You've heard all kinds of arguments, data, impending doom, reasons, solutions, and conspiracies. I'm not really interested in all the standard platitudes and talking points; I want to talk about something a bit different. You may not agree, but before your formulate your argument, please make sure you go all the way down the rabbit hole below.

You and I are just regular people, without a lot of clout or money to make the kind of sweeping changes required to turn our global environmental crisis around, right? It's true that we may not have a lot of clout or money, but as it turns out, we don't need that much. There is so much more that you and I can do besides limbering up to kiss our butts goodbye any year now. To start, we simply need to think more deeply about how we view and use our space, observe our land and our community, and then identify and make small changes from our sinks, to our backyards, and out to our counties. We may need to attend some town council meetings and (gasp) talk to our neighbors. First, let's make sure we understand the problem beyond what most media headlines want you to think, beginning with the obvious...

97% of the water on our planet is comprised of oceans. The rampant mishandling of the remaining 3% is literally wreaking havoc on all of humanity in a variety of ways. Underlying the catastrophe of rising seas is a much more subtle theme that seems to be largely escaping everyone's radar, and this is what I want to talk about, because this is where you and I can make a difference today, next year, and for our children's children. 50 years ago, the term "global warming" was used as a warning of what would occur if we didn't change our behavior. We didn't change our behavior, but these days it seems people talk about global warming as if it was the cause of these problems rather than a symptom of our behavior.

Why didn't we change our behavior? The cost of doing things differently was one important issue, especially for people living paycheck to paycheck. Inconvenience was another, since few working people had the time or energy to buck a system set up to plow and pollute. But another reason many of us didn't listen was because there seemed to be some fatal flaw in the arguments environmentalists made. They lacked, and in my opinion still lack the ability to show us the real truth in ways we could understand, internalize, and act upon, and that's what this page is here for.

What behavior needed to change, anyway? In my opinion, the people who tell you we need to stop ranching cattle or driving big fancy trucks are somewhat missing the mark, and perhaps this is why we haven't completely put our faith in those people. They constantly talk about only one half of the equation, the Inputs - like cows farting and non-point source emissions, while seeming to discount how vitally important the other half of the equation is. That half of the equation that moderates the composition of the atmosphere, surface temperatures, local weather, and water retention. That half of the equation that, if it was present in significant amounts, would have a mitigating affect on cows farting, emissions, air pollution, erosion, drought, temperature, and severe weather. It is also the half of the equation that we've had a direct impact upon globally, for thousands of years (way beyond the tiny blip of human history that contains the combustion engine), which is wonderful news because it means there's finally a problem we could solve, if only we truly understood it.

But before we can get into that more, let's just keep looking at our land for a minute and observing what is happening there now, courtesy of Google Earth...

First of all, kudos, Americans! Did you have any idea we were so productive? We're taught that the "breadbasket of America" is in the center of the country, but I deliberately didn't include many of those states because you might not realize how almost every state in the contiguous USA looks very similar, regardless of climate and topography. We are farming badasses!! You may think where you live, your county, or your state, has unique conditions that other people aren't facing elsewhere in the country, but much of the country is either farmland, grazed land/pasture, or developed land, so actually many of us are facing similar challenges no matter where we live.

No matter how much average rainfall our town gets in a year, it doesn't always last and we often need to irrigate. We are quickly losing water after rains due to evaporation and surface runoff. We have issues with drought, flooding and loss of topsoil (going all the way back to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s). We have damaging straight-line winds and increased severity of weather events. Meanwhile, peoples homes, communities, and even entire countries are sinking beneath the waves.

We have some serious water displacement issues. The wonderful news is, we played a large role in current events, which means we can resolve it. In just a few years, even. This is something you don't need to wait for government to debate or charities to donate millions to address; there's things you can do right now in your home, your backyard, and your community to move the needle. If you haven't already considered our page about Mega-Droughts and the plight of the pesky beaver, please do, because retaining potable water and rainwater more effectively is one piece of this big puzzle and there are solutions for you to implement.

Another important piece of this puzzle is our attitude toward the land, what it means to have "productive" land, and how important it is to make space for plants and animals whose place in the environment is to maximize water retention. In its natural state when covered with native grass, perennials, or trees, our land is supposed to be like a sponge, soaking up and retaining water. As it sinks down into the water table, it creates springs and creeks, and ensures year-round supply, even in dry times. Unfortunately, we've turned too large a percentage of our land into a giant hockey puck. It's not just us, either;

We're definitely not the only country with some serious water displacement issues. It's happening globally. But there are also people who have figured out how to green deserts from Australia to China to the Middle East and even right here in America, so it can be done. It already IS being done.

Another major part of the problem is our past and present addiction to trees, which I discuss here. It's important to understand historically how the pictures above came to be, and I'm not saying anywhere on this site that we need to do away with farms, because we very much need them. Though it costs money, some farmers are already making adjustments to their land management strategies, such as using cover crops, so that they can continue to hand down their way of life to future generations. We need to help them. We need to stop blaming everyone else in our supply chain, especially farmers and ranchers, and help them by contemplating our own attitudes about land, trees, wildlife, food, and development, and then purposefully creating space within our already-developed areas for trees and wildlife. We can do that. People all over the world have already started.

Above all, simple laypeople like you and I need to find a way to comprehend how much water we're losing by doing things the way we've been doing things for the past few hundred years and see if we can stop losing as much. If you don't believe changing our water usage and retention could possibly have an impact on rising sea levels, then I would have to remind you that the Thwaites glacier (yup, the one they call the "doomsday glacier") is only slightly larger in area than the state of Florida. Imagine how much water our entire country, our entire continent, and finally, all the temperate continents of the world could retain if we changed our habits, and what do you think that would do to sea levels?

Maybe you should go back to Google Earth and poke around more, because it is difficult to comprehend the magnitude of our situation until you really start looking all over the world. Consider this, for example:

Why did I choose this spot? Italy's longest river, the Po, runs through the area above, and in 2022 it just ran dry. Meanwhile, relatively nearby Venice had to build temporary bridges on top of the permanent bridges to keep people out of the ocean. You can go ahead and blame that nebulous "climate change" or an unusual temporary weather pattern, but we are the ones that are causing those extremes and unusual weather patterns over an unfathomable amount of land all over the world. If we were just being wasteful with water in Nebraska, maybe it wouldn't matter. If it was just happening in Spain, maybe it wouldn't matter, but that's not what's going on here. Nebraska looks like Italy, Italy looks like Columbia, which looks like Burma, which looks like Australia. We have reached a critical mass and have completely transformed a significant percentage of the entire surface of the earth. Yet, we did this over a relatively short span of time - less than 200 years. We can fix it, this, but it's going to take way more than fancy engineering, international climate meetings, and protests. We - everyone, consumers, farmers, homeowners - have got to change our minds.

Water by the Numbers

Math makes my palms sweat but I'm going to attempt to do a little thought experiment, and the result isn't meant to be accurate, merely indicative. I'll put as much of my work as possible here so you can do it yourself and perhaps correct my mistakes.

First, let's consult Michigan State University. In a 2015 article titled "Compost increases the water holding capacity of droughty soils", they state that;

This article and the referred studies are good reads, worth a longer look. Though farmers fallow fields and plant cover crops whenever possible, decades of ploughing, tree loss, high winds, and drought have stripped topsoil and organic matter from the surface of our country at an alarming rate. Before we came, it was Native Americans, trees, native grasses, and perennials (commonly called "weeds") that held everything together. Much of that ancient topsoil was lost by the 1930s and every decade since then, so now we have land that is relatively devoid of organic matter. In many cases, when we manually put down new organic matter, it's used rapidly by the year's harvested crop, so we're often not building soil but barely maintaining it.

But according to this article from MSU, one acre that has just one percent organic matter in the first foot of soil can hold 16,500 gallons of "plant-available" water.

For the closest comparison, a typical residential swimming pool that's 15 x 30 feet and goes down to 8 feet at the deep end is about 13,500 gallons. So let's just say more than a pool per acre. So that's great and all, but what if we aren't even getting much rainfall in the first place?

What I'm saying is that you might be surprised how much water a system receives that is generally considered to be arid, and you might be embarrassed to discover how much water more temperate states receive annually but still seem to need irrigation. As a homeowner, an apartment dweller, a casual horse owner, all the way up to large commercial ranching and farming outfits, we individuals can choose to tackle all of the issues facing us by changing our water management strategies to keep more water in the system, and losing less water to runoff and evaporation.

Beyond that, if we even band together in groups, whether at work, at church, or with our neighbors or along a creek, we can accomplish even more together. We need to manage our spaces to increase the carbon content in the soil if we truly want to reduce and even reverse our carbon footprint in this world, and making even small changes could have an impact on everything from drought to sea level rise.

What kinds of things could we personally do right now without going out and buying a Prius? This is by no means an exhaustive list...

Reduce Water Waste

If you have a leaky faucet or hose, get it fixed. Put as many water-efficient technologies into your home and around your farm or ranch. Try to use water twice whenever you can while following local regulations for greywater usage. Do whatever you can to prevent any water that comes onto your property from going into a sewer drain, quickly washing downstream, or evaporating away hours after a good rainfall.

Convert Some Lawn

Lawns are an important part of American culture, but we tend to overdo things, and lawns are no exception. Create a natural edge around your lawn dedicated to wildflowers, perennial landscaping, or fruit-bearing shrubs if space provides. Balancing the lawn with visual interest around the edges can actually make the lawn pop in contrast. Grasses best for beautiful lawns aren't going to be capable of developing the kind of extensive root system needed to rebuild the soil underneath, and they constantly need fertilization as well. Creating a border around your lawn can help seal in the fertilizers near the surface to prevent runoff that can prove toxic to downstream organisms.

Convert All of Your Lawn

Some municipalities in more arid states are beginning the push to convert as much water-gulping lawn in public spaces to native groundcover as possible in a bid to reduce water consumption, and to cut fertilizer and maintenance costs. In many places, homeowners are encouraged to do the same, with towns and states even providing resources and incentives for this to happen. It is possible to create a clean, modern, aesthetic landscape outside your home without a lawn, and it's possible to create spaces that are family friendly or otherwise useful for outdoor activities with thoughtful planning.

Plant Trees and Shrubs Strategically

It cannot be stressed enough that humans have been removing trees from the landscape at a rapid pace since the dawn of the Bronze Age 5,000 years ago. It will take a massive concerted effort to bring back what we and our immediate ancestors have taken out of the system just in the past 200 years. Trees and shrubs can provide shade and protect the ground from heat and in some cases evaporation. They add moisture to a system both above and below ground. Above ground, trees emit stored moisture in a process called transpiration, which can help raise the humidity in a dry microclimate. The widespread removal of trees has a three-fold drying effect; the lack of transpiration makes the air dryer, causing water on the newly exposed ground surface to evaporate even faster, and as the ground becomes compacted there is no longer a mechanism to divert surface water down into the aquifer. That's a triple whammy of suck.

Trees, shrubs, and vines also need to make a comeback in urban spaces to help reduce the Heat Island Effect as well as create windbreaks to prevent additional topsoil erosion from exposed land. The side benefit is almost always making spaces more people-friendly and inviting, in some cases reduction of energy costs, and reducing the risk of heat-related injuries for pedestrians and apartment dwellers. Converting more areas from concrete to permeable or plant-covered spaces will help retain moisture both above and below ground, as well as providing habitat for pollinators, beneficial insects, and small mammals that consume the kind of bugs we might otherwise use chemicals to control.

Vegetate Vacant or Unused Land

Cover crops and native perennials are often called weeds, but we must come to understand the relationship between drought and exposed soil. Land has more value, and can potentially be more "productive" the higher the percentage of organic material in the soil, so if land is sitting around awaiting development or a new crop season, why not let nature work its magic with nitrogen fixing cover crops or native perennials good for pollinators? This will also help reduce surface runoff and evaporation, that will help keep water in the system longer.

Some of the Other Stuff You've Heard About

Reducing our energy footprint and non-point source emissions are important, but having as much living matter on and in the soil as possible is the vital other part of the equation I was talking about above (this article is so long, it feels like a year ago). Even if you can't afford a new car or appliance, you can probably afford a few perennials or some river pebbles if you budget for it. The problems we face are interconnected, just like we are. We can tackle them, we don't need to wait for anyone else or make any more excuses. Just pick one small thing to change for this year, and pick another thing for next year, and start getting it done. There's never been a better time than now.