Limits: Grounding our vision in reality

It is all well and good to talk about a vision for a different future, to imagine a world where we all have the capacity to thrive and flourish. To talk about transforming our relationship and connection with food, and building food systems that nourish our bodies, minds, and spirits while connecting us to ourselves, each other, and the living biosphere. 

However, we must face the fact that we live on a finite planet. That living on a finite planet means that there are physical limits, boundaries and universal laws we cannot change. And as we bring our vision of living in a world where our food and food systems truly nourish us into being, we must make sure they work within physical and universal limits and constraints. In other words, we must make sure that our food systems are built for a finite planet. 

So, in this episode, we will look at the one physical limit that determines what is, and what is not sustainable for the long term, and I will likely explain things differently than you have heard before. 

So, what are the limits? And how do we, as everyday people, make sense of them? How do we use them to make meaningful change in our lives, communities and societies? 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello and welcome to Creating Change with Food. I'm your host, Dr. Tara Naylor. Creating Change with Food is the podcast that goes back to basics and explores what it really takes to build nourishing, resilient food systems for a finite planet. Today's episode is called Limits: Grounding Our Vision in Reality. It's all well and good to talk about a vision for a different future. To imagine a world where we all have the capacity to thrive and flourish, it makes us feel good. To talk about transforming our relationship and connection with food and building food systems that nourish our bodies, minds, and spirits, as well as connecting us to ourselves, each other, and the living biosphere. And when I imagine this, it just makes me feel so good. However, we must face the fact that we live on a finite planet. And that living on a finite planet means that there are physical limits, there's boundaries and there's universal laws we cannot change. And as we bring our vision of living in a world where our food and food systems truly nourish us into being, we must make sure they work within physical and universal limits and constraints. And in the mainstream, we certainly don't talk about this. In other words, we must make sure that our food systems are built for a finite planet. So in this episode, we are going to look at the one physical limit that determines what is and what is not sustainable for the long term. And I will likely explain things differently than you've heard before. And although this is a really serious topic, I want to have some fun with it and take you through a thought exercise that completely shifted my perspective on what matters in life and what it really takes to live a good life. As usual, I wanted to start this episode with a story. Every year since 2019, I have raised a small flock of between 8 and 12 small breed turkeys. And these turkeys have brought me so much joy and connection and heartbreak too. And they have provoked a lot of deep feelings and thoughts about our role as humans and omnivores. So a few years ago, I raised a flock of turkeys that included a smaller breed called Artisan Gold. And that breed liked to roam and roost more than my usual mini white turkeys. And I had so many hours of part frustration and part delight watching the two smallest female turkeys trying and often succeeding to escape. They were lighter, they could fly better. Their daytime enclosure I had for the turkeys was temporary and movable. So each day they could graze in a different area. Some sections were even in forest. But these two turkeys would find ways to go under, over, and through the fencing, and they were just constantly testing the limits and boundaries. It was a bit like a game because every time these turkeys would find their way out, then I would have to go into my garage to see what materials or scrap wood I could find to stop them from escaping. One day I got a call from an irate neighbor who said my turkeys were at her house. And from what I could figure out, the two escape artist turkeys had sat on a weak section of fence and tipped it over, and the rest just walked away. And then I had this really frustrating time trying to get the flock back across the road and home to their enclosure. So the following year I built a secure day pen made with wood and welded wire mesh. There have been no more escapes, but there are also no more foraging in wild spaces. Just like those two turkeys, we humans are not very good at accepting limits and boundaries, which in some ways has led to many incredible athletic achievements and inventions and artistic expressions. However, from a planetary and biosphere health point of view, we need to stay within the physical limits and boundaries, otherwise, the life support systems that we depend upon are at risk of collapse. I think we humans are a bit like those two turkeys. We are constantly trying to push the limits. If we get serious for a moment, the genuine risk for those escape birds was that if they wandered too far from their pen, a predator could kill them, or they could get hit by a car or a truck on the road. The risk for we humans is that we cause localized ecosystem collapse, which we have done many times before, or even much wider ecosystem collapses. The difference now is that with such a high human population, mass migrations cause their own challenges. Even more seriously, with the global nature of climate change and biodiversity loss, we could, and in some ways we already are, causing unforeseen system feedbacks and events that could lead to significant hardship and loss of life. The big difference between humans and turkeys is that we know there's limits. We also have a partial understanding of the consequences of our actions, yet we continue to push and even break those limits. So, what are the limits? And how do we, as everyday people, make sense of them? How do we use them to make meaningful change in our lives, communities, and societies? Scientists have developed so many different ways to measure planetary health, resource use, and ecological footprints, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Most of these measures depend on complex scientific models and large data sets, and each measure and model makes assumptions to analyze the complex world we live in. But I like to go back to basics. Think of this as a back-of-the-envelope calculation. I remember this amazing engineering consultant early in my career who helped the company I was working for when we had an environmental emergency. He walked outside, he looked at the problem, and he provided us with a hand sketch with dimensions of what we needed to construct to deal with the problem until we could implement the long-term measures. So, in effect, we're going to do our own basic calculation here of the limits on this finite planet, and then we're going to use those results as a thought exercise. What we're going to calculate is the fish is a fair share of productive land on Earth. And then we're going to play with that number and imagine what it takes to live within that space for the long term. So you can get a piece of paper out or just do this in your head. But we're going to start with the total surface area of the Earth, which according to Wikipedia is 510 million square kilometers. And in my head, that sounds like a large area. Now we will subtract the areas of the oceans. The oceans are bodies of salt water that cover approximately 70.8% of Earth's surface. And this is an area of roughly 360 million square kilometers. I'm keeping the numbers round so they're easy to do in our heads. This brings us down to 150 million square kilometers. Now we're going to subtract the area of the deserts because deserts are barren areas of landscape with little precipitation and are inhospitable to plant and animal life. And deserts cover about one-third of Earth's land surface. Now we're down to a total area of productive land of 100 million square kilometers. Now we have about two choices in the direction we can take. We can either look at land degradation or the space per person. And what I found was to be the most impactful was the space per person. For simplicity's sake, we're going to take that 100 million square kilometers and divide it by 8 billion, which was the estimated human population in November 2022. And this gives us an area of 1.25 hectares or three acres of productive land per person. And if we reach a human population of 10 billion, which some people are projecting, this drops the space to one hectare per person. The problem with this number is that it's totally human-centric. And we humans cannot survive without the living systems on Earth. And so we must set aside roughly half of that space for nature. And even that number seems rather human-centric to me. But remember, we're just trying to get a sense of the limits here that we have on Earth. We're not trying to do a precise calculation. So if we set aside roughly 50% of that space for nature, we're now down to between 0.5 and 0.6 of a hectare per person. And if you go paste that out in your community, in a local field, you can see just how constrained that is. Now the reality is that according to the United Nations, approximately 40% of the planet's land is degraded by human activity. And this ties into other data from the website Our World in Data that says 55% of ice-free land has been turned into cropland, pasture, and urban areas. So we're not going to include all this in our calculations because we're trying to keep things really simple, but I do want to keep that in the back of your mind. So from a purely mathematical point of view, we must accept that there is only half a hectare or one and a quarter acres of productive land per person on Earth when we set aside some for nature. Now let's compare our rough back of the envelope calculation to the global footprint network's much more scientific model, which looks at both biologically productive land and water. The last time I looked on their website, they said there was 1.5 global hectares per person that must support all human needs and the needs of wild species. So really, when you take into account I've set aside 50% for nature, you can see our basic calculations are only about 25% different from a much more complex model. So I want to ask you, how do you feel now? That there's only just over one hectare of productive land per person to support all our human and wildlife needs. And this includes the basic life processes we need, like cycling water, oxygen, nitrogen, and all the other nutrients essential for life. When I first did this calculation, I had a real oh shit moment. I looked out my window and started to look at the forest and the gardens to see if I could even live off that space, to see if it was even possible to survive off that area. Once I decided that I could live off this space, my thoughts and feelings started to turn towards what I value in this world and my life and what it takes to really live a life to full potential. Because when you see how constrained we are, you start to shift how you think and what we aspire to and what really matters in life. Now, this calculation assumes equity between people, which we know is not the case now. Land is seen as a form of investment, not to be preserved, but to grow money and power. And you can see why when you see how constrained we are. With such a high human population, the overconsumption of resources by people, companies, and regions impacts everyone. If you go to the Global Footprint Network's website, they calculate how much equivalent space people in different countries use. And any of us in the so-called global north are using many, many times of our fair share at the expense of other people, nature, and wild species. And the wealthiest few percent are just being plain selfish and greedy in their use of Earth's finite resources. Now, as usual, I don't want to dwell on where we are now, but I wanted to wake you up a bit because doing this calculation woke me up. It completely changed my perspective. Now, you may ask, what about climate change? What about biodiversity loss and all the other planetary boundaries? Well, for me, these predicaments are purely symptoms about what we're doing on this really constrained planet. If you dig up, move around, process, and burn lots of different materials in such a finite space, there are going to be significant local and global impacts. That's just the way it is. Now I realize I have hit you with something that can be really hard to take, and I get it, I've been there. But I have found both in my life and my work, some of the most creative and ingenious solutions are born because of limits, because of physical limits and constraints, because we're forced to think and act differently. And that is how what I hope this discussion is doing and this podcast as a whole is doing. If we want to live in a world where we have the capacity to thrive and flourish, where today's children and their children have the capacity to thrive and flourish, we need a fundamental rethink. We need a different way of being. And the exciting thing is I have met so many people searching and experimenting with different ways of being. So I want to switch gears for a moment and use our imaginations. So what would it be like to live on that space? Because we're essentially imagining that we're animals in an enclosed habitat. And I really urge everyone to go out to a local park, a sports field, or even your neighborhood and pace off one hectare and see what it looks like. In the town near me, there's a sports field with walking track around it. And I paste off the area of that field, and the field inside the walking track is pretty close to this one hectare we're talking about. So I wanted to take a few moments to go a bit deeper into the thought exercise. So if you know you only have you know 1.2 hectares or a hectare or less to get absolutely everything you need to live for the long term, what would you do? What would you prioritize? Do you even feel pressure? Do you feel pressure to survive? Because I know I did. Now, of course, humans are communal beings, and there are benefits to resource sharing and house sharing, etc. I want you to get a feeling of just how constrained we are. So what would I do? Well, I've had a long time to think about this, and I definitely don't have all the answers. But we have to think about all our basic survival needs first, such as water, food, shelter, and clothing. Based on the place I live, which is surrounded by a mixed forest, in a location that only has about 100 frost-free days, I would set aside half the space, and that would belong to nature. That's what we need to do, that's our life support system. I would still walk through that area as I do now in the forest around me, but I would keep just to a few paths, and I would probably use some damaged trees for firewood. Then the remaining half hectare must be used for multiple purposes. My home, garage, and any sheds also take up space, but those spaces must have multiple purposes. They must include spaces to store food, preserve food, to start seeds, and to house tools and animals. For water, I would probably collect water from my roof spaces and I would stick with my dog well in the forested area. Now, some of the half hectare remaining, as I'll say call it the human half hectare, would be left as forested because I would have to selectively cut some trees for heat, energy, and material use. I would also probably pasture a few animals like goats or turkeys underneath a small area. I might even raise bees or other small-scale animals. The reason I would raise animals is that animals can use for food resources we cannot. Animal manure is a very valuable resource to feed my gardens. And animal hides, feathers, bones also have many other uses. Now, based on what grows well in my local area, I would grow some fast-growing shrubs, and I already do, like hazelnuts and pea shrubs for food, materials, and fodder. I would also have a diverse mix of fruit and nut trees, shrubs, and cane fruit, because you cannot cultivate the land around where I live. It is sandy, and if you take the top layer of soil off, you're done. So I would also grow many plants that have multiple purposes as well as a vegetable garden. I would be growing food, materials, and plants that bring me joy on every wall and space I possibly could. I would also set aside some space for technical materials, such as non-renewables, that would have to come from elsewhere. We'll call it a communal space where we can share what comes off there. And I almost forgot clothes, but there are the hides of animals, there's also plants that will grow here that can be woven into cloth. The point is that when you see what a small space we have, we need to concentrate on getting the fundamentals right. And we also need to understand that the long-term future of us must be founded on materials that can be regrown. And this is not the case now. In places like the United States and Canada and many other industrialized nations, the most used non-renewables are sand, gravels, aggregates, and fossil energy sources. And the way we use these non-renewables are not circular, they cannot just be recycled round and round because they tend to break down. We fundamentally change their form. So once these sources are used, you can see on this constrained space, once these sources are used, they cannot be reused. And their extraction can cause long-term damage to previously productive lands. Throughout much of my working life, I've spent a lot of time around and using products of resource extraction. I used to work opposite a magnesium mine where you could see both the open pits and the huge stockpiles of waste material all around. Before that, I had visited an open pit copper mine in Quebec, and the pit was so deep the rock hauling trucks looked like little toys. And all around the mine site there were massive stockpiles of waste rock. Some of it was low-grade ore that wasn't economically viable to extract yet, and some of it was just waste rock. I also worked on a lot of highway and bridge construction projects for more than 10 years and visited a number of pits and quarries and waste material dump sites. And most of these sites had long-term impacts on the productivity of the land. And this was one of the many reasons I left this field of work. I really wanted to be around the living, not machines, asphalt, and concrete. So let's start to wrap this up. When we see just how constrained we are by the physical reality of space on this planet, we can see how our future. Our economies, our needs need to be based around regeneration. And that is nature's ability to grow and regrow the resources we need. Our resources need to stay within the regenerative capacity of ecosystems, and that is the ability of ecosystems to grow the things we need. We need to use our skills as caretakers of this land to restore the damaged lands so that it can once again be productive. We need to make spaces where we live and work as vibrant and full of life as we possibly can. And we must ditch the colonial mindset that we can continually keep expanding our land and resource use. Now, living within the regenerative capacity of Earth's biosphere is a complete shift in thinking from where we are now. It increasingly means celebrating local resources, materials, foods, and skills. And this is why creating change with food is so important. In my opening episode, I told you that our food systems are the largest land user, freshwater user, cause of biodiversity loss in nature and domesticated species, greenhouse gas emitter and uses 30% of global energy. And it's also disrupting the planetary nitrogen and phosphorus cycles. The systems and structures we have built around our food and the wider economic systems really are undermining our lives. This is what I love about food is that food and food systems can be done in an entirely different way that not only nourish us but connect us to each other and our systems in a meaningful way. And this is what I spend a lot of time, obviously, both talking to you about, but doing at home in my own life. Now, hopefully, I've given you a little bit of an understanding of the limits we face. And so going forward on this podcast, we're going to increasingly be talking about solutions and different ways of being and why systems and the values underpinning them matter. And we're also going to look at some models we can learn from and implement into our lives. That's it from me, Taranela, for today. If you're enjoying this podcast and are intrigued to join me on this adventure, then hit subscribe. But until next time, bye for now.