The Ecosystem of the Climate Crisis
A model to perceive and understand the layers of the climate crisis in a new way
I can remember when the land here was rarely, if ever, unfrozen from late October to early April. Never in March have I watched as bugs fly over my still-brown plants in the warmth of what felt like May sunshine. Yet, here I am, watching bugs crawl on the windows on the dried grasses outside my office window on March 13th. Not to mention that the first day of spring rarely, if ever, looks or feels like spring in the North. Even if it is cold this year, it will still be evident that spring is upon us.
The land around us is shifting from a snow-covered wonderland to feeling like the winters, I remember when I was a teenager living in Kentucky. Never as a child do I remember such major temperature fluctuations or where the snow was less common than the mild and sunny days.
Many days, I struggle with the grief of thinking of my children not having the winters I had as a child where the snow banks were taller than me walking to school or building tunnels of snow forts on the playground with my friends because our playground slides were buried beneath feet of snow till April. They won’t know the beauty of a snowstorm that goes on for weeks and how cabin fever REALLY feels. Instead, they know the angst of the sprouting garlic and the unfrozen ground that no longer lets our trees rest or tick-checks in January. Their sleds hang, and we question if enough snow will be made for our skis to feel fresh powder more than once or twice a season.
I remember when the maple syrup boil was the sign of when to begin starting seeds and planning the garden because it was mid-March. I remember the rosemary never growing long enough for it to flower, yet I am finding flowers for the third year in a row while the crocus blooms in the first few days of March. Our school greenhouse reached 115 degrees on the first day of March. To say that something isn’t shifting is no longer a topic of conversation but a pill we need to swallow before it’s too late.
It isn’t just the winter, though. The summers get hotter and smokier, and the water now could bloom with dangerous algae. The birds come at different times, and the ticks increase (I just removed one from my son this week), so the wild places I never thought about entering feel slightly scarier than they should. The poison ivy thrives alongside other invasive plants while our Spruce, Maple, and Hemlocks are dying off little by little - the trees that we know as the backdrop of our forests are beginning to shift. It is sad and heavy to read, but it is also true and can be remedied.
I feel the weight, and any climate-aware person or anyone paying attention to the disintegration of our seasons is feeling it, too.
Since I was a child, the words “Save our Planet” have been placed on the shoulders of individuals. Earth Day became a proclamation for the individual to fix things. As a parent, I was made to believe that the climate crisis was something I must add to the large weight I carry in this world of raising small humans as well—that, in some way, the weight only sat with me and others around me. This is far from the truth, though.
Though the weight doesn’t lie on just the individual's shoulders, I did feel the awareness it brought to me has pushed me to find new avenues that aren’t just better for the planet but also bring me immense joy. This year, I decided to take my passion for gardening further by studying Permaculture and working to receive a Design certification from the Permaculture Institute of America. I felt I had found a calling. Though that will take another year, I have spent the last 8 weeks learning about the systems, patterns, and ways nature works and how we can work with it. It has expanded and confirmed things that sat like fires at my feet for years. Things I believed were necessities to how we approached living, growing things, and more, but now I was learning why and how they work best in these systems. It has been enlightening.
Part of the course is also learning about climate change, the things that stand before us, and how we can adjust them to allow the planet to heal. I had some believe I was taking it as a dooms dayer, but instead, I found permaculture to be quite the opposite perspective on nature and the life that lies ahead of us.
In permaculture, we discuss the concept of Permanent Agriculture, which is agriculture that doesn’t need replanting but stays put. This is also referred to as agroforestry. This system captures and stores significantly more carbon overall and doesn’t release carbon as much, unlike mono-crop farming, which releases quite a bit on a larger scale.
That said, as my learning on Climate Change and Permanent Agriculture or forest systems was merging along with my climate grief, I began to realize a more empowering, helpful, and big-picture way for us to look at Climate Change. I started to see a system that already exists all around us about who carries the weight, and how there isn’t just 1 person or 1 corp to point our fingers at.
In permaculture, everything is interconnected. Everything plays a part, and a healthy ecosystem has a balance. Slight imbalances can still leave the system functioning, but when things are too far off, things will not function as they should, whether that is in the soil or with pests. To fix it, we assess where there is an imbalance, and we start bringing things back into healthy proportions again. For instance, with pests, in permaculture, we never look at a pest as the actual issue; we instead ask what is out of balance that will bring the pest down in the ecosystem. The same system works in the forest or other imbalances in life.
This concept can be easily applied to how we approach other societal problems as well. The forest system is a great analogy to the functions, interconnections, and systems we use daily, whether in the workplace or on a larger global issue.
Well, one night after finishing a big project on this and feeling the dramatic weather shift, I woke up and began to see how to connect it all. I saw how we can apply this concept to how we think about solving our climate change problems.
I will share the model below, but I want to preface that as I saw this all coming together in my head, it wasn’t that it gave me “hope” but more of a reassurance that there are answers and there is power in the Earth’s ability to heal itself. It also identifies that many of the ways the systems we know and find comfort in can and will have to shift. This lets no one off the hook here. There are major changes that have to happen, but the reason our climate is shifting is that we are not imbalanced as a global system. There are societal imbalances, governmental imbalances, individual consumerism imbalances, etc. It plays a part; it all matters now that we see the issues unfolding in real-time. Every part of the system has to offer, how do we change and bring balance so the entire system can create space for collective healing. I find it nice to not feel the weight solely on our shoulders. It is also powerful to see the impacts of things collectively, particularly in the smaller systems like schools and local government. There is a lot of impact we can make in these places as you will see below.
I will also note that none of this is a political statement. I don’t see the climate and ecosystem as political and I don’t think it should ever be political. Our climate is our home. Caring for it should be an everyone thing. Politicizing something that matters to our livelihood only divides us rather than helps us create cohesive and unified decisions.
Let’s break down the model below:
The basic model of a forest is broken into these parts:
Canopy
Lower Tree Layer
Shrub Layer
Herbaceous Layer
Ground cover Layer
Vine Layer
Root Layer
No matter the type of forest, each layer plays a part in creating a healthy and thriving ecosystem. A healthy forest has all these parts and they are all essential to the health of the soil and entire system.
What these layers can teach us about systems in societal space or even in our own life is even more interesting. I think this is one of those places many people miss when they are working with nature. Everything that happens in nature is intentional and well organized whether we are aware or not, what that means is that it can be an amazing source of wisdom in creating change and offering answers to many broken ways we do things. The trick is to first understand and then find the correlations.
I will break down what each above layer does and how we can coordinate each part to the way we can see the entire climate solution:
Canopy
This layer in the forest is the big trees—think 60-80 feet. These are structural and nearly immovable fixtures in the forest system. However, at times, when the right things occur, they fall. When they do, they allow light to go to new canopy trees to grow and build a new canopy. No tree at this height lasts forever. It is actually vital for them to eventually fall to allow new canopy layer trees to emerge.
Canopy, in our analogy = national governments and major corporations or media institutions.
Lower Tree Layer
This layer is made of trees 20-40 feet in height. These could be Service Berries, Wild Plums, apple trees, or large fruit trees like standard-size Pears. They serve as a canopy for the lower layers of the forest.
Lower Tree Layer in this analogy = local systems like local government or even mid-size corporations and businesses.
Shrub Layer
This layer is made up of 2-10 feet tall plants, such as lower berry bushes like blueberry or honeyberry, for instance.
The shrub layer in this analogy = is our neighborhood, small group systems such as small businesses and school systems.
Herbaceous Layer
These are the 1-2 feet-tall plants that are our perennial nitrogen fixers. This would be like Comfrey, False Indigo, Hyssop, Fennel, Alliums, etc. These pull up nutrients for the other plants. They also drop foliage that turns into important nutrients to feed the lower layers.
Herbaceous layer in this analogy = family and household systems.
Ground Cover
This is just what it sounds like. This layer is what retains moisture for the rest of the layers. Without it, the others would struggle to have what they need to continue thriving. This would be like clover or wild strawberry as an example plant.
Ground Cover in this analogy = the individual
Root Layer
This layer is comprised of tubers, bulbing roots, and more. It could include Jerusalem artichokes, daikon radish, and so on. These help to aerate the soil. However, they can become prolific and out of control if you don’t watch. They can also be grown and then allowed to die to create the organic matter needed to improve the soil's nutrients.
Root Layer in this analogy = our held beliefs, cultural ruts, and the systemic norms of lifestyle
Vine Layer
This is any plant that connects the ground layer of the forest to the highest layers in the forest. These may be grapes may eventually climb along every layer to reach the top.
Vine layer in this analogy = this is the thing that can both bring change from the bottom to the top, but it can also be what suffocates or takes down upper layers of the system as well. So this means it can be an individual who brings awareness and attention or an organization that interconnects everything.
I think this is important to look at and understand because we see climate change as being all on us as individuals to make changes OR solely on the larger canopy of systems such as the government and corporations. The truth is, it is both more complex and simpler than that. Any issue or system is ultimately an entire ecosystem. The answer to many problems usually involves more layers and nuances that are typically visible or simple to define in just a few layers.
As I stated above, I have learned that EVERYTHING is interconnected, and the answers to the climate can be looked at in these layers. The weight isn’t held solely in one place. Some layers will have to shift for things to change for the better. It is big and small, though, and I think there is some reassurance and empowerment to knowing it all matters and that not all is within our control.
The thing that is key here is that the individual is as important as any other layer. However, the mid-shrub and herbaceous layers, which are the things that can happen in smaller and more localized systems, are some of the most fruitful and important connection points both in the forest and this analogy. These layers allow the vine layer to reach the upper canopy and larger overarching places, after all. It is important to grab that because when we work together in our communities, the impact becomes stronger, and the layers above begin to take in those thoughts, feelings and needs far better. It begins to move the world just as it does in the forest.
I will say that as I have been thinking through this analogy and view on where the effects of climate aren’t shifting and where they can shift, I see more than ever how it all matters in the ecosystem. When one thing isn’t working properly, or in this case, quite a few things are out of balance and misdirected, everything is out of balance. Thus, our actions as individuals hold the same weight as any other part and vice versa.
We aren’t at a place where one thing can loosen any more than another. Our grips in the system should be steady but also look different depending on the layers. Most importantly, we should hold all layers and ourselves accountable in this process.
This analogy doesn’t give a true answer to the issue, but I feel it offers empowerment and structure to what we are facing.
Time will tell how we choose to bring harmony to this system. I know that if we do, nature will gladly meet us and heal in the ways it still can.