Hope 3 of 3 FIsh Story Afterlife!

Fish Story Afterlife! 

When the Gulf to Gulf team completed Fish Story Memphis last Spring, I knew we had to do more. The team had calculated that 36% re-greening the earth could mitigate global warming. How to do that? We decided to create a website that could link restoration work, education, the Gulf to Gulf work on line, ecological art and invite our friends to be part of that 36%! Please join us and consider giving feedback on this beta version of the site before it goes public:

dev.gulftogulf.org

Screen shot from the new website

Hope, 1 of 3

I am pleased to announce the release of 4 new "Gulf to Gulf" webcast events. These are not intended as polished films but rather raw conversations about how we can deal with climate change.

"The Search for Anthropocene Solutions" (https://vimeo.com/84840975)

"Assessing Predictions from 2007" (https://vimeo.com/84718229)

"Leverage 36% Green from Memphis?" (https://vimeo.com/85037535)

"Women and Global Warming" (https://vimeo.com/85042661)

Gulf to Gulf "The Search for Anthropocene Solutions"

A "Gulf to Gulf" performance "The Search for Anthropocene Solutions" January 20th, 2014. Ecological artist Aviva Rahmani: ghostnets.com, with Dr. Eugene Turner,…

"I periodically find myself over-whelmed by how difficult the struggle is, how grief-stricken I am by collateral damage, as climate change takes human life around the globe. At those times, like today in a Noreaster, listening to deaths interspersed with accounts of dissolving starfish and slaughtered elephants in a world inured to loss, I take heart in knowing I am one of many in an army of determined Hope for the earth's future. I am therefore more than pleased when we can contribute sober considerations to that future.- Aviva Rahmani 2-13-14

The following is more information on each of these webcasts:

These conversations are deliberately raw, except for recording corrections. They are opportunities to reflect with the participants, on the implications of each research session. We are proud that since they were initiated in 2009, they have been accessed from over 75 countries. We consider them to be an on-going public think tank to come to terms with the impacts of climate change from Gulf to Gulf, across the planet. Additional information on each webcast and participants:  "The Search for Anthropocene Solutions" January 20th, 2014 with investigative reporter  Dahr, Jamail, artists Erika Blumenthal and Aviva Rahmani, Fisherman Addison Ames, and Dr. Eugene Turner, Distinguished Research Master and Professor, Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA:(http://www.oceanography.lsu.edu/index.php/people/faculty/eugene-turner/), Addison Ames a fisherman in the Gulf of Maine and joining from Qatar, ecological artist Erika Blumenfeld (erikablumenfeld.com), and her husband, investigative journalist Dahr Jamail, author of "The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan" (http://www.amazon.com/The-Will-Resist-Soldiers-Afghanistan/dp/1931859884/ref=pd_sim_b_1) and "Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq" (http://www.amazon.com/dp/1931859612/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20) (dahrjamail.net/). Participants talk about problems in the Gulf of Mexico due to the Macondo oil spill. "Assessing Predictions from 2007" January 8th, 2014 with Dr. Jim White, Professor of Geological Sciences, Fellow and Director of the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at the University of Colorado at Boulder, CO: (instaar.colorado.edu/people/james-w-c-white/) and Addison Ames a fisherman in the Gulf of Maine. Aviva and Jim discuss their work together since 2007 and predictions they have made about the impacts of climate change. "Leverage 36% Green from Memphis?" November 12th, 2013 with Dr. James White, Professor of Geological Sciences and a Fellow and the Director of the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at the University of Colorado at Boulder, CO: (instaar.colorado.edu/people/james-w-c-white/), Dr. Eugene Turner, Distinguished Research Master and Professor, Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA: (http://www.oceanography.lsu.edu/index.php/people/faculty/eugene-turner/) and Virginia McLean President of Friends for our Riverfront in Memphis TN: (friendsforourriverfront.org/). Participants discuss the places and ways in which re-greening the earth may be possible. "Women and Global Warming" October 2nd, 2013 with Dr. Jim White, Professor of Geological Sciences, Fellow and Director of the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at the University of Colorado at Boulder, CO: (instaar.colorado.edu/people/james-w-c-white/) and Chris Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, University of Georgia and Curator at eco*art*lab (ecoartlab.wordpress.com/). Participants discuss ways to talk about climate change and how, if possible, to reach the people who can actually make an impact regarding climate change.

Fish Story update

Yesterday, Gene Turner, Jim White and myself assessed what we learned from Fish Story in a "Gulf to Gulf" webcast. I will load that in the next week, along with responses to our questionnaire to our audience.

Meanwhile, I am putting finishing touches on an article about the project. On FB, I wrote:

I took time from my diss revisions to rewrite the conclusion of an article coming out in the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences (ESAS) on Fish Story: 

"In conclusion, we observed that the tributaries are indeed a critical part of the Mississippi water basin puzzle but so are people. Trigger points for change in the Mississippi watershed will require not only the sustained efforts of ecological restoration scientists working on the Wolf River but far more extensive plans for public education about and engagement in restoration. That engagement must include the regional participation of young people who will inherit the mistakes of their elders, particularly from the inner city areas of Memphis. Fish Story was a modest initiative towards accomplishing the long term goal of devising strategic responses to environmental damage in the Anthropocene era. This project provided a beginning to effect the 36% greening White calculated might be imminently required of all human kind. Our experience was that art may play a significant role in changing necessary public paradigms for thinking and behavior. It was an incentive for further research and experimentation to build on lessons learned."

Stockholm syndrome- dodging the connections between sexism, ageism and speciesism

The 90 previous posts on this blog were about fish in Memphis, TN.   As my time has been consumed with completing my PhD dissertation recently, I'm focused on the larger systemic problems that contextualize our relationships to other taxa and species, like fish.

Apparently, the world just dodged a bullet over Syria. The most interesting part of the last week about that dodge was that perhaps the world doesn't want "strong men" anymore. We all just want peace. And yet, most of us haven't quite let go of our fantasies that we can have it all- or be connected to someone who does. That is what I want to write about in tis post. Not the having but the fate of the have nots and the glimmer of hope I have tonight that all is not lost.

Other people have a human partner. I have my dissertation and my cat.

The following are some notes that won't go into my dissertation on the relationships between Stockholm Syndrome, sexism, ageism and speciesism. Stockholm Syndrome, refers to the empathy evoked for bank robbers in 1973 when they captured employees. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

As the dominant species, it's interesting to consider all the ways, as a culture, we have come to identify with the captors of this culture, whom are more powerful than the dying cultures and species that are collateral damage of the Anthropocene.

I would say the "bank robbers" these days are the large corporatized banks bank rolling extractive industries at the expense of Indigenous Peoples, people of color, women and other animals, many of whom are just fodder for a greedy few humans. That may be critiqued as classist, even, socialist. I don't intend it that way. The robbers I have in mind have simply taken greed and selfishness to an extreme. I accept that a measure of dominance and hierarchy is natural to most human species. Just not to the extent we see it operating today.

Yesterday, I wrote on FB in response to a recent article on Feminism and advancing the careers of young Western academic women:

"Ageism is a very serious problem for men and women and terrible for the economy because so much skill & wisdom is tied up with older people. This article is excellent for women up to the age of 35. It ignores the darkest side of the feminist mystique, which is how both men and women deal with ageism in relation to women. The competition not only with sexist standards from men but the often poisonous competition from other women who discount anyone, for example from the baby boomer generation is devastating. This is too complex a problem to address in a comment but it is not only totally ignored in this article but implicitly, women over child-bearing age have been utterly erased by the content because they are irrelevant and inimical to it. However, I promise you, every woman struggling today with the implications of being young, and attractive while ignoring how sexism is tied up with ageism will struggle twice as much tomorrow with the professional implications of being old and unattractive. Thank goodness for Diana Nyad."

The article I referenced, from the Chronicle for Higher Education, was: http://chronicle.com/article/Where-Feminism-Went-Wrong/141293/

This morning in the ecodialog, artist- educator Beverly Naidus posted links to two recent articles on racism:

http://thesunmagazine.org/issues/452/keep_off_the_grasslands   

http://www.policymic.com/articles/56733/are-mainstream-environmental-groups-keeping-racism-alive

My response was:

"Thank you for bringing these articles to our attention. I almost wrote a post yesterday on racism, sexism, ageism and the environment that might have over-lapped some of these points. It was on my mind because of an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, which I linked on my FB page. I've also been writing about racism in my dissertation and refer to some of the same information about Yellowstone referenced in the Sun article. It's difficult for me to take time to write at length here about this now because of my disseration but I do think it's a critical issue.

In Memphis, for Fish Story, I worked very hard to engage the inner city and found it very challenging. Memphis is interesting about racism because the demographic is so blatantly physicalized. However, I think it is very hard for most people to see the connections, no matter how blatant, between environmental ethics and environmental damage because the connection between social data & hard science is often subtle and complex. These articles do a good job of making those connections. 

I've tried to reference these points in my diss. writing, without making it the main focus, only because there are so many related ideas I reference. One of the points I do try to make clearly, however, is over assumed patterns of dominance that are very intractable. As I referenced on my FB page, the painful dynamics of competition (generally) are rarely honestly confronted. I think that plays powerfully into a discourse on racism/ sexism/ ageism. I believe there is a privileging in our society of a very narrow, narcissistic view of the acceptable messenger for critical ideas: white, thin, youngish, preferably male or male identified. I reference that as Stockholm Syndrome."

It is almost 4:AM now in Maine, where I'm writing the end of my final draft for my dissertation. Earlier,  I was corresponding with one of my diss advisors, about the context for my thinking. I wrote about my thinking:

" (I argue that) ... the Anthropocene is a closed system model in which "nature" doesn't stand a chance. ... If it's true that the Anthropocene is a closed system, we need to erase one set of information and do the work of introducing another set of information to change the entropic nature of the system we've created."

The erasure I'd like to see, is the notion that humans, and top dog humans at that, are entitled to the center of the world. Only because in the end, that doesn't even work for the top dogs. With the suggestion that the world may not have to go to WW III to control Assad, that none of us can stomach one more strong man, there is hope for all the other dysfunctions in life.

And with that, I'll return to my diss writing and then to sleep. I am now writing my conclusion, the discussion of what makes a complex adaptive model to effect trigger point theory as aesthetic activism in the Anthropocene.

Walking with Fish in Memphis

"Many practitioners of ecological art use walking as a strategy to either engage audiences or to research a site. It is an attractive methodology because it is simple, economical and heuristically inclusive. Richard Long, a British walking artist, whose practice began in 1967 with an iconic work, “A line made by walking,” in which he traced and retraced his steps until he had worn a line in the grass field, close to London, is often cited by other artists as an inspiration to their practice, that often includes references to sound. Long has referenced the importance of listening and hearing during his walks. On his website, part of his statement refers to, “The music of stones.” - excerpt from the third chapter of my dissertation 2013

When I was 11, I walked for hours in the woods near my home, not far from the Hudson River, every afternoon, after school, with my dog, in all seasons. I was trying to learn to walk soundlessly on dead leaves, as I imagined Hiawatha might. Sound has a taste, a smell, a tactile quality on the skin. Each season the leaves had a different sound when I failed to be soundless. Crackly in the Fall, soft in winter, tiny in Spring, warm in Summer.

When I was 18, every morning en route to Parsons School of Design, in four inch heels, I walked from Grand Central Station to my first class, practicing what I learned in Joseph Pilates Studio, moving thru the crowds swiftly, smoothly but balanced, aware of each detail of my environment and synchronizing every part of my body without any extraneous movement, breathing deeply and rhythmically. I didn't know that was a performance.

When I was twenty-two, directing my own street theatre group, the American Ritual Theatre, I watched my dancers move slowly, deliberately through Eucalyptus trees on a far ridge East of San Diego that was still undeveloped country, passing between the pale trunks like fluid vertical ghosts between pylons. That was a performance without an audience. Another time, dressed all in silver and wearing silver body paint, we walked slowly thru the streets of the city of San Diego.

From 1990-2000, I walked the paths of the Trigger Point Garden in the Ghost Nets restoration, learning the sounds of each microhabitat as it gathered entropy and adapted to itself.

When I walked the same paths yesterday morning, with my sister, we remembered what the site looked like when I began: a plant here and there on barren slopes while we passed beneath boughs of spruce and dogwood and heard the distant sound of the tide. In the sound of the tide, I imagined fish swimming.

In my mind, as my pages dissertation add up, I walk the Wolf River, from the Ghost River to the Mississippi river, hearing the unfamiliar sounds I recall from May in Memphis and marking in my mind, "here," "here," and "here." Here, would be trigger points to intervene and reconnect the broken pieces of habitat. There, I would hear fish swimming upstream.

View from Ghost Nets

Back in Maine, I am meditating on how the waters I canoed in Memphis, on the Wolf River, are connected to the waters I study in the Gulf of Maine, where I live. I am thinking about how the Ghost Nets project, that restored a former town dump, is related to the goals of Fish Story, that is concerned with restoring the relationship between the uplands of the Mississippi River, the third largest watershed in the world, the Mississippi River Basin and the Gulf of Mexico, formerly,
one of the most productive estuarine systems in the world.
The story starts and ends with water. Fish are the narrators.

In Ghost Nets and Fish Story the bottom line and connecting element is always water, whether fresh or salt, particularly in the shoreline littoral zone.

I walk in the garden several times a day to take a break in my work and observe small changes. My favorite time is always twilight.

June 19, the first Agnes roses began to bloom in the East quadrant of the garden.

Throughout the process of monitoring the restoration of the Ghost Nets site, the most rewarding experiences have been about the volunteer surprises, like this Lady's Slipper in late May.

In the evening light details of the restored salt marsh seem more important than the functional results of restoration.

The uplands riparian zone is a complex pattern of paths created to study the microhabitats in various weather conditions. But they also need tending to view the relationships between plant communities.

By June 1, garden details could be followed for the interactions between varieties of life.

Post - Fish Story Memphis

I am back in Maine now, organizing, assembling and making sense of the documentation of our experiences with Fish Story in Memphis, which I will begin posting here later in the week. As with everything in nature, including mental creativity, there has to be some fallow time for fertility to be restored.

Canoeing the Wolf RIver, Dr. Eugene Turner, guest blogger for Fish Story

The Canoes of the Memphis Social(s)

            A woman emerges from the darkened room, turns around to cast back a whispered ‘I love you, Bye!’, closes the door softly, and scampers off barefoot -- lightly thumping the wood floor -- gathers sandals, and zips downstairs and away. An old man smiles at the youth, the opportunity to care, and good use of precious time. The morning’s first restorative light spears glide across the room. Time to nourish oneself and get in motion.

            We are here as part of the Fish Story team for ‘Memphis Social’ that opens in two days. We have been reconnoitering the area, beginning with a canoe trip on the Wolf River May 4, then installing artwork for 5 days, giving one workshop at Crosstown Arts Gallery, and plan to attend the opening Friday night, and organize an international webinar on Saturday, May 11.

Dr. Eugene Turner and Aviva Rahmani with 8 guides from the Wolf River Conservancy

            The Wolf River cradles the southeast of Memphis, Tennessee. It drains the high ground above the present day Mississippi River, opposite the low ground of the present-day State of Arkansas. Ninety-five million years ago it debouched directly into the salty Mississippi Embayment, then an extension of the Gulf of Mexico. This was 60 million years before the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide concentrations dropped below 350 ppm, after which it was cool enough for ice sheets to form, and long before our human ancestors could exist as forest dwellers, which was about 6 to 8 million years ago. When sea level dropped because this global cooling, the embayment filled in with sediments to form the Mississippi delta lowlands. 

            Whap!...our canoe bumps another cypress knee. We push off and it hits another on the opposite side; the current moves us sideways against a tree buttress, and I briefly consider abandoning ship, lest we capsize in six inches of water. The paddle can be useful at both ends of the canoe, but if we both pull strongly on the same side at the same time, then …we’re with in with whatever fish are there. Sometimes we back up because the various openings are not wide enough or spaced apart enough to allow passage. We drag on the bottom. The canoe behind bumps into us. Then we turn in front of them to avoid a log. And so it goes for 10 minutes until we find a wider channel; and then it starts again.

            The water is high, or we’d be aground in a 10 mile wide swath of recovering swamp.  I say ‘recovering, because it was cut over, farmed, channelized and burnt many times over the last 200 years. Birds, snakes, bear, fish, raccoon, deer and the occasional bison and elk were hunted down as the European-based eastern seaboard culture moved west like termites chewing their way through wood, forming channels and burrows in the eatable valleys. These are mostly cypress, tupelo, and gum trees, but there are also splotches of marsh with bull tongue, waterlily, grasses, and reeds. Life will not be denied, in one form or another – it’s just that the place may silt in, foreign plants take over, birds disappear, and game be sparse. The largest cypress trees now reach up about 80 to 100 ft, but are only 4 to 5 ft wide. The record cypress in Mississippi is 15 ft. in diameter and the largest in the US is 17.5 feet in diameter. The biggest might have been 2000 years old. Gone now, for sure.

            Two of the 8 guides from the Wolf River Conservancy are behind mothering us along like a duet of parenting ducks teaching their newly hatched. One of them explored this section og the river  earlier this week to mark a new trail. Henry comes up from behind to joke that he has picked up the orange markers so that we can use them to mark the way forward, but wants to know “which way is forward?”. And it is not always clear where the trail is in either direction, either. Last year a helicopter picked up a pair of lost bayou paddlers. More people signed up for today’s trip, but the weather forecast discouraged them and they weren’t at the launch site when we left. But the temperature turned out to be agreeable and there is no rain. It’s cool enough to sweat, but warm enough to hold a paddle, and even to dry out if we tip over. The canoe needs only 2-3 inches of water and we are mostly in less than 1 ft of water. Some of the guides are in kayaks that are even closer to the water. Some of us are in wool (good if you fall in) and others in cotton (not so good). One has the ‘Full Monty’ – a neoprene diving suit from ankles to neck. The view from an airplane must be like a cluster of 11 dots moving across the green and brown, shivering, vibrating and mixing like water striders. If you haven’t seen them, water striders ‘walk’ on water supported by surface tension, with ripples emanating from each of its four legs. The water is muddy from eroded silts and clays. The paddle sometimes digs into sand, which would be bright white streaks when water is low and the surrounding land is restored.

            “We”, the tourists, includes the artist, Aviva Rahmani, and me, her team-member scientist who has signed up for what we call ‘art camp’. Aviva has the moxie to set this in motion and we try to help out. Another team member, Jim White, a paleo-ecologist from Boulder who is intimately involved in climate change programs is not here. The guides are from the thriving local canoeing club of the Wolf River Conservancy and are all a half-century old, or more. By virtue of their enthusiasm alone, they are helping reclaim, rehabilitate, re-discover, restore, and just enjoy what this place is and might become again. Mary is a computer-savy health specialist. The SoJourner brothers are former policeman and fireman. The names and specialists of the others are lost in a swirl of shadows and puddles, and I regret not writing them down, but we were in the midst of greenery, balancing, hunger, lightness, bugs and laughter. A camera does not work; cell phones are useless (thank goodness!), and the twists and turns around a thousand missed and a hundred un-missed obstacles kept us occupied.

            We stop at some high ground to chew and converse, point and laugh, and smile and inquire about each other. They are proud to be friends and find joy being on the water with a light touch. Some beaver mounds are discussed, the red-berried Ohio Buckeye pointed out, and… is it an eagle or an osprey nest over there?  Two of them?  And abandoned duck decoys – the flotsam and jetsam of modern life, like a plastic bottle, some loose twine, and plastic bag are picked up, but there is little of it. By the time we pull out to clean up and return home, we are tired, glad to survive and say quite honestly how much fun the work was, and that maybe we’d be a little sore tomorrow. Say, could you send some of those pictures? 

            Restoration in the broad sense of people, place and other, may be something like this canoe trip: Exploration, capsizes, led by both experience and chance, exchanging the lead to follow, tutoring and yelling, and with some companionship against the stream of dysfunctional pressure to subdue random acts of love, kindness, fun and exertion. The way back will be opaque in our collective memory for lack of examples, extinct species, and common goals. Moving forward with the current, we may get back with stiff muscles, but also with appreciations for how we need to just a little amount of gear to travel well, that the arch of similitude between our ancestral sensual lightness with the world and today can be couched simultaneously in awe and practicality.  But more on that later.

Fish Story progress report

Eight days before I leave for Memphis. I have 30 pages in a dedicated notebook, each committed to a different aspect of the work there, from the participant list at Crosstown Arts Tuesday May 7 to a list of what needs to be packed.

I spent most of today tracing the path of the Wolf River. It was in preparation for painting on a 12 yard x 9'  roll of black paper that should arrive tomorrow. I also worked on drawing the metallic shapes of the fish I'll be cutting out and attaching to the paper. It's wondrous to study all the subtle differences between species, to read about their natural history and infer the intelligence in the dead eyes of the trophies held up by fishermen.

Detail of mock up sketch for installation at the Memphis College of Art opening May 10, 2013

I'm stepping up my training for the canoe trek, having strengthened my foot that went out a few weeks ago. I can take more weights with my reps and seem to have more stamina. But I'm considering buying a cheap waterproof camera for the trip in case I capsize.

My singing was coming along until about a week ago, when I did a recording of the song I'll sing at Crosstown.  I've slacked off a bit since then and need to step up my practice time.

The webcast is coming together with the right participants for May 11 and my thinking is beginning to self-organize. I'm thinking about it now as less of a summit than a conversation with whomever is there about observations. I imagine much will change, however between now and then.

Last weekend, I designed some T-shirts for one of the Rockethub gifts, a limited edition of $75. each in either black or white and sold the first one to the artist Deborah Kotaka. I'm finding it difficult to keep priming the pump to raise money while creating the work but this was fun to do.

http://www.rockethub.com/projects/20146-fish-story#description-tab

My assistant, Daisy Morton has been following up our contacts in Memphis, to be sure I let everyone know what we're up to and we all have a chance to connect and share our thinking about the region. I'm looking forward to the entire experience.

Fish Story numbers on the eve of Earth Day

Earth Day http://www.earthday.org/2013/ is April 22. We have a ways to go to make Earth Day an event that reflects a realistic response to the anthropocene. There's hope but it will be a challenge for us all.

This past week, I attended an event at the Temple of Understanding at the United Nations, on the crisis- emergency of global sustainability. My take away, was that the scale and imminence of our environmental crisis is even more hazardous than I'd previously thought: that without emergency intervention over the next few years, by 2050, most of the human population (up to 8.5 billion people) would likely perish from inter-related exigencies.

Those figures are based on 2009 and 2011 calculations respectively from Kevin Anderson, Deputy Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, 2009 and Professor Joachim Schellnhuber, Director, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Two of the presenters Thursday, were Ian Dunlop and Tapio Kanninen, both members of the Club of Rome. Both are optimistic about the human prognosis- if we act in emergency mode.

Slide from Ian Dunlop's presentation at the UN Temple of Understanding.

I discussed with them how ecological art, as Fish Story could contribute to the solution. My thinking behind Fish Story has been that if people are stuck on these massive problems, to just focus on fish. People care about fish on their dinner plate and at the end of a hook. Fish bring us to water quality which depends on habitat and that comes to restoration. Fish Story is a restoration plan based on working backwards from global warming to the individual. That is where the promise of empowerment lies: in individuals, working as part of larger communities, who can re-green our planet.

April 8, 2013 I had asked our Fish Story team member James White the following question:

if we had a time frame for when we might totally turn over to alternatives and the carbon "cost" of that time lag, how much might that "cost" be "off set"  by how much potential restoration to mitigate the impacts until we're totally off fossil fuels? For example, if the total turn over is 2030, how many millions of acres of increased green (forests, wetlands, prairies, etc- even increased tundra as the ice melts, despite the loss of albido?) would be required to offset the carbon impact of using that much fossil fuel (I know it would probably be astronomical but I'm curious whether there could be even a ball park assessment.)?

These were his numbers:

On Apr 8, 2013, at 12:13 PM, James White wrote:

There are no simple answers to this, but here's the best I can do:

We emit globally about 10 BMT/yr of  carbon (billion metric tons per year) in FF burning and deforestation. In 20 years, that would mean about 200 BMTs.

There are about 550 BMT of carbon in all plants above ground, and 1,500 BMT below ground (in soil carbon), so you need to add about 2% to the living global biosphere every year to offset the above. In 20 years that would mean you need to add 36% to the living biosphere to offset FF's and deforestation, or you'd need 1/3rd more biosphere in 2030 to do the offset. Its less if you can figure out a way to speed up the transfer of carbon form the living bits to the soil carbon pool.

The obvious problem is where do you find 1/3rd more land, nutrients, water, etc. to make this work? Neither easy nor clear…

Jim

Finding that 1/3 is what Fish Story will start doing, in Memphis, in just two weeks.

Dunlop is the former senior executive of Royal Dutch Shell, past Chair of the Australian Coal Association and Australian Greenhouse Office Experts group on Emissions Trading 1998-2000, current chair of the Australian National wildlife Collection Foundation and Deputy Convener of the Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil, advising on governance and sustainability.

Kanninen is a Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the Project on Sustainable Global Governance at the Ralphe Bunche Institute for International Studies at the graduate Center of the City University of New York and past Chief of the Policy Planning Unit of the UN Department of Political Affairs (1998- 2005) and Head of the Secretariat of Kofi Annan's five Summits with regional Organizations. He recently authored the Crisis of Global Sustainability http://crisisofglobalsustainability.com/about-the-author/.