 Ngāi, tawinqahua hake hake, tawinqahua hake, hux pasiaqa holliaka narek ka Rebini ka lua gara, fanau me instantlywe wipio di maerio me maerio kerani na i g shampoo me tu owi dito paraka Gunanon do power points actually hate power points but if you can look at them you won't have to look at me so much so it might be quite good so I want to talk about wholeness and I'm going to start there because I'd actually like to talk a whole lot about wholeness and well-being and what it is to have health which is all to do with being whole and being connected I haven't got time to do that but I'll touch on it and then I'm going to go through and get to water and then we're going to a sub-theme is going to be well an example is going to be about sort of climate change I guess but what I'm really want to talk about is ecosystems and living systems on this planet and what's happening to them okay so let's go so wholeness and holistic perspective and I like to keep the W there because it's a whole view it's not a hole in the ground sort of a thing and it's all about connections it's about patterns of exchange what's going on in terms of the integration and maintaining the connectivity all the time and everything we look at and think about and do whether it's thinking or action or whatever so I just want to on this one want to talk about ecological health or what is ecological health it's actually a rather difficult thing to think about it's a difficult question is what is ecological health so I'm just going to give you one possibility here it's really about the rate of turnover of nutrients carbon phosphorus nitrogen all these nutrients and everything that's going on and the more turns over and the more diverse pathways of all those interconnections is then the healthier that ecosystem is it's one measure maybe of health is the there's a lot going on and it's very complicated and it's all sort of supporting each other and highly interconnected way with a rapid turnover and that of fertility is a rapid turnover of nutrients couple things of all that might mean because it gets a little bit difficult is that it means that it's it's productive it's not about maximising production it's about productivity that supports all parts of the ecosystem or that living system and there's storages and sort of backups in terms of resilience in terms of the shocks that might come or the changes that might come so it has the ability to to adjust and adapt another take on that is that it involves a lot of death we tend to forget about that when you're next going to eat some food something's dying so that you can live okay so life and death go together in a healthy ecosystem it's not just all about life and growth right and look at it another way it's not all about regeneration either there is growth maturity and decay so there's both regeneration and degeneration I now want to look at something called world views we all have a world view we have an individual world view we have a social group community a cultural one a society one we all have a world view and it's a sort of the default setting when you don't quite know what to make of it we go to our defaults I'm going to make an assumption that you can read here that's our unconsciously held beliefs or assumptions about what about life and what it means actually has the most influence on our actions and we don't even know that we're doing it we don't even know what these beliefs are they just well down deep but it makes a real difference to us so I just want to look at that in terms of this little diagram of the friend of mine drew in terms of the world view that sort of is sensing the dominant world view which is the world view of dominance at the moment where nature is out there nature that's a terrible word nature because we're soon to say nature it's like we're not part of it all right it's something else and that and we've come out of it and we're now in control of it and we can now make use of it and that's a sort of dominance and control type of paradigm that we live in and so if we think about that and we're thinking about coming to this the theme of climate change well the climate's changing all the time day and night seasonally year on year the climate is continually changing right so it's always changing always will change and it's sort of been stated and Charles sort of said it a bit as well thank you Charles but this could be a statement I don't know how easy it is to read there but this could be a rather raw but maybe more honest statement about what a lot of climate change activity might be about in terms of stabilising the climate right so it's the climate's changing and it's virtually affecting us and our lifestyle then we must take action we must be in control so it's our responsibility to take action for what to keep the climate and the convenience and comfort of our present lifestyle that's what a lot of climate change people talking about keeping it like it is so we can keep on living like we are well I'd like to question that I want to go then to water so we're on a watery planet that's out to run New Zealand or can't see it on that somewhere down there and it shows us and that's half the globe so we're in a very watery place at the globe and I'm sure you know that the guy hypothesis and that is that where there's water there's life so I want to quickly just go through this and I'll just see how far I get so let's say basically what life is about life is a synergy to me and very simplistic terms between water and carbon okay and a little bit goes like this in terms of water well it's a fees doctor start we talked about photosynthesis minister talked about that water and co2 sunlight photosynthesis makes carb hydrates that's the energy of the whole system that's how we build life right but it's a lot more than that it's actually the facilitator of all organic exchanges water is a incredibly unusual and strange molecule very basic but very unusual and it facilitates all exchanges of life and so it's it actually helps to distribute and particularly liquid water helps distribute nutrients around the oceans easy enough and on land as well and that's really important because plants can't move so nutrients have to come to them and I'll talk a bit later about the air bringing also basic nutrients like water and co2 to plants because that's what they are the basic nutrients very importantly water is about distributing heat as well and so the climate is really about water the weather is all to do with water that's what the weather is it's water carbon is a very unusual well not unusual let's just happens to be a simple molecule that has a sort of four-way bonding positive negative anions cations can sort of bond to it and can bond to itself and it conforms sort of complex rings and chains and basically form very long complex spiraling molecules and that's what allows life so the two together give you life so let's look basically a couple of basic cycles of life of carbon and water so let's start with carbon don't look too much at the that kind of work it out okay it's just saying how carbon flows around through ecosystems and soils and in the air and on land based ecosystems there's this interplay between the land the biomass and the atmosphere in terms of the whole interaction of it and again this one here don't you look too much time in it but this is somebody's trying to look at well what's the quantities of storages and the fluxes of carbon in the world and just look at on the left hand side you'll see a sort of pinky thing now that's the carbon exchange going on through the atmosphere through CO2 or methane or carbon monoxide this life it's life's way of distributing carbon and it's going on if you look at the smaller little pink ones that's the fossil fuel burning the fires and that it's actually quite a small percentage of what's going on anyway it's a huge amount of carbon been recycled through the year anyway and we might be adding a bit to it let's go to the water cycle pretty basic to life as I've said and and and a whole lot of ways of having time to get into and how the water cycle works but that's really important part of the whole system of life okay now if we look at what we've done to it I'm sure you can go through all these things that I need to tell you what they are but we've done lots of things that have affected the water cycle all right including on waterways but also on land deforestation and whatever it's got in soil loss and all that that's all disrupting and interfering and affecting the water cycle it's also affecting ecosystems and they're both connected so they affect ecosystems it affects the water cycle it affects the water cycle it affects the ecosystems the ability of life to do its thing as affected by the disruption this one is really when we come to climate and global climate to me anyway it's all about the circulation of water and therefore heat the sun's shining it's more on the tropics it always is water is used to distribute that heat around as well as water itself I mean I mean part of the life cycle of of life so I just want to come to this as an example a little bit in terms of everything with climate so let's look at the composition first very basic of the atmosphere mostly nitrogen really interesting isn't it another story is the why so much nitrogen in the maybe over three quarters of it then oxygen now on the right hand side there there's water now people look at it as a dry air or wet air because water goes in and out of the air all the time is water vapor all right and then some guns down again is rain and that's really important and that's what this that's the greenhouse gas that's the most important greenhouse gas of the lot because it's the heat transferor all right there's water and then there's inert gases well they just wander around and don't say anybody to anything they just do their own thing you know so we don't worry about them too much it's mainly argon and a few others if we blow up that again two percent is about an average that's up to four percent in the air can be water vapor and it's coming and going and then those are those inert fellas who just wander around and don't say hello to anybody and then there's a bit of carbon carbon dioxide methane come in my oxide whatever going around in the system a very small part it is a trace element going through the atmosphere really doing its thing for life and what impacts it has on the climate is really a side consequences from my point of view so if we look at then some of the climate drivers and I go through this quite quickly because you probably know it all but I want to make the point is that the biophysical process of life and climate intimately connected one affects the other climate affects life life affects climate and if we I think we need to get a head around that bigger picture of those interconnections and how it all works together and not concentrate or something we've been making the point on one part of it which is the climate so what are climate drivers let's say what are the suspects right well clearly the biggest suspect is the sun right because that's what brings the heat brings the energy into the earth and it's uh we have to deal with it and life has to deal with it and this is just a plot and I'm sure you've seen in the sun's energy and the radiation varies and that varies the amount of heat and radiation coming to earth and that affects the weather obviously and the climate and that sort of thing and that's all fine and there's various other things that happen all about the moon well a bit of different opinion about what affects the moon has and on our weather and that but from my point of view but since it affects water and a huge way and affects us our bodies of water and actually the moons come in and go and it's affecting you and with the time in fact so I think it is actually having an effect on the weather whether it's making much change in it in present time well that might be a different story so maybe it's not such a big suspect the earth itself clearly is it's got its own heat source we want to above volcanoes infect volcanoes and what that does to the climate okay and this happens to be the rupahi eruption in 1995 already small one but we're in a high energy place here right on the ring of fire and all this weather that comes around us so we know about the earth being a bit active around here and then there's life itself as a whole now I just like this diagram because it's a representation of proteins but life is always interacting with climate so this always goes on between climate and life if I put this one up now this is a a view right back in time and it's a little compressed view so it's like as you go further back in time it's a psychological view of time and it gets more compressed as you go back in time and I think it's quite a good human view of time this but a lot of shows this temperature against geological time up to the present and what it demonstrates is we're actually in a cold period at the moment the earth is cold and we're in quite a cold period with these really quite short sharp warm intervals and the Holocene is just the most recent of the last four or five of those intervals and that's going to keep going these drivers these changes are not stopping just because we're around they are continuing to do their thing so let's come to the prime suspect the problem what's our human activity and what the effect does that have on it I want to talk about the difference between sources and sinks I think it's really important I think Charles has already sort of raised this issue the sources of CO2 going to the air and the sinks when it's taken out of the air has been recycled by life now clearly we are burning fossil fuels and that's increasing the sources of CO2 and clearly we are burning plants and crops and that's increasing the sources of CO2 okay don't breathe you're letting out CO2 okay so be careful don't belt your fart either actually and and what about our animals and which animals is it our domestic animals is it all animals I come to that something what about the sinks well I'm afraid there's a whole long list of what we're doing in terms of reducing the ability of life to take carbon out of the atmosphere again you know we're clearing forests we're draining wetlands we're poisoning the soil as well as telling it we're doing all sorts of things to the to the ocean and wrecking ecosystems we're polluting waterways we're putting plastics that's been mentioned into oceans we're doing a lot of disruptive biotechnology which is affecting ecosystems there's a long long list of what we're doing to our living systems on this earth of which we're actually an intimate part of and that to me is the thing we should be focusing on that's the bigger picture of what we're doing to all these ecosystems mountains to the bottom of the sea we're affecting ecosystems we're degrading them and therefore they're less able to make use of the carbon that's meant to be going around left in the air nowhere to go where do I go I'm left here okay so that's support I really want to come back to in terms of it's really about the sinks so it's not so much the burning of fossil fuels it's the issue but it's actually the the what we do with the burning in terms of the machines that then are powered by cheap energy and degrade and ecosystems that's the real issue of what we're doing with it so it's the use we're making of fossil fuels to degrade rather than regenerate to be on top of and impose rather than to be with and work with and that so it's that's the that's actually my key message in a way so let's just think about carbon accounting and if we're going to understand what's going on here and and my story is not about facts and figures it's about understanding the values and priorities we really need to see the bigger picture of what's going on and nature doesn't care within animals domesticated or its wild it has the same impact what's important is whether it's healthy ecosystem or a degraded ecosystem now the ones on the left are pretty degraded ecosystems and that's a problem it's not that they're farmed as they're degraded it's not that the dairy farming is wrong it's that the what Melissa was I 100% agree with it's about how we can farm grasslands with large animals which are a natural ecosystem in this world in a way that is healthy for the environment and lots of soil life which means lots of carbon and the fastest way of sequestering carbon out of the air is grazing large animals on grasslands that's the fastest way it won't be the most but it's the fastest way if you want to do that so why aren't we considering that in our accounting because we don't and we talk about agriculture in New Zealand where's the accounting for people who sequester carbon in the soil and we're in the equation one underneath it's not just the machines that are burning fuels it's the lack of diversity in that field that would have been there taking up carbon and a wheat fuel takes up very little okay so the last thing i'd really want to say is about carbon action and regeneration and i'll leave it to Kay and Bob to talk a bit about regeneration and and that's a big issue you know I haven't got time to go on to it but the last big of talk about plastics in the sea now what's the implication that on the water cycle and the carbon cycle what about all those plastic floating on the ocean in effect on evaporation that's the way you reduce evaporation you put a plastic film over water plastic bubbles okay what's effect on the ecosystems that degrade in it and therefore not allowing it to take up carbon that's the issue now a while ago people used to go up burning plastic incinerating it or a better gasification gasification which actually takes it and uses it as energy because it's just like fossil fuels it just rechains into another form you can burn it and that takes it right back to co2 and h2o best way of breaking down the only way to really break things down by fire that's the cleanser all right we don't do it because he says put in co2 into the air well what's the consequences of that in terms of now all this plastic going around to it there's all sorts of things about why we should do it the last bit is i don't know if this is photoshopped or not but there's ways of doing it and ways of not doing it no you can incinerate or you can not incinerate very well so my last slide i think is a much deeper issue than just worrying about climate change it's a deeper issue about our whole way of living and we have to change our whole way of living in a transformative way to have healthy ecosystems and we be a part of a healthy ecosystem intimately connected to it that's what we've got to do and it's much harder than just saying we shall control the climate or we shall make it better for us thank you for listening i hope you got something out of it