Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Johan Rockström returns to the TEDGlobal three years after his talk on environmental development to talk about the — hopeful! — future of our environment in crisis.

Johan Rockstrom: Let the environment guide our development

Life in the Holocene is full of problems, but it’s not without unexpected turns of resilience and promise. Rockström grasps a piece of metal on stage, explaining that this magoye ripper seems insignificant but is one of the most important pieces of technologies in the Savannah region, where it’s used instead of the plow. It’s an unobtrusive knife that simply opens up the land, copying nature by degrading carbon. A small, elegant innovation like this can solve grand challenges, says Rockstrom, and this is where we must turn.

We humans are in the driving seat of global environmental change, says Rockström. Today, we are already seeing the enormous impacts and costs of global climate change on our prosperity. But we also have the knowledge and resources to seize the opportunity for growth and development

But these effects and the movement to protect against it have only just begun. It’s the environmental aperitif. Says Rockström, there are two giants standing in our way:

1. The social momentum is just beginning — but with force. Four, 5, 6 billion people in the world will soon be in the developing world with the purchasing power of the average European. It’s positive social change, but a challenge nonetheless.

2. So far Mother Earth has been very forgiving, subsidizing our economy with bioecological resilience. But in the last twenty years we’ve begun to get nature’s invoices.

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

These giants are colliding. Quickly. As Rockström says, “We’ve moved from a small world on a big planet to a big world on a small planet.” He cites Hurricane Sandy, forest fires in Russia, the collapse of the arctic jet stream. And all of these disasters feed back into the global economy. Every finance minister, says Rockström, should be worried about preserving biospheres, with our global tipping points.

To emphasize his point, Rockström gives a watershed example from 2012: Greenland, a once permanent white ice sheet, reflects 90 percent of light from the sun back to space, acting as a massive planetary cooler. But for two weeks in July last year, for the first time ever, all of Greenland was melting. This tiny shift from a white ice surface to a slightly darker liquid surface corresponded to 300 exajoules of energy.

What we need, says Rockström, is a new framework that unifies all nations toward sustainable development. In particular, we need to work toward six goals:

1. Energy for thriving lives and livelihoods
2. Sustainable food security
3. Secure sustainable water
4. Universal clean energy
5. Healthy and protective ecosystems
6. Governance for sustainable societies

The key is a new way of looking at the intersection of the economic, social and environmental spheres. Right now the latter two operate in the service of economic growth; what we need is to nest economic needs within society, and nest that within the environment.

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Rockström feels strongly that the only options are not to say “the party’s over,” or to hide your head in the sand. There’s another option, and it’s already taking place. Ten years back, the percentage of our energy use from solar and wind was fairly small — but it’s scaling. According to Rockström, today, in a country like Germany, 50 percent of the energy is solar. For the food challenge facing our growing population, he says, we need a combination of already existing innovations: rainwater harvesting, sustainable sanitation and conservation agriculture. That’s where innovations like the magoye ripper come in. And finally, consider the Great Barrier Reef, which 10 years ago was in crisis, and now has been transformed through governance.

Yes, we are facing huge forces. But we have the knowledge and thinking required to design a safe and good Anthropocene — by intertwining the world with planet Earth in social economic harmony.

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Greg Asner closes Session 2 of TEDGlobal 2013, “Those Flying Things,” with a very different vision of the Earth. We spend a lot of time, money and resources conserving nature, yet, as Asner points out, we know absurdly little about it. Which is why, in an effort to advance our knowledge about biodiversity, he founded the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO). The CAO uses laser scanning systems and two imaging spectrometers to image the Earth in 3D, capturing landscapes in extremely sharp chemical and biological detail. The CAO, in essence, captures the building blocks of ecosystems.

Asner asks and answers three questions about his work:

1. How do we manage our carbon reserves in tropical forests?

Tropical forests contain vast amounts of carbon stocks, and they need to stay there to prevent global warming from getting worse. Carbon emission levels from deforestation are now so high that emissions equal all the carbon emissions from the global transportation sector. The challenge for governments is targeting exactly where the carbon is in all these forests. In this case, CAO basically serves as a very high-tech accounting system, cutting the forests into millions of slices, mapping landscapes by the density of its carbon stocks.

Mapping the speed of CO2 uptake by rainforest trees. Photo: Carnegie Airborne Observatory

2. How do we prepare for change in a place like the Amazon rainforest?

The Amazon was so dry in 2010 that the main stem of the Amazon River itself dried up, to devastating effect. CAO imaging was able to reveal that the droughts were causing widespread damage in remote areas, and that climate change seemed to be forcing species to migrate across vast distances. In addition, CAO allowed Asner and his team to digitally remove the forest, exposing clandestine gold miners.

Mapping Amazon gold mining and deforestation. / Photo: Carnegie Airborne Observatory

3. How do we manage biodiversity on the planet and help the ecosystem?

With so many species under protection, park managers are under duress to manage systems in ways that can support multiple species. Fires and elephants alike can take their toll on parks and have detrimental cascading effects for many species. How can they be managed? In response Asner and his team are mapping every tree in the Savanna, then seeing which trees have been pushed over by animals. This allows park managers to make better decisions and pinpoint where species need the most help.

Mapping African savanna tree height. / Photo: Carnegie Airborne Observatory

Asner believes strongly that technology is the key to helping us answer the question: How can we save places we know so little about? — and contribute to someday making the question obsolete.

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Writer and political activist George Monbiot (with only three days’ notice, says Bruno!) joins Session 1: “Moments of Truth.” As a young man, Monbiot went off on adventures in the wild as an investigative ecology journalist. When he returned after six years to his life in Britain, he found himself inundated with the mundane, scratching at the walls of his life. He was ecologically bored.

Monbiot had almost accepted his fate as banal Briton when he discovered rewilding, a conservation movement that has come to popularity in the past two decades, and which drastically shifted Monbiot’s perspective of ecological boredom. One of the primary goals of rewilding is the mass restoration of ecosystems, and one way in which that can happen is trophic cascading, in which animals at the top of the food chain affect processes all the way down the food chain.

Monbiot’s gives a classic example: In 1995, wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park, 70 years after they had been exterminated. Wolves take life, but they also giveth. An unfathomable cascade followed: Deer populations went down, so streamsides and riversides flourished again; trees on the riverbanks quadrupled in height in just six years; bare valleys reverted to aspen and willow; birds and beavers alike flourished; beavers’ dams created habitats for otters, muskrats, fish, frogs and reptiles; and on and on.

And a glorious, unexpected side effect: The wolves altered the rivers themselves. The return of trees reduced the rate of erosion and narrowed the width of the streams, meanwhile creating a greater diversity of pools and riffles. Even on the hillsides, vegetation has begun to recover. The Yellowstone wolves demonstrated that a single species, when allowed to pursue its natural behavior, can transform an entire ecosystem.

Consider the example of whales in the southern oceans. Though the Japanese government has argued that whaling boosts the population of krill and fish, the opposite appears to be true. Declining numbers of whales have an adverse ripple effect on the ocean’s ecosystem. Whales produce an iron-rich manure — “fecal blooms,” as scientists call them — that fertilizes plant plankton; more plant plankton means more zooplankton; more plankton means more food for fish and krill. And, Monbiot suggests, just as wolves have altered the behavior of the Yellowstone rivers, more whales could have changed the composition of the atmosphere for the better, since the plankton fertilized by them absorb carbon and remove it from the atmosphere. It would seem, says Monbiot, there is more and more evidence to support the Gaia hypothesis — that the Earth functions as a coherent and self-regulating system — from an ecological perspective.

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

But what are the limits to rewilding? In Monbiot’s view, it’s not about controlling nature but letting it find its own way. There are a few necessary actions, like reintroducing absent plants and animals and pulling down fences, but in his view rewilding is not a teleological progression, with a correct endpoint or ideal ecosystem. “It lets nature decide,” he says.

But according to Monbiot, the benefits of rewilding are beyond just ecological. Human life itself should be rewilded. This entails not the de-civilizing of modern life, nor the shedding or regression of technology, but a reintroduction of adventure and surprise back into everyday life. Why only focus on wolves, bears, lynx, bison, moose and beaver, all of which are spreading rapidly across Europe already? What about megafauna? Elephant-adapted trees? Lions in Trafalgar Square? “Why shouldn’t all of us have a Serengeti on our doorsteps?” he asks, to laughs and applause.

Monbiot cites moments from his experience — seeing an osprey return to a local estuary for the first time in 400 years, making eye contact with a dolphin as it leapt over his kayak — as awe-inspiring, reintroducing him to “that high, wild note of exaltation after a drought of sensation that had persisted since early adulthood,” a drought he had previously accepted as an inevitable matter of growing up. But the world is much more interesting, surprising and complex than it seems, and drudgery doesn’t have to be our only experience. Rewild, says Monbiot, and “our silent spring could be replaced by a raucous summer.”

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Steve Howard has spent his life working toward sustainability. So on the TEDGlobal 2013 stage, he explains why he wanted to work for, of all places, Ikea.

Howard, who now holds the delightful title of Chief Sustainability Officer at the Scandinavian furniture behemoth, says that the company is dedicated to sustainability because of three numbers:

• 3. The number of people, in billions, who will be coming out of poverty by 2030 and joining the global middle class as consumers.
• 6. The number of degrees centigrade that we’re headed toward in global warming. We are currently at less than one degree.
• 12. The number of cities in the world that had a million people two generations ago. Now, there are 500 cities with a population of a million people or more.

Says Howard, “Sustainability has gone from a nice-to-do to a must-do.”

The vast majority of people care deeply about sustainability, but are used to products that are good for Planet Earth being, well, not that good. Think of that expensive, rough recycled toilet paper.  Howard urges companies to focus on creating beautiful, affordable and, of course, functional sustainable products.

One area where Ikea is making strides is in the light bulb department. Ikea is committed to, by 2016, stocking only LED bulbs, which use 85% less electricity than incandescent bulbs. ”LEDs are the next best thing to daylight,” says Howard, saying that these bulbs can last for up to 20 years.

Ikea is also focusing in on materials, from what’s used to make their products to the food they serve in the cafeteria. By 2015, Ikea plans to use 100% better cotton. At the same time, they’re working toward responsible forestry, with 35 million hectares of forests certified so far.

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

In their 300 stores around the world, Ikea is aiming for energy independence, thanks to 300,000 solar panels in addition to wind farms.

“By 2020, we will produce more renewable energy than we use,” says Howard. ”Renewable energy is a good thing for the CFO, not just the sustainability guy.”

Overall on the TED stage, Howard urges companies to think more about sustainability — and for consumers to reward those that do.

“Vote with your wallets. Be a discerning consumer – search out the companies that are acting on this,” says Howard. “If we get it right, we can make sustainability affordable for many people and not just a luxury for the few.”

The vast tail of a Southern right whale, photographed near Argentina in 2004.

Ask photojournalists to name a peer they admire, and Sebastião Salgado’s name is sure to crop up. The Brazilian is renowned for the long-term projects he undertakes, devoting years at a time to documenting the story of a particular people or the evolution of a certain place. Sebastião Salgado: The silent drama of photographyAs he describes in the talk he gave at TED2013, his attention to detail and his personal attachment to his subjects caused health problems that nearly killed him.

Thankfully, he didn’t give up. His most recent project is Genesis, which he describes as “my love letter to the planet” and for which he spent eight years traveling the world to photograph humans, animals and nature in their native glory. (To read more details about Salgado’s process, see this rather lovely Q&A with TED photographer Ryan Lash.) The resulting black-and-white images include the astonishing shot, above, of a Southern right whale, which he photographed in the Valdés Peninsula in Argentina in 2004. Together, the series forms the focus of a book (including a vast, two-volume edition that costs $9,000 and comes complete with a wooden stand designed by the Japanese architect Tadao Ando; mere mortals can pick up a hardcover version for $69.99). There’s also a documentary, Shade and Light, filmed by Salgado’s son and Wim Wenders, and exhibitions in cities around the world.

The scale is appropriate. This is truly breathtaking work. And, for all that the scenes Salgado captures will likely feel alien to most of us, the images are imbued with no less than the spirit of humanity. If that sounds overblown, seriously, check these out:

An iceberg photographed on the Antarctic Peninsula. Note the “castle tower,” at top right, apparently carved in the ice by wind erosion. (2005.)

Waura Indians fish in the Puilanga Lake near their village in the Upper Xingu region of Brazil’s Mato Grosso state. (2005.)

The Mursi and the Surma women in Ethiopia are, Salgado says, the last women in the world to wear lip plates. It’s unclear precisely why or how this custom evolved, but it is a mark of women of high birth. (2007.)

Teureum is the leader of the Mentawai clan, which lives on Siberut Island in West Sumatra. The shaman is preparing a filter for sago. (2008.)

Women of the Zo’é village of Towari Ypy in Brazil. (2009.)

Look, ma! No hands! Salgado photographed these chinstrap penguins on icebergs between the Zavodovski and Visokoi islands in the South Sandwich Islands, near Antarctica. (2009.)

Shot from Navajo Native American territory, this breathtaking image captures the junction of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers, at the gateway to the Grand Canyon National Park, in Arizona in the United States. (2010.)

Light streams across an elephant disappearing into the bush. Kafue National Park, Zambia. (2010.)

The Nenet people, living deep within the Yamal peninsula in Siberia, inside the Arctic Circle. (2011.)

According to EarthDay.org, Earth Day was founded in 1970 by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson, who called for a “national teach-in on the environment” after witnessing the terrible effects of the 1969 oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. The first Earth Day brought major actions to the streets of many major U.S. Cities. For fun, check out this vintage newscast from after that first Earth Day.

Earth Day went global in 1990 and, today, is celebrated in an estimated 192 countries. Which makes today the perfect day to take time to appreciate the land, air, oceans and wildlife that sustain us — and to think about how our lives, both individually and as a group, affect the environment. To that end, here are 12 talks — some reflective, some terrifying, some beautiful, some galvanizing — to watch today.

Al Gore: New thinking on the climate crisis Al Gore: New thinking on the climate crisis Former vice president Al Gore flipped the way so many think about global warming in the documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Two years after the doc’s release, he returned to the TED stage with a new presentation … showing that the impact of climate change may be even worse than scientists had predicted.

Louie Schwartzberg: Nature. Beauty. Gratitude. Louie Schwartzberg: Nature. Beauty. Gratitude. Louie Schwartzberg is a master of time-lapse photography, and his images of flowers dancing as they bloom will pierce your heart. In this talk from TEDxSF, he invites Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast to lead a meditation on gratefulness for the beauty and bounty that surrounds us.

Sylvia Earle's TED Prize wish to protect our oceans Sylvia Earle’s TED Prize wish to protect our oceans Ocean researcher Sylvia Earle knows that the waters of the deep contain amazing wonder. And yet, she worries that they are quickly becoming a “paradise lost.” Watch Earle accept the TED Prize at TED2009 and unveil Mission Blue, an initiative to protect our oceans. As she puts it, “No blue, no green. If you think the ocean isn’t important, imagine Earth without it. Mars comes to mind.”

John Doerr sees salvation and profit in greentech John Doerr sees salvation and profit in greentech Silicon Valley legend John Doerr had an ‘aha’ moment when his 15 year old daughter accused him and his generation of ruining the planet. In this talk from TED2007, he gives a personal, heartfelt call for investors to look at clean energy, and for big companies to make the little changes that will add up over time.

Vicki Arroyo: Let's prepare for our new climate Vicki Arroyo: Let’s prepare for our new climate As our climate changes, many areas of the world — including major cities like New Orleans — are at risk of flooding and drought. In this talk from TEDGlobal 2012, Vivki Arroyo calls on use to prepare now, by sharing examples of cities that are planning ahead and implementing big projects that take these risks as a given.

Karen Bass: Unseen footage, untamed nature Karen Bass: Unseen footage, untamed nature Karen Bass shoots incredible wildlife footage for National Geographic and the BBC. In this talk from TED2012, she shares awe-inducing video — from the tube-lipped nectar bat feeding on a flower to grizzly bears emerging from hibernation.

James Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change James Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change Scientist James Hansen saw it as his moral imperative to speak out about the rapidly changing planet he saw in his work. In this talk from TED2012, Hansen explains why global warming is happening (“Adding CO2 to the air is like throwing another blanket on the bed”) and calls on us to start reversing it.

Capt. Charles Moore on the seas of plastic Capt. Charles Moore on the seas of plastic We recycle a “diddly-point-squat” percentage of the plastics we use. The result — they end up in the oceans.  In this talk from TED2009, Captain Charles Moore shows us the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — an endless floating wasteland of plastic. His call to all of us: to stop our throwaway mentality and stop the plastic on land.

David Keith's unusual climate change idea David Keith’s unusual climate change idea Environmental scientist David Keith bemoans the fact that we’ve been reading the same headlines about the environment since the 1950s, while achieving very little to change them. In this talk from TEDSalon 2007 Hot Science, he shares a bold idea: What if we released a huge cloud of ash into the atmosphere to deflect sunlight and heat?

Cesar Harada: A novel idea for cleaning up oil spills Cesar Harada: A novel idea for cleaning up oil spills When TED Senior Fellow Cesar Harada heard about the BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico, he quit his job and set about designing an efficient way to soak up oil. At the TEDxSummit, he shares his creation — a highly-manueverable boat that is capable of cleaning large tracts of oil quickly.

Alex Steffen: The route to a sustainable future Alex Steffen: The route to a sustainable future If people across the globe had the ecological footprint of those in the United States, we’d need 5 to 7 planets to sustain it all, says Alex Steffen at TEDGlobal 2005. But of course, we only get one. Here, he asks us to actively reduce our footprint, especially as the consumer lifestyle spreads across the globe.

James Balog: Time-lapse proof of extreme ice loss James Balog: Time-lapse proof of extreme ice loss Thanks to photographer James Balog’s Extreme Ice Survey, we can actually see glaciers recede before our eyes — the process of several years condensed into a few seconds.  In this talk from TEDGlobal 2009, Balog shares how he brings together art and science to deepen all our understanding of how quickly ice is disappearing. (See also: Camille Seaman’s haunting photos of polar ice.)

In the TED Book Keystone XL: Down the Line, Washington Post reporter Steven Mufson and photographer Michael Williamson travel the entire length of the proposed project and reveal starting realities about its impact on everything from the environment to town economies to people’s lives, in the areas through which it passes.

As debate over the Keystone XL boils over, it felt like the right time to ask Mufson a few questions. Below, his take on this highly controversial proposed project.

Why are Canada and the United States now in a rush to expand oil exporting? 

Canada is already a major oil exporter — in fact, they’re the biggest source of U.S. crude oil imports. Companies producing oil in the tar sands in northern Alberta are looking to double production there — and they need more ways to move that oil out. Currently, the limited options for transporting oil only pile onto the costs of production. The biggest and most natural market is the United States, both because our economy is big and because U.S. refineries on the Gulf of Mexico have been modernized and upgraded to handle low-quality crude oil like that coming out of Alberta. Once the crude oil is refined, it’s easier to sell in the United States or abroad. The United States both exports and imports refined products, though given the size of the U.S. refinery industry and relatively flat U.S. gasoline consumption, the volume of U.S. exports of gasoline and diesel has increased.

You say the pipeline is a Rorschach test of how Americans view energy issues. Can you elaborate?

For four decades, we have thought about oil as a scarce resource. We imported more and more at higher and higher prices and went to distant frontiers, whether onshore or offshore, to find oil and gas. The sheer scale of the oil sands in Alberta has been Exhibit A of those extremes. The Saudi oil minister has often said that prices had to stay above $60 a barrel to keep the Canadian oil sands economically viable. All of a sudden, the trends reversed and a slew of oil prospectors – like the North Dakota fracking pioneer Harold Hamm who is profiled in the book – and energy experts are talking about U.S. energy abundance. Imports have dropped nearly in half. U.S. oil output has climbed over 7 million barrels a day and the International Energy Agency has forecast that U.S. output will surpass Saudi Arabia’s by the mid-2020s. Canadian oil sands would compete for U.S. refinery space with Venezuela, and North Dakota, Louisiana and Texas shale oil has enabled the big refiner Valero to stop importing light, sweet crude oil.

It’s partly a matter of interpretation and partly a matter of outlook. There are the folks who worry about climate and make calculations about booming demand across the developing world. And then there are the optimists and industry people who see more opportunity – which in the case of prospectors and drillers translates into profitable opportunities.

So which is it? Are we energy rich or energy poor? The truth lies somewhere in between. Yes, the United States has surprising new resources at home, and U.S. consumption may have hit a plateau as fuel efficiency rises. This is a big benefit for the U.S. balance of trade and the domestic oil and gas industry. And while U.S. oil independence remains elusive, the Keystone XL pipeline would help make North American oil independence conceivable.

Why are two in ten Americans against the pipeline?

Opposition to the pipeline has three main themes. First, some oppose the pipeline because of climate concerns. The process of extracting oil sands crude – a mixture including low-grade petroleum known as bitumen –gobbles up much more energy than the process of conventional oil drilling. So it emits more greenhouse gases. Second, some people fear pipeline leaks, either near the vast Ogallala Aquifer in the Great Plains or in rivers that must be crossed. And third, some people – many on ranches and farms – oppose the use or threat of eminent domain to force them to sign deals with the pipeline builder and owner, TransCanada.

What are the environmental downsides?

In addition to those environmental issues, the pipeline is being built to provide outlets for oil from the oil sands in Alberta. Half of the oil sands are produced by a process that is akin to strip mining. Trees in Alberta’s vast boreal forest are cut down, wetlands and topsoil are peeled back, and black sands are taken by gigantic dump trucks to facilities that mix the sands with warm water to separate out the useful bitumen. The other half of the oil sands are produced by injecting steam in the ground and sucking up the petroleum. Alberta is vast, but visiting the big mining and drilling sites still makes quite an impression.

The pipeline itself would have no significant environmental impact – unless it leaks. The company has tried to address those concerns by saying it would drill deep below rivers and by making the pipe extra thick in some places. And it has sensors that alert TransCanada’s computer-monitoring center, in Calgary.

Why do some believe that tapping sands oil is ethically better than helping the economies of Saudi Arabia and Venezuela?

One key argument in favor of the pipeline is that it would bring the United States greater energy and national security. Many proponents say the United States would be more secure importing oil from Canada — a democratic, stable ally — than from Venezuela or the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez was no great friend of the United States but much of Venezuela’s crude oil is also low quality, like Alberta’s, and Venezuela has been a major supplier to the U.S. refineries. So it might be more of an ethical issue. Would we rather buy from a democracy, or an Islamic state run by a royal family or from a country run by the heirs of the fiery populist ruler Chavez?

What will happen if the pipeline is rejected by Congress and the President?

Good question. One possibility is that TransCanada might file suit saying that the process was improper. But it is more likely that TransCanada would look to alternatives, most likely a line to Canada’s east coast and eastern markets. In addition, railways would step up efforts to add tank cars and tracks as they have done in North Dakota already. Foes of the pipeline hope rejection of the permit will slow down development of the oil sands, but the State Department’s new environmental impact statement issued in March says the oil sands crude will find one way or another to get to the Gulf Coast refineries.

Tell us a little about the effects of the project on the Native American cultures of the proposed area.

Many Native American tribes, especially in Oklahoma, have no problem with the pipeline. In Oklahoma, formerly called the Indian Territory, people have not been strangers to oil booms. But some Native Americans and their tribal leaders are bothered by the thought that the pipeline might inadvertently disturb ancient burial sites or other sacred grounds.  Indeed the pipeline’s route from Niobrara River in northern Nebraska to northern Oklahoma follows almost exactly the route, or Trail of Tears, that the Ponca Tribe followed when forced to move in the 1800s. In South Dakota, Native American tribes have also been outspoken, saying that the Keystone XL crosses treaty lands. The pipeline would narrowly miss the state’s reservations. But it has unearthed more than a century of mistrust and grievance among Native Americans.

Photo: Bloomberg/Getty

Photos: James Duncan Davidson

The growing desert

Allan Savory has dedicated his life to studying management of grasslands. And if that doesn’t sound exciting, just wait, because it touches on the deepest roots of climate change and the future of the planet.

“The most massive, tsunami, perfect storm is bearing down on us,” is the grim beginning to Savory’s talk. This storm is the result of rising population, of land that is turning to desert, and, of course, climate change. Savory is also unsure of the belief that new technology will solve all of the problems. He agrees that only tech will create alternatives to fossil fuels, but that’s not the only thing causing climate change.

“Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert,” he says. It’s a process that happens if we leave ground bare, allowing water to evaporate. Even heavy rainfalls will quickly vanish. Terrifyingly, about two-thirds of the world’s land is desertifying. This is huge, because ”the fate of water and carbon are tied to soil and organic matter. When we damage soils, we give off carbon.”

Even worse, we might think that only arid and semi-arid land is becoming desert, but tall grasslands are in danger as well. They can have a cancer “that we don’t recognize until it’s terminal form.”

This is mostly caused by livestock. Everyone knows this, says Savory. Scientists have known it for decades. Livestock damage the land, leading to dry ground, leading to desert. This makes sense, and turns out to be quite wrong.

A terrible mistake

In the 1950s, Savory helped to set aside large areas of Africa for national parks. As soon as they removed the people (to protect the animals), the land deteriorated. His theory, backed up by data, was that it was because there were too many elephants. That was “political dynamite,” he said, but a panel agreed with his assessment.

So they shot 40,000 elephants.

But the deterioration only got worse. The elephants were not the problem after all. Says Savory, “That was the saddest and greatest blunder of my life. I will carry that to my grave.” It did give Savory one thing: “I was absolutely determined to find solutions.”

Later, in California he was shocked to find similar problems in national parks, but there was no livestock nearby. So he looked at research stations where cattle had been removed, to prove that that would stop desertification. It didn’t. ”Clearly,” he says, “we have never understood what is causing desertification.”

If it wasn’t livestock, as had been assumed for centuries, what was it? “What we had failed to understand was that … the soil and vegetation developed with large numbers of grazing animals.” They also had predators, and so defended themselves by making herds, which are forced to move. This movement prevented over-grazing, while periodic trampling produced good soil. It wasn’t the livestock, but the way the livestock were kept by farmers.

The problems spiral out from this failure to understand. If grass dies on its own, at the end of a season, it must decay biologically before the next growing season. If it doesn’t, it will stifle the next growth. The typical method used to deal with that is to burn the grassland. That does remove the dead grass, allowing a new crop to grow, but it is very damaging, releasing an amount of carbon equivalent to 6,000 cars/second.

Holistic management

So what can they do? “There is only one option left to climatologists and scientists. That is to do the unthinkable: to use livestock, bunched and moving, as a proxy for the herds.” Those herds mulch it down, leaving both the trampled grass and their dung. The grass is then free to grow without having damaged with fire.

Now, how do you actually do that? Herders had 10,000 years of experience moving animals, “but they had created the great man-made deserts of the world.” And then 100 years of modern science that accelerated that process. Clearly more was needed.

He studied other professions — and found new management techniques. With this, he was able to develop what he calls Holistic Management — a way of moving livestock around to mimic the patterns of nature.

The results are stunning. For location after location he shows two comparison photos, one using his technique, one not. The difference is, “a profound change,” and he’s not kidding — in some cases the locations are unrecognizable (in one case the audience gasped). Not only is the land greener, crop yields are increasing. For example, in Patagonia, an expanding desert, they put 25,000 sheep into one flock. They found an extraordinary 50% improvement in production of land in the first year.

“What we are doing globally is causing climate change, as much or more than by fossil fuels,” says Savory. It is also causing poverty, suffering, and war. “If this continues, we are unlikely to be able to stop climate change even after we have eliminated the use of fossil fuels.”

He is currently using this on 15 million hectares on five continents. He estimated that if we do it on half the available land, the growth with take in enough carbon to go back to pre-industrial levles, while feeding people.

“I can think of almost nothing that offers more hope for our planet, for our children, for their children, and for all of humanity.”

Allan Savory’s TED Talk has been posted. Watch it here»

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Have you checked your email today? Your finances? What about your energy use? Alex Laskey thinks that with just a shift in attitude toward our energy use, we can all save a lot.

Laskey introduces an experiment he ran with his team at Opower. People received one of three different messages on their doors about why they should try to save energy:

- You can save $54 this month
- You can save the planet
or
- You can be a good citizen

Which one won? None. No one message showed a marked difference. So Opower added a fourth message: Your neighbors are doing better than you.

That one worked. The locals who heard the message that 77% of their neighbors turned down their A/C, Also turned down their AC, creating a marked difference in energy consumption. As Laskey says, “If something is inconvenient, even if we believe it, persuasion won’t work. But social pressure? That’s powerful stuff.”

Every year in the U.S. alone $40 billion of energy is wasted. Laskey projects that by thinking not just about material sciences but about behavioral sciences, we could save 2 terawatts a year — more than enough energy to power every home in St. Louis and Salt Lake City for more than a year.

We can be doing so much better, says Laskey, starting by tapping into the power of social behavior.

Alex Laskey’s TED Talk has been posted. Watch it here»

The speakers who appeared in this session. Click on the speaker’s name for a full recap of the talk:

Creative force Leyla Acaroglu uses innovative design and systems thinking to create positive change.

Renegade gardener Ron Finley grows a nourishing food culture in South Central Los Angeles’ food desert by planting the seeds and tools for healthy eating.

Mouth musician Wang Li mesmerizes audiences with his unique approach to two of the world’s most ancient (and surprising) instruments.

Teenaged science fair winners Miranda Wang and Jeanny Yao have discovered a way to break down nasty compounds called phthalates, common to flexible plastics and linked to many health problems.

Energy software maker Alex Laskey helps power companies to help their customers cut down — using data analysis, marketing and a pinch of behavioral science.

Fueled by their deep Afro-Cuban roots, the Pedrito Martinez Group featuring Ariacne Trujillo, have rocketed to the top of New York’s Afro-Caribbean music scene.

Michael Green wants to solve architecture’s biggest challenge — meeting worldwide housing demand without increasing carbon emissions — by building with carbon-sequestering wood instead of concrete and steel.

Allan Savory works to promote holistic management in the grasslands of the world.