The Climate-narrative Ecosystem is Changing

Image by Craion

At the end of 2024, I published a “year in review” for The Climate According to Life, sharing some of the year’s encounters, events and posts. Now I want to broaden the lens to consider the climate narrative at large. How has the climate according to life, or what we could call a “biotic climate understanding,” or if you want to be more scientific—”a complete biophysical analysis with the explicit recognition of land degradation as a human driver of climate change"—fared in the mainstream climate narrative?

The short answer: not well. As an example, I recently came across an article entitled Even NASA Can't Explain The Alarming Surge in Global Heat We're Seeing. Since June 2023, the planet has heated well beyond model predictions, and scientists can’t figure out why. The article quotes Robert Vautard, of the IPCC, saying, "It is difficult to explain this at the moment. We lack a bit of perspective.” Perhaps a hint to that lack of perspective lies in the title of the piece: Even NASA Can’t Explain…, the assumption being that the climate is something ideally seen from space, through the vaulted gaze of computer models. As important as that view is, there is another perspective to be had, which is from the ground up, with the recognition that Earth’s climate isn’t simply a physical event that surrounds the globe, but is also a biological event held up and regulated by living processes, many of which are too complex and poorly understood to be confidently modeled. From this perspective, the natural question is: could the broadscale destruction of the biosphere and its water cycles have something to do with the heat surge? The article, typical of mainstream climate coverage, never asks.

You can’t really blame the journalist. Journalists seek out officials and experts. If the official expertise isn’t talking about something, they won’t either. Unless, of course, they decide to dig deeper.

As I’ve written before, In 1979 the World Meteorological Organization held it’s first World Climate Conference, with a keynote address that began by summing up two recognized modes by which humans effect the climate, CO2 emissions and land degradation. “We now change the radiative processes of the atmosphere and perhaps its circulation by emissions of the products of our industrial and agricultural society. We now change the boundary processes (such as water cycles) between earth and atmosphere by our use of the land.” 45 years later, however, only CO2 is treated as a cause of climate change, with the average citizen still unaware of how the degradation of landscapes and associated water cycles is adding to the problem.

But that may finally be about to change. There is a growing ferment for a broader, more biocentric view rising from below. I got a sense of it the other day when I read a post by Ali Bin Shahid, who writes the Substack newsletter Re-genesis. Shahid had written his own “year in review,” but with a more personal glimpse into his thoughts and apprehensions as he launched himself into this topic. He lays out how he got started, saying:

“I wasn’t trying to change landscapes or unlock nature’s hidden mechanics. I was just…noticing things.

I’d sit outside after a storm, watching the way the sky broke open over certain patches of land while other areas stayed bone dry. I’d see patterns that didn’t quite make sense—trees pulling clouds inward or rainfall lingering strangely over dense forests.

And I’d wonder—“Why does this happen here… but not there?”

That’s how it started.

Think about it. He started by simply noticing things. There is something hugely powerful in that, perhaps because it’s so universal. Anyone can do it, and more and more people are. There certainly is a lot to notice. Once you step out of the CO2-only reduction, and acknowledge the role of living things and systems in making climate, you begin to see it everywhere. Soil becomes a living, terrestrial, climate-moderating sponge, trees rise as cooling, cloud-making fountains of water vapor and rain-seeds, ecosystems attain a sense of ballast and gravity as you realize how powerfully they maintain their microclimates. It’s not that CO2 goes away, it’s that the picture widens, complexifies. The relationships unveil themselves as the climate comes to life before your eyes.

And you begin to ask questions. Shahid didn’t start his site because he thought he had the answers, but because, as he writes, “I couldn’t stop asking the questions.”

Noticing things and asking questions. Isn’t that at the heart of human learning? We are generally expected to wait for the experts, perched high on select panels, to interpret reality for us, to tell us what’s what. And there is certainly a place for that expertise. But what happens when the citizen begins noticing things and asking the questions? Then, I’d argue, a fundamental shift is underway.

Of course, noticing things and asking questions leads to a desire for answers and solutions. Alpha Lo, who writes The Climate-Water Project, read my series on meteorologist Millan Millan, who showed how land degradation was destroying the summer storms so vital to the regional water cycles of the Western Mediterranean Basin. Lo wrote further on Millan’s work, and then took the next step by heading to Portugal to develop a project aimed at restoring the rains of the Iberian Peninsula. Here he describes standing on a mountain in Portugal and watching a rain cloud literally evaporate around him due to the lack of respiring vegetation.

“A hundred kilometers away to the north, I could see a thunderous cloud formation rising like a sandstorm. I watched rapt as it raced across the landscape. It took fifteen engrossing minutes to reach me. When it arrived, the winds caused the eucalyptus trees to groan, and bend back and forth at precarious angles. Close up the clouds became patches of fog sprinting by. I could almost touch them. Then rushing a mile past the mountain top, the clouds began to vaporize, disappearing like a Cheshire Cat smile. The heat of Algarve was evaporating the clouds and their potential to create precipitation.”

I love how visceral his description is. Global climate models can help us see global circulations the naked eye can’t, but models are still models. They’re not the thing itself. To really see the climate means experiencing it, and that begins with nothing more technological than the senses.

The effect is magnetic. Lo’s effort, called the Restore Iberian Rain Project, isn’t the only one underway. I got a note from a master stoneworker on the Greek island of Patmos, who is also working to restore the water cycle there based on Millan’s insights. I can’t help but see something poetic in a master stoneworker, who restores ancient Greek stone architecture, working to restore water cycles on the legendary island of Patmos. Yes, there’s a lot of science to all this, but there are other threads running through as well, threads drawing on beauty, spirit and imagination.

Wherever I look I see such growth and energy. Biodiversity for a Livable Climate, perhaps the first citizen organization to take up the biotic climate understanding, toiled in relative obscurity for a decade. But now, as I wrote in July, thought leaders like Richard Heinberg are advancing their perspective. Even the New York Times and Christian Science Monitor have highlighted their work on Miyawaki, or mini, forests. An organization they cofounded with Jon Schull, called the EcoRestoration Alliance, is already helping to develop restoration projects around the world, such as community woodlots in Uganda and watershed restoration along the Panama Canal.

And in just four months the second Global Earth Repair Convergence will take place in Port Townsend, Washington, bringing together scientists, artists, indigenous people, community workers, farmers and more from around the world to take on the task of restoring the Earth’s living climate.

Is it all going on below the radar of mainstream media? Sure. These things take time. There’s a lot of education still to do, and due to well-funded climate denial campaigns, there’s a certain amount of suspicion to overcome. But like it’s subject, life, this movement is self-generating. Roots are spreading and it can only grow. Eventually, mainstream journalism will take notice. At that point, the narrative is generating its own rain.

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