ENVIRONMENT

The 8 Most Inspiring Good News Environmental Stories of 2022

It’s really happening now, my friends

I’m a stubbornly positive person. I just can’t do doom and gloom. It gives me stress. And I just refuse to envision a bad future for our grandchildren. I need to be on top of solutions. Reporting and doing. Walking my talk

But then, realistically, there’s also a lot to be positive about

So, today, let’s have a look at 8 very positive stories I encounter in my work life as a biomimicry mentor and reporter

Cheer with me, my friends

We’re making big progress!

8- The Sun Will Only Die in Another 5 Billion Years

We are halfway, my friends. The earth exists for 4.6 billion years. And we all know we are dependent on the sun. So, if the Sun only dies in another 5 billion years, we only have to become an adaptive species

Because climate mitigating and adaptive species are thriving species

7- The Weathermakers Calm Down Hurricanes

In many countries, holistic engineers are popping up. The Weathermakers are doing a huge project to regreen the Sinai desert right now. Their lead engineer and director Ties van der Hoeven, calculated that bringing back original vegetation in this desert will calm down hurricanes in the far and wide area

How do they do it? They bring sediments that have flushed over centuries into a lake back on land. And the dormant seeds in the soil will germinate. We know that vegetation mitigates climate and provides us all with food

Of course, the local citizens are involved too. This whole project will strengthen their economy big time. Nature-based solution is the name for these kind of solutions with benefits for biodiversity, climate, and human economies. Everyone is talking about these solutions now. The UN. The EU. The World Bank and many more

And many consortiums are making it happen

In this film, Return to Eden by Marijn Poels, you’ll see the Weathermakers together with a lot of other solutions for environmental predicaments and food challenges around the world

I worked on this film. Marijn Poels has been my friend for 15+ years. And we recently visited him and his family near Berlin and slept in their tree hut

I know the projects in this film too. Project Drawdown (technology) & Project Regeneration (ecosystem restoration) worldwide

Also Habiba Community in the Egyptian desert

I was a temporary director of the Ecosystem Restoration Camps with John D. Liu. John is the ecologist and filmmaker who planned and documented the already-finished restoration of the Loess Plateau in China. An area the size of my whole country, the Netherlands, regenerated in a couple of years

Watch John’s documentary Green Gold if you want to know how they did it

And I know the holistic engineers of the Weathermakers. We are all from the same country. The Netherlands. We know about water. We support everyone with water and soil solutions right now

And of course, I also know the big greenhouses next to the cities. Where we grow healthy food on full-spectrum artificial light and full-spectrum healthy water. Wageningen University is close to where I live

Whatever isn’t close, hahaha? Holland is a small country. More one big, green city with 17 million inhabitants, if you ask me

And the Dutch practical college, most famous among South Korean farmers, is my home turf. Warmonderhof in Dronten. Biodynamic farming. Huge farming skills in Germany, Belgium, and Holland

I live on the border with Germany and Belgium, so I have easy access to all three countries. These solutions are really happening big scale now, my friends

6- Sponge Cities

China is really transforming its cities into Sponge Cities now. Regulating water with holistic engineering, wetlands, and material science

The excess water during flooding is stored in the soil. And when drought kicks in, we actively create freshwater with evaporation and water cycle knowledge

Our Dutch Delft University is working on it with the Chinese. I was born in Delft. Give me your questions and your access to knowledge is just one click away

5- Transforming Existing Buildings into Healthy Buildings with Membranes

Transforming existing (city) buildings into healthy buildings is a thingy

We spend 90% of our time indoors. And the indoor climate sucks because of off-gassing glues and paints. High particle amounts of carbon (out-breath) stay in meeting rooms because we don’t ventilate properly

“We spend 90% of our time indoors and it’s estimated that 92% of the air in the places we live is unsafe to breathe”

— World Green Building Council

Cause? Our buildings don’t breathe and have bad ventilation. Sick building syndrome is the result

Headaches. Vomiting. Coughing and sneezing

My personal passions are healthy school buildings. It’s so easy to solve, you know. Do we need ventilation machines? Of course not! That would only create a lot of noise, maintenance (filter exchange), and costs

We do it with Termite Ventilation. We do it with membranes around existing buildings. Biomimicry solutions. Cheap and easy

Have a look at this German architect

LAVA architects use the Superformula. And that revolutionary-thinking mathematician is my friend. Professor Johan Gielis. Gielis transformations are changing the scientific scene right now

With formulas inspired by reality. Nature on our planet

And don’t be surprised if Johan wins a Nobel Prize one of these years

He and his evolutionary team deserve it!

4- Tiny Forests

My Asian hero is Shubhendu Sharma. An engineer who makes urban forestry sexy and very achievable. He uses the Miyawaki method. And we used this method as well for our Olive Bliss project in Greece

Strengthening economies and using agroforestry for healthy farming

3- Modern Local Production

We are merging into an era of local production. And an end to geopolitics and mining. How will we do that?

Step 1 — Phytomining

Some plants are super accumulators of minerals and metals. Local citizens can mine garbage heaps with plants. And of course, African mines can be mined like this too. No more reason to rape Gaia

Local citizens farm her with care

We can harvest the super-accumulator plants and regain the metals and minerals from them with an easy process called pyrolysis. This is the same process we use for making biochar out of waste organic materials

This way, we store carbon in the soil and create super-fertile soil at the same time. Terra preta is the name of this black, fertile soil now mainly found in the Amazon rainforest

We just make it ourselves from our food waste and our biodegradable diapers. Just like the indigenous people of the rainforest did before us. Ancestors have sooooooo much valuable knowledge

Step 2 — Generative Design

Generative design is how nature designs her solid matter. With lots of space. The open structures of the material will give the products their functionality

Stiff like bones. Or flexible like skins

Step 3 — 3D Printing

This is also called additive manufacturing. We add layers to a product instead of cutting it out from a larger sheet. Imagine the saving of waste materials. We use it all. No waste, no pollution

The technology is in the developmental stages for the full-scale big production of all products. We cannot 3D print airplanes yet. But houses are already possible. And the technologies will progress with the material science of healthy chemistry

Not concrete but ecological concrete with Miscanthus (elephants’ grass). Easily farmed as an abundantly availabale material

Molecules. Nano. Minimum materials

Combining phytomining with generative design and 3D printing is not done (yet) so that’s why I promote the combination. We can produce all our basic needs very cleverly if we combine dots, my friends

Let’s combine all this with the electronic dots (piezo and others) and we’ll fly airplanes without engines. With antennas instead. Again the Superformale that makes Nikola Tesla’s vision and trials in 1931 very realistic and possible

Is the antenna car of Nikola Tesla a hoax?

I don’t think so…

2- The Merge of Ethereum & Web3

Until recently, digital design still used a lot of energy. Data centers are energy slurpers because they don’t want to decide what to keep and what not. Facebook could easily make information temporary

Why would I need my history from 10 years ago?

My life has moved on, dear Meta (why did you ever change your name? you’re sooooooo old-fashioned)

I don’t live in the past, if I wanna hold onto memories, I’ll store them in my brain. It’s big enough hahaha. And I can make my own version of events :-) Very handy…

But okay, now seriously. Two new developments are making digital design the best chance to adapt to climate change with little energy use

The progress has to do with the manner of data distribution. Nature distributes over nodes. Not central or decentralized but over nodes. Fully distributed networks. And now, we are applying that knowledge in the digital world

Blockchain is the best thing that ever happened to data sciences. Although it had the disadvantage until now that it used up too much energy. That’s why most data miners were located near Chinese hydropower plants. But forget Bitcoin. The hydropower plants are drying out due to climate change anyway and the miners are going bankrupt right now because of energy prices

1. In September 2022, Ethereum (blockchain combined with smart contracts) finalized The Merge. Fully distributed crypto-currencies. Saving 99% of energy. Joehoe! The road is open to community currencies and citizen-owned basic incomes on crypto. The Bancor Protocol is making it happen
2. Web3 is also a fully distributed system. Web3 is the new internet after Web2. 3D images. Metaverses. Not owned by one company but by all users of a community. Fair distribution of money flows. Still in developmental stages but so many great platforms are sprouting now. All DAOs. Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

The Value Instrument is my favorite. Web3-based and all ethics and knowledge to make basic incomes and all kinds of value distribution a reality. My good friend Anna Blume is the co-founder of this platform

I love these people of Bancor and Value Instrument. I met them all together with my hero in macroeconomics, professor Bernard Lietaer before he died. I saw in his eyes that this was the development he had been waiting for

The yin and yang of money. Money systems are culture after all. And we can just design them differently than we have done so far

Also here, the Superformula plays a big role. Because using the Superformula saves many, many coding lines per data transfer. And thus saves a lot of energy

1- Cleaning Up Ocean Plastics

And finally, another Dutch example. Sorry, I’m kind of proud of my small country to give us some good solutions.

The Ocean Cleanup is progressing well. There’s a whole continent of plastics in the Pacific Ocean. And a Dutch teenager, Boyan Slat, decided a few years ago to make this problem his life’s mission to solve

He’s making progress all right

Are you still angry and sad, my friends?

I promise to write more stories like this. Stories with other, non-Dutch, examples of what’s already happening

After all, Mike and I are Born Globals

Please, don’t only feel doom and gloom. Yes, we need to release the fear and tears of our past mistakes. We need to become a climate-mitigating and adaptive species. Because adaptive species are thriving species

And there’s definitely light on the horizon

I’m a mentor & mermaid making waves — Educating and inspiring future leaders — Stay tuned via our website Abundanism.com

Thank you, Gaia, for giving me Wild Writing © Désirée Driesenaar, 2022