Preface

There is no doubt that we live in an increasingly perilous world, and that time is running out.

We have crossed six of the nine planetary boundaries originally identified by the Stockholm Resilience Institute and are well on our way to exceeding a seventh. We may well have already triggered tipping points, whether it’s melting the tundra, the Arctic, or the Antarctic; altering air and ocean currents; or causing the extinction of species critical to our survival. Johan Rockstrom, now at the Potsdam Institute, recently posted a TED talk (Aug 15, 2024) calling the situation increasingly urgent. We may have less than five years to turn things around.

At the same time, as long as we avoid global system collapse, there is still reason to hope that we can change course and avoid the worst outcomes of the 21st-century mega-crisis, at least in some regions. But we’re running out of time.

As of this writing, we have effectively surpassed the 1.5°C “aspirational goal” of the 2015 Paris Accords on multiple occasions, so some consequences are inevitable, and others very likely. In this book, we’ll explore the challenges we face, both globally and l0cally, and examine our own responses to them.

But first, something about who we are. We are not academics or climate scientists but regenerative activists working from our shared knowledge to bring about positive social, economic, and ecological change.

Our Story

Our 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the Center for Regenerative Community Solutions, was founded a dozen years ago in the wake of Superstorm Sandy. Its goal was to provide a better way to recover and rebuild. We had several immediate objectives:

1. Providing local communities with educational services on the effects of climate change and other related issues that can affect their long-term ability to regenerate their ecological and economic systems,
2. Providing local government institutions with assistance to undertake actions and initiatives to reduce and ameliorate present and expected extreme weather and other climate change effects,
3. Providing small businesses and non-profit organizations with funding to undertake actions and initiatives to reduce and ameliorate present and expected climate change effects in low and moderate-income communities, including communities impacted by Hurricane Sandy.

The first “solution” we chose to focus on was Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE), a transformative financing model that supports energy efficiency improvements and energy in buildings. Our strategy was to modernize NJ’s existing PACE law, passed in 2011, and include resiliency—floodproofing, hurricane-resistant construction, and stormwater management. Working with NJ Senator Bob Smith, we crafted legislation that we thought would appeal to both liberals and conservatives and could be supported by then-NJ Governor Chris Christie.

Looking back, it was possible to discern our naiveté. Despite briefly acknowledging climate change as implicated in Sandy, Christie soon backtracked and went on to veto three different versions of the bill. Eventually, it was approved by the legislature a fourth time and signed into law by Governor Phil Murphy in August of 2021. Three years later, we’re still waiting for the NJ Economic Development Authority (NJEDA) to get its act together and issue guidelines and regulations so that the program can actually get started.

Meanwhile, the world of 2024 is very different from the world of 2012 immediately after Sandy. What’s needed today is a major shift in perspective on the part of governments, businesses, and individuals from an extractive and degenerative model to a regenerative way of thinking. PACE is a small part of this shift, but the story is an illuminating one and provides an interesting contrast with our current focus on bioregional regeneration.

In reality, we are still losing the battle on carbon emissions. Reducing emissions while still expanding the economy is not impossible, but it’s not what’s actually happening. Cutting emissions from buildings, which is the area we focused on, is costly, complicated, and time-consuming, but it’s work that needs to be done at a much greater scale and speed than today.

This is also all the more reason to ramp up ecological restoration and regeneration. Any hope of climate stabilization depends on absorbing more greenhouse gases than we’re emitting, enhancing carbon sinks, and restoring biodiversity. A significant effort is underway to do this worldwide, but it needs to be rapidly expanded to recover and protect more land and ocean regions.