I’m Done with Climate Doom

We can Repair Our Biomes from the Bottom Up, Using Water and Love

I’ve become something of a climate doomer over the past few years. Partly that’s come from listening to my smartest friends who have been studying energy, fossil fuels, timelines, the various plans for shifting to renewable energy, and the geo-engineering fantasies of the tech titans. But there’s another way of looking at all this.

What if the trajectory of global climate could be impacted instead by smaller actions? Could something like homeopathy or acupuncture work on a global level? Just how much influence can we have over the microbiomes in which we live, and how does changing them change the larger organism of which we are a part?

This is the kind of work the people at The Tamera Peace Research and Education Center in Portugal have been doing. It’s an intentional community and living laboratory for social, civic, economic, and climate experiments, and an experiential school for those who want to learn from their findings in everything from land stewardship and raising children to conflict resolution and rainwater management. They may have gotten best known for their open approach to relationships and love, for they’ve learned that the integrity and honesty with which we approach one another is a prerequisite for engaging sustainably…