Global Warming/Global Climate Change:Two Narratives

Article by Michael Pilarski, Global Earth Repair Foundation, January 7, 2026 version.

This article is the result of 50 years of research on the topic. They are my opinions to the best of my knowledge. I am always learning new things so do not regard this as static.

The Dominant Narrative by the mass media/government/corporate complex is that climate warming and climate change are the result of burning fossil fuels and the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. The solution is to reduce fossil fuel use and switch to renewable sources of energy: solar, wind, hydro, biomass and nuclear.

Global Earth Repair Narrative. The main reason for climate change is the destruction of the biosphere. The volume and weight of the world’s biomass is down by about 50% from its interglacial peak, decreasing from an estimated 2 Teratons (2,000 Gigatons) of carbon to around 1.1 Teratons (1,100 GtC) today. This reduction is driven by the loss of half of Earth's forests, soil carbon losses, an 85% decline in wild mammal biomass, and a large drop in fish biomass.

Besides the outright loss of about half the world’s forests there is also the problem of ongoing degradation of forests, grasslands, shrub-steppes and deserts. A big part of carbon loss, (less talked about), is the massive loss of carbon from the world’s soils. Tillage agriculture burns the humus and carbon out of the soil. This reduces soils water-holding capacity and fertility and resistance to erosion. Soil erosion is another major loss of carbon. Tillage agriculture creates heat island affects for at least part of the year. Bare, or nearly bare, agricultural land is a major factor in climate heating. Degraded bare ground holds very little carbon and has a big heat island affect.

Bigger storms, more intense rainfall, more droughts and wobbling jet streams are all effects of the disruptions to biosphere functioning. All of these can be improved by earth repair.

The idea that trees dry up the land is utter nonsense. It is the loss of trees that dries up the land. Healthy rivers flow year-round out of forested landscapes. Small intermittent rivers flow out of bare, degraded landscapes except for when they are raging torrents in flood periods.

As a result of burning out much of the humus and carbon in the soil, the soil holds less water. A higher % of precipitation runs off without percolating into the soil. This along with pumping of groundwater for irrigation and other uses, means that groundwater levels have dropped in many parts of the world. Incised streams (due to erosion) are also a major factor in groundwater lowering. Pumping and depletion of deep aquifers has happened in many parts of the world. Deeper and deeper wells need to be dug and at some point the water declines or stops. We are about to witness the loss of millions of acres of irrigated farmland worldwide due to aquifers running out. The combined loss of water in biomass, in soils, in groundwater and in deep aquifers ends up in the ocean contributing to rising sea levels. Conversely if we replenish the water in soils, groundwater, deep aquifers and living biomass we can halt and then reverse sea level rise.

One of the biggest culprits in climate change is industrialized, monoculture agriculture with annual crops. There are improvements to be made, and some are being made but by and large we need to transform this system. Smaller fields, far less tillage, much more use of perennial crops, tree crops, agroforestry etc. Agriculture set within a mosaic of more natural ecosystems, rather than agriculture dominating the landscape.

Intensive polycultures can provide local food security in most places in the world largely with local inputs. More small farmers, less big machinery. Each farming region can produce specialties for export as well as feeding the local population. There would still be agricultural trade. Africa imported 35 million tons of food in 2024. This would not be necessary in an Earth Repair kind of world.

Climate change will likely become ever more catastrophic until humans seriously stop damaging and start fixing and the environment. A worse-case scenario is runaway hothouse Earth, whereby the Earth becomes so hot that all higher life-forms go extinct, including humans, and the Earth more closely resembles the climate of Venus. This is serious and humanity needs to greatly ramp-up its restoration activities. The Global Earth Repair Convergence aims to point the way forward. We will compile a very large list of the practical things we can do. Each bioregion/culture of the world can choose which practices are most appropriate for their circumstances.

Unbridled capitalism and racist white supremacy are both big actors in destroying the world’s biosphere as well as destroying its cultural diversity.

The war on Indigenous peoples worldwide has been going strong since the expansion of Western European colonialism. Countless millions of Indigenous people have been killed directly and indirectly. Of course wars of empires have been killing local tribes/cultures for millennia, but the last 500 years it has been global. Outright ethnic cleansing and genocide has been replaced by by assimilation programs and cultural warfare in most places. The % of world population that are Indigenous peoples has been dropping for many years, but there still are an estimated 500 million Indigenous people in the world today. They should be protected from further persecution. Cultural diversity is important to long-term human survivability. As we embark on this big era of earth repair, traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) is key to success. There is the related matter of traditional agricultural cultures that might not classify as Indigenous but have a long history of knowledge of how to live in place and provide food. This traditional agriculture knowledge (TAK) also has been disappearing at a fast rate in today’s modern world and also needs to be preserved and the carriers of the knowledge protected. The policy has been (and continues to be) get rural people off the land and into the cities where generations grow up with knowing how to grow food or take care of themselves.

So humanity faces not only the challenge of earth repair, but also that of cultural repair. They can, and should, go hand in hand. Obviously what we are saying is that we need new economic and governance systems around the world focusing on localization of economies and governance.

All of this will be on the table at the Global Earth Repair Convergence.

Domestic livestock and overgrazing effects on biomass, carbon and water-holding capacity have badly damaged lands in many places. There are traditional pastoralist cultures that sustainably grazed and managed their landscapes, but population, pressure and displacement and ecosystem damage means that this is practiced less and less. We need to stop, and then reverse, the destruction. Thankfully we have sustainable/regenerative grazing practices to draw on today, like the Savory methods.

The solutions to deforestation, desertification and dehydration of the land are to regreen the planet. Specifically what we will address at the Global Earth Repair Convergence. https://www.globalearthrepairconvergence.com/

“Save the old growth.”

“Save the old cultures.”

“Save what’s left and Restore the rest” A Rob Lewis quote.

Other terms for Earth repair include:

Ecosystem restoration,

Nature-based solutions.

Nature-positive solutions,

Natural climate solutions,

Biological solutions.

Planetary regeneration.

Earth-healing,

Stewardship,

Biomimicry,

Geo-biomimicry,

Geotherapy.

[We realize that the term “nature-based solutions” has been tainted in some quarters because of its use by corporations to green-wash or promote bad practices. We believe all these terms apply and we use the terms interchangeably in this text.