Biosphere Restoration

A 12 Step Program to Restore the Biosphere

And, Introducing the MONAD Calendar-Clock App, a Dynamic Model of the Planetary Biosphere.

Overview:

Even if you don’t believe in climate change and global warming, surely we can all agree that there are some significant problems involving the environment. The planet is huge and the surface is so vast that it’s almost impossible to get a sense of the whole. Maybe the local environment looks pretty good where you’re at, but that doesn’t mean it’s good all around the globe. The Amazon rain forest really is burning to the ground and an island of plastic the size of Texas is growing in the pacific ocean, and there doesn’t seem to be any organization or government with the power and inclination to fix these problems.

One thing that would clearly help is if we could all re-discover the love & respect for nature and plants that we had just a few hundred years ago, when we lived in an agrarian society, and the vast majority of people were involved in farming and gardening.

Outlined below is a description of what I’m calling a Neo-Agrarian Society, which stresses the importance of not just cultivated plants but also wild plants and fossilized plants that have been transformed into fossil fuel. A Neo-Agrarian Society uses modern technology in the service of the biosphere as a whole, not just for the benefit of humans but also considering other animals and plants, recognizing the importance of biodiversity for health and happiness. A Neo-Agrarian Society uses the MONAD Calendar-Clock app to tell the planetary time and date. Anyone who uses MONAD as their clock and calendar will find it much easier to understand and visualize the planetary biosphere. MONAD reminds us all of our collective purpose here on this living planet: we are the gardeners and caretakers of the biosphere.

History:

An agrarian or agricultural society is any community whose economy is based on producing and maintaining crops and farmland, where the vast majority of the population is involved in food production. Such a society may acknowledge other means of livelihood and work habits but stresses the importance of agriculture and farming. Agrarian societies have existed in various parts of the world as far back as 10,000 years ago and continue to exist today. They have been the most common form of socio-economic organization for most of recorded human history.

1781 is considered the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, when James Watt improved the steam engine, the first prime mover. Industrial societies use external energy sources, such as fossil fuels, to increase the rate and scale of production. The production of food is shifted to large commercial farms where the products of industry, such as combine harvesters and fossil fuel-based fertilizers, are used to decrease required human labor while increasing production. No longer needed for the production of food, excess labor is moved from the country into cities and factories where mechanization is utilized to further increase efficiency. As the population grows, mechanization is further refined, often to the level of automation, and many workers shift to expanding service industries.

Our current situation:

We no longer have an agrarian society, but 100% of the population still depends on plants to keep us alive. Plants generate the oxygen we need to breathe, the food we need to eat, and most of the raw materials we use to keep our industrial society going. 95% of the biomass of the biosphere organisms is made up of plants and the soil bacteria that facilitates their growth. Plants prepare the planet for habitation by animals and they maintain the oxygen in the atmosphere at 21%, which is required for animals to breathe and perform cellular respiration. Animals make up less than 1% of the biomass of the biosphere. (Fungi, protists, archaea and viruses make up the remaining 4%.) You would have to be insane to destroy and pollute the predominantly plant-based biosphere which keeps us humans and other animals alive, but in case you haven’t noticed, that is what is happening. Our industrial society is burning, cutting down, uprooting and poisoning plants as if we are at war with them.

Plants make our lives possible. They are by far the most valuable natural resource on this planet. Plants take care of us as long as we take care of them. And this is where we are failing as a society. We are allowing our plant-partners to be exploited and destroyed for the short term gain of a few reckless individuals. A wise society will carefully conserve 3 different plant populations: 1) Wild plants are uncultivated but they generate the bulk of the atmospheric oxygen we breathe. The ongoing destruction of the rain forest is equivalent to the destruction of the lungs of the photosynthetic organism that is the living solar system, whose heart planet we live on. 2) Cultivated plants are part of our agricultural effort to provide a reliable source of fruits, seeds, nuts, roots, leaves and other plant parts we eat to power our human bodies. We also cultivate non-edible plants like cotton, hemp and many different trees for their wood and other materials. And 3) fossilized plants have been transformed over millions of years into fossil fuel which can be used to power internal combustion motors and vehicles, which should be used sparingly because they heat the environment (the larger than usual fires that are recently afflicting the west coast of America and Australia are symptoms of this over heating), release greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere and the fossil fuel-refinement process generates huge amounts of plastic waste that is filling the Earth with pollution.

Respectable and concerned scientists have been telling our government and the public for years that our planetary biosphere is being seriously threatened by our ever-expanding industrial society. Yet our political leaders would have us believe that: “climate change is a much-overhyped problem. It’s probably not even happening, and if it is happening, it’s not worth worrying about. To the extent it is real, it can probably be dealt with in the future as technology advances. And don’t bother with regulations to protect the environment, they unnecessarily impede economic growth, and the economy must keep growing indefinitely.”

All lies. Foolish, dangerous, ignorant lies. These lies are threatening your life whether you know it or not. You don’t make an appointment to see a politician when your body is ill, you go to a doctor. And you shouldn’t trust politicians to tell you when the Earth’s biosphere is ill, you trust qualified scientists who have dedicated their lives to study of the biosphere and other living systems. And so what if all these scientists are wrong about climate change and global warming? Would it really be that terrible, a waste of time and money, to focus our attention and effort on cleaning up the globe and making our society more efficient and clean with greener energy? Your body is not separate from the biosphere. Pollution in the biosphere results in pollution in your body, which manifests as a multitude of diseases that afflict the members of our industrial society.

Any investment we make in restoring and protecting the biosphere is an excellent investment we will never regret. On the other hand, we will definitely regret it if climate change and global warming are real, and we don’t do anything to slow them down and the biosphere goes into “fever-mode” and kills off a large proportion of the biodiversity that has accumulated over untold millennia, just because a few sociopathic politicians and greedy corporations wanted to make more money burning fossil fuels and exploiting as much as possible all the natural resources provided by the biosphere.

We need to heal and restore the planetary biosphere but the vast majority of people don’t even know what the biosphere is. It’s not easy to motivate people to work for something they can’t see and understand. We need a model of the biosphere that we can show people and say: Here it is, this is what we’re trying to save. The problem is, the biosphere is huge; vast. The biosphere is a planetary phenomena, so if you’re going to model the biosphere, the model must include the planet.

How to Model the Biosphere:

The MONAD Calendar-Clock app features planet Earth at the center of a time- and date-telling celestial sphere. MONAD is a modern version of the ancient astronomical calendar-clock installed in the town square of Prague, Czechoslovakia back in 1410. The Prague calendar-clock provides a lot of useful information for an agrarian society where the vast majority of people were involved in food production, and highly dependent on the rhythms of nature this calendar-clock measures. 610 years later, the MONAD Calendar-Clock app does everything the Prague calendar-clock can do, plus a whole lot more.

The Earth-centered celestial sphere is a conceptual container for the biosphere and the atmosphere it creates. All living organisms have biorhythms and the planetary biosphere is no exception. MONAD is all about the biosphere. MONAD measures and demonstrates the planetary biorhythms of the predominantly (95%) plant-based, and therefore photosynthetic biosphere. The planetary biorhythms (the solar day, lunar month & seasonal year) involve the distribution of heat and light from the Sun and Moon, to photosynthetic plants all around the globe. Plants are rooted in the Earth and the Sun, and the tidal rhythms of the Moon flow within plants. The Earth, Sun and Moon are all parts of the biosphere that must be included in the model.

The MONAD Calendar-Clock is a Biosphere Rhythm Monitor. Anyone who uses MONAD as their clock and calendar will find it easier to understand and visualize the planetary biosphere. MONAD (in Health Event Mode) allows you to record your personal biorhythms in the context of planetary biorhythms we all share. If you keep a Chronobiological Health Journal, the Chronobiological features of the Calendar-Clock (featuring a circadian-clock face) will naturally improve your personal health over time. Participating in a Neo-Agrarian Society improves your health and lifestyle while also effectively dealing with the dangers of global warming and climate change. (Learn more about MONAD and its many features at: monad.earth.)

If you recognize and agree that our predominantly plant-based biosphere has been seriously degraded and must be restored and healed then here is a plan, in the form of a 12 Step Program which I hope people will at least follow until something equivalent to Bernie Sanders’ Green New Deal is implemented. Follow as many of the Steps as you can; they’re all important. Share this post if you want to be an active part of this Neo-Agrarian Society that loves and respects Mother Nature. Mother Nature has predictable rhythms measured by the Calendar-Clock, yet she is still capable of surprising us in so many ways. But if we take care of her, she will take care of us.

12 Simple Steps to Restore the Biosphere.

1) Use MONAD to tell the planetary time and date. Help complete the programming of the MONAD app, which is currently at the prototype stage. The MONAD app already works at a basic level and hopefully you will download the MONAD app for you and your family (only available for iPhone at this point) and use it to record your Chronobiological Health Journal. Teach your kids about the biosphere, and how to use MONAD. Tell your friends about MONAD. Support further programming of the MONAD app by making a donation at GoFundMe.com/MONAD. (Check out the Stage 3 and Stage 4 Programming Goals.)

2) Always vote for the Greenest candidate available in any political race. This is always the most important factor to consider when voting, and makes it easy to figure out who to vote for. (Read Colors In Conflict.) We have to vote green politicians into office, and vote out all climate change-deniers and people who discount overwhelming scientific evidence. Working from the ground up is better than doing nothing but ideally we need enlightened leadership, from the top down. Bernie Sanders would be a very good president. His Green New Deal is an excellent, comprehensive plan. Our situation demands a major national commitment of scientific and technical manpower, material and facilities. It will require dedication, organization, discipline and sacrifice. It will take the combined efforts of pretty much everyone on the planet to restore the biosphere, similar to the organized effort required back in the 60’s to launch a rocket into space and carry men to the Moon. The Lunar Mission was totally unnecessary and yet we expended a lot of energy and effort to accomplish it. It goes to show what is possible when a large number of people work together for a shared goal. I’m hoping we will do the same, all around the globe, for this absolutely necessary effort to restore the biosphere.

3) Our collective human purpose here on planet Earth is to cultivate and take care of the planetary biosphere. Individually, this means your job as a Neo-Agrarian Gardener is to take care of a small plot of land you call “your garden.” You may live in a situation without easy access to a garden. If you live in the city you may not even have a yard, or maybe there’s not enough light or this or that. Modern industrial society is filled with specialists, who do one job primarily in exchange for money which then allows them to purchase food from farms and gardens where other people work. But if you can, find some way to actually work in a garden that produces flowers, herbs, fruits or vegetables or some other produce of plants. This should not be thought of as a burden. There is no better work than to work in a garden.

Ideally you want to contribute year around to the 4 main gardening activities that take place over the course of a seasonal year: planting in the spring, irrigating and tending the plants in the summer, harvesting in the fall and accumulating seeds in the winter. Working in a garden year around provides you with a blueprint for success in all areas of life. “The agrarian is blessed in that they follow the example of God in creating order out of chaos.” All of our schools should have gardens like class rooms where the students help grow some of the food they eat in the cafeteria. Community gardens are a great idea for part time gardeners.

When you work as a gardener, think of your garden without boundaries. You can put up a fence around your garden but you can’t have any real boundaries. There is no way to keep out air pollution, water pollution and pollution of the soil. If you live on a lake or river or the ocean, that becomes part of your garden without a boundary. The biosphere is made up of an infinite number of gardens without boundaries, all of them interconnected and interdependent.

At the very minimum, to qualify as a Neo-Agrarian Gardener, you need to actively participate in the four main seasonal festivals: Spring Equinox, Summer Solstice, Fall Equinox and Winter Solstice. These festivals are an opportunity to consider the state of the garden and express gratitude for all that the predominantly plant-based biosphere provides us. These festivals should be celebrated all around the globe, 4 world wide parties every year. Is that not a great idea? By the way, MONAD is an excellent Festival Timer. MONAD (in Planetary Event Mode) also tells you what gardening tasks are appropriate and favorable for any time of year.

Don’t forget to compost your food. This is how we help plants cultivate the soil. Plants are busy producing the oxygen in the atmosphere, along with fruits, nuts and seeds we eat, but they are also transforming dead dirt into living soil, which contains soil bacteria and other organisms that make possible plant growth. Compost is rich in this soil bacteria, and extremely valuable to the living Earth.

And of course, make sure your garden is an organic garden. The nutrients in petrochemical fertilizers are formulated to be absorbed directly by the plant, bypassing the soil which becomes more of a growing medium rather than a source of fertility. Because healthy soil contributes to plants’ resistance to pests and disease, there is a distinct disadvantage to relying on petrochemical fertilizers. Plus, petrochemical fertilizers contain salts that accumulate in the soil and eventually become toxic to plant life. Use pesticides as little as possible. Anything you put in the soil ends up back in our water supply one way or another.

4) Always buy organic foods, whatever you can’t grow yourself. Stop spreading toxins and poisons around the garden. Don’t encourage other gardeners to spread toxins and poisons by purchasing non-organic food grown with petrochemicals and pesticides. These toxins are carried into the Earth’s hydrologic cycle which is the circulatory system of the living planet. Bottled water is a ridiculous solution to water pollution. Are we going to bottle oxygen also? Is that the next step? When you live in a garden, the purity of the water which waters your plants is of the utmost importance. You and your children drink that same water.

5) Start recycling everything. Japan is a model of recycling efficiency. (A guide to garbage disposal in Japan.) We should follow their example. In most of the United States, the materials you place in the recycling bin for pick up next to the garbage can are not actually recycled. They are treated just like regular garbage. Don’t let this stop you from making the effort. The process of separating everything into recycling categories will force you to consider how much and what types of waste your household is producing. Multiply all the waste that you produce by a billion households all around the Earth and that is the scope of the problem. Clearly, something has to change. Garbage doesn’t “disappear” when it is buried in the ground. It starts to break down into chemical components which then leaches into the soil and hydrologic cycle, poisoning the garden without boundaries. This is one of those areas where we desperately need National leadership. Everything has to be recycled when you live on a planet. Everything.

6) Ride a bike. Car pool. Drive as little as possible, with a vehicle powered by the smallest adequate engine, with the best miles per gallon. The smaller the engine, the less heat it produces. We all love fast, powerful, responsive cars, but if you know what’s good for you and your children, you will love the biosphere more and reduce internal combustion of gasoline powered engines as much as possible. Goodbye Nascar. It was fun while it lasted. Plastic is a waste product created in the process of refining crude oil into gasoline. It is perhaps the most dangerous pollutant and certainly the most prevalent. It degrades slowly and is difficult to recycle effectively. The more gasoline you use, the more plastic is created. Our current strategy for dealing with all this excess plastic is to let it accumulate as a giant dead-zone in the ocean, which is twice the size of Texas and growing rapidly. By the way, there are a lot of ways to have fun that don’t involve destroying the biosphere.

7) Develop and use new energy sources that don’t heat the environment and don’t generate toxic waste that can’t be handled efficiently without poisoning the garden. Solar power. Hydroelectric energy. Wave energy. Biofuels. Geothermal power. Wind energy. Etc. The vast majority of our energy usage is brought about due to consumerism and conflict or wars between nations. We can’t afford this tribal behavior much longer and this ecological crisis should be driving an increased consciousness and global awareness of our need for cooperation, not conflict.

8) Renounce Consumerism. Stop buying junk you don’t need that ends up in the garbage. Stop producing junk other people don’t need which ends up in the garbage. There is no such thing as garbage, just things that must be recycled. No more paper-printed magazines, books and junk mail. That’s what computer ebooks and email is for. Paper is made out of trees that are better suited producing oxygen for us to breathe. All necessary physical products should be built to last and made so they can be easily repaired or upgraded.

9) Clean up pollution whenever you see it and where ever you find it. Instead of taking a vacation, take a clean-up-pollution trip. Start locally, clean up the neighborhood and then the city where you live and then expand outward. In a garden without boundaries, there is no good place where pollution can be hidden.

10) Get people and corporations to stop all unnecessary burning and combustion of trees and other plants. If you enjoy breathing, stop cutting down trees! Cutting down trees is not a long term solution for reducing wild fires. Fires are easier to start and spread because combustion (internal combustion of engines and external burning of trees) is raising the atmospheric temperature. Cutting down trees because they are too close to power lines is stupid. Planting trees is certainly an excellent idea but leaving living trees alone is a much better idea. Plants are the most efficient oxygen producing machines imaginable. You can’t see it but plants are steadily releasing a cloud of oxygen all the time. If we destroy all our plants, the oxygen in the atmosphere will drop to about 1% and all the animals will drop dead. We humans have an ancient and holy Pact with plants: You take care of us and we’ll take care of you. It’s way past time we live up to our side of the bargain.

Almost all great wealth is derived from exploiting environmental resources which should be managed for the benefit of all beings, not just mankind and most certainly not just for the benefit of a few obscenely wealthy sociopaths who supposedly own the “rights” to exploit shared natural resources. Most wars are fought over the control of natural resources, and the ability to exploit them. War is incredibly expensive in terms of energy and fuel usage, and spreads huge amounts of pollution and toxins. For decades, fossil fuel corporations knowingly destroyed our planet’s biosphere for short-term profits. As Bernie Sanders describes so eloquently in his Green New Deal, Step 2: We need to “End the Greed of the Fossil Fuel Industry and Hold them Accountable.”

11) Support as much as possible other Ecological Restoration Groups. Send them money or help them in person. We all gotta work together towards this shared goal of a healthy biosphere.

12) Share with other people and with other animals, the resources available to you. All the species and all the races are equally important in the ecology of the biosphere. Value wild plants and animals as much or more than cultivated plants and animals. Seek diversity: There is strength and health. Share this post. Share these ideas. Share food from your garden.

Call to action.

What time is it? I’ll tell you what time it is. It’s time to throw out the ordinary clock and calendar and use MONAD to tell the planetary time and date. It’s time to take care of the atmosphere, the soil and the flowing water and all of Earth’s plants that give us life. It’s time to become a Neo-Agrarian Gardener, and celebrate and cultivate the garden without boundaries which is the biosphere. It’s time to slow down our hectic pace and get back to Mother Nature?

Are you willing to take on the role of planetary gardener? Are you willing to take responsibility for your garden without boundaries? Will you commit to help restore the Earth’s biosphere? We need everyone on board. Recruit all the members of your family, all your friends, both real and Facebook friends. If all of us work together, we can still make this planet a paradise.