Why we need to change
Colin Austin © 27th September 2023 This document is published under the Creative Commons system which means that it can be freely copied or republished without further permission – the only provision is the Standard Creative commons requirement that the source
Colin Austin www.gbiota.com should be acknowledged.
Humans are intelligent and cooperative
Humans are an intelligent, innovative and naturally cooperative creature.
Our very first innovation was when a ferocious beast was eyeing us up for it’s dinner but we found that if we all worked together and threw stones at the beast it would just nick off and chase some less smart creature.
Innovation is good, if we had not made that first innovation you and I would not be here.
But there is another side to human nature, there are a few humans who put their short term benefits over the long term benefits of the community.
Civilisations come and go
History, from the time of the early Egyptians right up to now, is full of civilisations which have made remarkable achievements, then just collapsed.
The common cause of societal collapse was by exhausting available resources needed for life. The, now inhospitable, lands of the middle east were once called the fertile crescent being a major centre for food production.
The Egyptian pyramids may have been a totally spectacular achievement but you can’t eat pyramids.
More recently the mobile phone – a high performance computer you can put in your pocket is similarly a remarkable piece of technology but does not make a tasty and nutritious meal. Sorry but that is the way of the world.
We need real food
For health we need food, real food which give us energy, replaces our body parts as they age and wear and most important of all feeds our gut brain which regulates our bodies controlling our appetite so we don’t die from lack of food or get get fat and sick from eating too much of the wrong sort of food.
Technology has given us amazing increases in our ability to make both products and food so we should expect that we should all be benefiting from improved living standards – but many people are actually going backwards -why?
Environmental load
Go back in time a couple or so centuries before the industrial revolution there was very little load on the planets resources – with most people, largely peasants recycling pretty much everything.
The technology of the industrial revolution led to a major increase in wealth but this was not equally distributed with a few people becoming very rich.
The global population has tripled, the environmental load per head of population has increased and industrialisation has spread across the globe as previously subsistence economies have adopted the modern life style.
The increase in agricultural production has been laregly driven by the use of fossil fuels to produce fertilisers. In fact, it is estimated that around 5% (and growing) of our fossil fuel consumption goes into fertilisers. Sadly only about 6% of that energy ends up in our food (1)
The load that humans are placing on the planet has increased dramatically far exceeding the earths capacity to replace so we are drawing down on reserves accumulated over centuries.
Threat to our survival
This is as big a threat to our survival as that early beast we threw stones at and survived. (To survive now we need to be smart.)
The majority of people fully understand this but a few people put their short term self interest ahead of the community.
We are seeing the effect in climate change and the degradation of our soils. To survive we have no option but to change the way humanity works from exploitation to recycling and from short term exploitation to community benefit.
Need for change
Growth and profits have become a virtual religion in modern society, they benefit both big business and Governments but have little benefit for the community at large and are often detrimental.
We need to stop worshipping these false gods and focus on sustainability and community benefit. This is a change which will be brought about, not by big business or Governments, but by the people.
Yes, survival is all about people power.
We have great power for change by our actions and the power of the wallet and the ballot box.
Solutions exist
We do not want to get depressed and think the world is doomed, it is only doomed if we are stupid enough to destroy our planet.
Take energy – one of the big issues of the day.
There is enough energy falling on of few square kilometres of the Australian desert (a minuscule fraction of the total area) to provide enough power for the entire industrialised world.
We have the technology to harness that energy – we just need the will.
Then there is minerals and nutrients – critical for health.
The actual amount each person needs is measured in milligrams yet there are trillions of tonnes of volcanic rock on the globe and more keeps on being added from volcanic activity.
It is true that we are approaching a phosphorous crisis as the mines become exhausted but it is not destroyed – it just get tied up in sewage which can be reprocessed or at worst recaptured from the oceans by seaweed.
Again we know how – it is just a question of will power.
We have the solutions
All the problems I keep on talking about have technical solutions. They may cost more but that is not really a problem as technology has given us dramatic increases in our productive capacity and potential wealth.
The issue that this increase in wealth ends up in in the hands of a very small minority of the population – the rich get richer (obscenely so) while the poor get poorer.
These are social problems which my grand kids generation will need to change but they wont feel like making these changes if they feel they do not have the capacity to change.
We are here to stay
It is easy to get depressed about the state of the world but we decide our future.
We just have to be smart.
It may be expected that the combination of climate change and degradation of our soil would lead to crisis in our food crisis supply.
But that has not happened as industrial chemical agriculture has increased food production faster than the increase in population with a plentiful supply of energy food, sugars fats and carbohydrates.
But (and it is a big but) the nutrient content has declined leading to major health problems. There is no shortage of nutrients as there literally mountains of mineral rich rocks just sitting there waiting to be processed.
But these are insoluble requiring microbes such as fungi and bacteria to break the rocks down and make them bio-available.
We also need microbes to feed our gut brain which regulates our bodies.
The Gbiota project aims to breed the beneficial microbes to both make nutrients bio-available and to power our gut brain.
The Tribox
I developed the Tribox system which was designed to be really easy to use allowing people to recycle food and organic waste so the costs were very low.
The benefits in terms of health and nutrition are self evident and virtually everyone, even those people living in flats with no growing experience can use the system.
We need the energy and motivation of youth
I know that most of my readers are like me, older people with their own garden.
We may have the experience and been through many changes ourselves but we need the energy and motivation of youth and they are the ones that will suffer if we get this wrong.
The challenge we older people face is how do we convince the younger generation that they have the power to make the needed changes.
How do we convince them that they can make the change?
Knowing does not automatically lead to action
It is natural for the next generations to ignore the previous generations and create their own systems and lets face it they talk a totally different language which I often fail to recognise as English, with all its young peoples secret codes (well secret to me anyway).
But there are young people who are well tuned into the need for change and are prepared to be the movers of change. What we have to do is to find these young people and let them become the creators of change.
I hear various buzz words floating around like influencers and ambassadors, the old fashioned word is social pioneers.
Come on oldies – inspire the young
What I ask you to do is to seek out these social pioneers and give them the benefit of our experiences gained over the years. Leave them free to use the language and mediums of their era so they become the next generation of social pioneers (or whatever the ‘in word’ is they like to describe themselves).
Actions speak louder than words. We need to inspire the next generation to set up Triboxes, start regenerating soil full of nutrients and beneficial biology and growing plants as natural pre and pro biotics.
We need to encourage them to film themselves tending their Triboxes and showing other young people on whatever social media is the flavour of the month. If young people see other young people like themselves taking action they will follow and my grand kids and great grand kids will have a world worth living in.
And yes I am now a great grand dad, I wont live long enough to see her grow up but at least I can help make a world worth living in for her.
1) https://cias.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/194/2008/07/energyuse1.pdf
2) https://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/follow-the-food/why-modern-food-lost-its-nutrients/
