Reversing Global Warming while Meeting Human Needs: An Urgently Needed Land-Based Option
Friday, January 25, 2013
2:00 – 4:00 PM, ASEAN Auditorium
The Fletcher School, 160 Packard Avenue, Medford, MA
Reception to follow
RSVP at http://allansavory.eventbrite.comAllan Savory, Rancher and Restoration Ecologist, Founder of the Savory Institute and originator of the Holistic Management approach to restoring grasslands, winner of the Buckminster Fuller Challenge Award, and finalist in the Virgin Earth Challenge
Presented by CIERP’s Agriculture, Forests, and Biodiversity Program with the Friedman School’s Agriculture, Food, and Environment Program and Planet-TECH AssociatesFree and open to the public. Convened by the Agriculture, Forests, and Biodiversity Program of the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at Fletcher;
the Agriculture, Food, and Environment Program of Tufts’ Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy; and Planet-TECH Associates.First in a Series of “Creating the Future We Want” Events.
While governments posture and dither, a pragmatic practitioner and intellectual entrepreneur, Allan Savory,has been developing and demonstrating a powerful technique that can reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere immediately while reversing desertification and providing livelihoods and food for millions of people. His applied research based in Zimbabwe on the restoration of grasslands has now been replicated on millions of acres worldwide. The application of his methods has the potential to significantly reduce atmospheric carbon through an increase in plant growth and soil formation. This process begins immediately and involves no new technologies, only a shift to the Holistic Management practices for livestock that he has pioneered. Major organizations and institutions are now recognizing his work, but climate scientists and governments have yet to incorporate it into their analyses and policy prescriptions.
Seth Itzkan, one of the organizers of this event, spent time in Zimbabwe with Allan Savory and his team in the Fall of 2011. He has compiled a series of videos on his visit at http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL79210F920CC4EF1F
One of the things which appeals to me about Allan Savory’s work is that his methods make a place for pastoralists among the “bottom billion,” giving them an opportunity to improve their own lives while improving the land and the environment and the climate for us all. More and more I believe that the solutions to climate change, the solutions to a predatory economic and social system must start by thinking about and working with the poorest first. Let the relatively rich folks in the USA and the EU fend for themselves. Start concentrating on the people who live on a dollar or two a day. After all, if Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina taught us anything, it should be that even the wealthiest of us can find ourselves in emergency housing and situations in which paper money is useless at a moment’s notice.
“Global Warming” was a smash iTunes album by Pitbull, but I prefer snowfall. Massachusetts had some snow this winter, but not enough to sustain an economy of contractors of snow-plowers such as Ron Campbell (who never spells my family name right). We the people have our needs. Norma Shulman explained tonight that it is a great pain to have even one of us lack health care or any of our other basic needs. Sand castles of rhetoric are not enough. We need to sustain compassion. I lived in an ASEAN country. I have played Magic the Gathering a Comic Card Game with Mana-based options. Us BayStaters, especially in Southern Middlesex County still worry about what to do with our wetlands, especially those of us who buy real property. How to develop? Can lands unfit for development be bought for a song? Cash is king, but Norma Shulman is better. Shulman is the face that launched a thousand shifts of volunteerism. We will all block and tackle Republican extremists who defame our all-American Norma Shulman. The wealthiest above us can arrange to top shelf themselves in some Waldorf-Astoria. USA in Spanish might be E.E.U.U. USA in Portuguese translates as EUA. Us EUA citizens shared a song for Norma tonight. Our money was good tonight at the Temple Beth Am. Drinks were way overstocked (our best staties being teetotalers), but whatever… at least co-chair Beverly Hugo reported a beyond-capacity 220 Americans attending our volunteer commemoration (Was Deb Butler the only voter registered independent?). Two Republicans from [framboys] band BroadSword dropped out of the gig = sore [bors]. [nobscot] axeman Mike Hugo signaled overbidding was allowed in our silent auction (His band played loud.). Shulman, our statie, has directed auction funds to scholarships for a twain of high school youths to this year’s youth convention in Lowell. Mike Lake honored Shulman for her leadership in his Auditor campaign. Anyway, it’s midnight.