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Why

Global Climate Change (GCC) is a result of the degradation of the physical environment on earth. Humans are burning fossil fuels for energy resulting in a build up of heat trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, causing the climate to change. However, humans are also causing a rapid degradation of the living environment by deforesting the earth at an alarming rate and depleting the oceans of marine life. As a result, species loss on earth is at 100-1000 times the background rate and it is estimated that 25-40 different species are going extinct each day in this sixth great extinction event in the earth’s history.

Thus far, the world has been focused on combating GCC by fixing the physical environment, mainly by switching energy production from fossil fuel sources to renewable sources. However, this requires a massive investment in infrastructure as humans currently use 16 TeraWatts of energy, and even at $1/Watt, the capital expenditure required is $16 trillion. Besides, this transformation requires world-wide policy changes, which  are difficult to achieve quickly in the face of opposition from entrenched economic interests. We also need time to make these changes, which we may not have in the face of climatic tipping points.

Finally, this two-decade long effort at fixing the physical environment has failed to prevent recent Carbon emissions from increasing at a faster pace than ever before as the above chart shows.

In contrast, it is a lot easier to combat GCC by fixing the living environment though it has received scant attention to date. This can be achieved, for example, if humans stopped consuming animal products, since then 1/3rd of the ice-free land surface that is currently being used for livestock production can be reforested

to fix all the carbon that humans are emitting today, while healing the living environment as well. However, this solution doesn’t work if there is partial boycotting of animal products since that would only serve to lower costs for the remaining animal product consumers. The Climate Healers initiative is an alternate life-affirming approach that when implemented to scale, saves the living environment  on land and combats GCC, even with partial participation from the affluent community. As such, it is perhaps a more practical solution to GCC.