the first year. “ — Rhodale Institute

Moving cattle around effectively helps the soil and the climate at the same time (Holistic planned grazing)

The advantages of building organic matter in the soil are not limited to removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Increasing soil carbon builds aggregates, which in turn act as sponges to enable soil to hold more water, thus providing reserves to plant roots in times when precipitation is low and a ready sink to soak up excess in times when it is high. This capacity to retain water also reduces the risk of erosion and can result in improved crop quality and yield.

“Using biology to restore organic matter to soils and stabilize it is not only beneficial to those who manage land and crops but is also vital to our society. If we want to survive we really have no alternative but to restore carbon to the soil. That this can be done through biology, using a method that has worked for millions of years, is exciting. Farmers, gardeners, homeowners, landscapers — anyone who owns or manages land — can follow these simple principles and not only restore carbon to the soil but help rebuild the marvelous system that nature has put in place to renew our atmosphere while providing food, beauty and health for all creation.” — Dr Christine Jones, soil scientists

We need to change the conversation about food.

Many people like to argue about this topic for hours. Wearing badges of honour, people go about their days reinforcing their worldview in heated conversations about who has the more sustainable and superior diet. But, while we do that, industrial agriculture continues to turn fertile soil to desert. In fact, just in the last 40 years, we’ve already lost 1/3 of farmable land.

Every time we eat, we cast the vote for the world that we believe in and want to see. Never in the human history have our food choices had such a profound impact on the world, the climate, the use of our lands and water. Food therefore can and should be part of the climate solution, grown in ways that restore our land, water and support communities that grow it.

If we omit the question of ethical choice — which definitely needs to be spoken about as well — the “lunchbox righteousness” doesn’t lead to many other constructive points. “Veganism will save the world”, the sign we often see on protests and all around the internet, is not far off from truth, but it can be misleading unless further explained.

“If you shift to a plant-based diet of GMO soy bean that has chopped down the Amazon and has used a huge amount of fertilizers, you’re still a part of the problem” — Vandana Shiva, at CCC19

“Rather than being seduced by exhortations to eat more products made from industrially grown soya, maize and grains, we should be encouraging sustainable forms of meat and dairy production based on traditional rotational systems, permanent pasture and conservation grazing. We should, at the very least, question the ethics of driving up demand for crops that require high inputs of fertiliser, fungicides, pesticides and herbicides, while demonising sustainable forms of livestock farming that can restore soils and biodiversity, and sequester carbon.” — excerpt from an article If you want to save the world, veganism isn't the answer.

This argument of course shouldn’t be used as a general justification for eating meat. The point here is that what we need to focus on, instead of arguing over wether it is ethical to eat meat or not, is creating new distribution chains that are regenerating the land and provide food-souvereignty in local areas, as well as start buying ecological products that support regenerative agriculture and have a positive impact on our climate, be it products of plant or animal origin.

Confrontation inspires defense.

With the example of the paragraph above — but also in any other situation in life where we find ourselves in an argument — confrontation usually inspires defense. In addressing the challenge of climate change, one of the question to ask ourselves is: How do we reframe the conversation so our arguments don’t feel as an attack or insult someone’s personal choices / worldview?

Oftentimes, the most difficult conversations can be had with the people we are closest to. How do we communicate these messages of a changing climate to the wider public, our friends and family members? How do we retain a sense of resilience and authenticity expressing our truth?

Not an all-fixing solution — what will happen will not be centralized.

One thing that comes to mind , trying to wrap this up and recognizing the diversity of voices and opinions only at the conference itself — is that there is no one-size-fits-all type of solution that would provide answers to the multitude of questions arising with the topic of changing climate.

And so, I believe that what is coming will not come about in a centralized manner. It will rather be a result of the interconnection of many dispersed and mutually supported communities, organizations, and individuals with a shared vision of a better world. I belive, that great things are on the cusp of happening.