Contemporary culture’s focus on (technological) innovation as a good in and of itself has come at the expense of nature. An obsession with newness, cultivated by corporate interests, has veiled alternative histories and alternative futures of resistance. Consider the possibility that, instead of using the power already within our grasp to transform into a better society, we are updating to remain the same. To remain in the same consumerist, capitalist, atomizing system that got us into this mess of a climate crisis to begin with. So that the same corporations can continue to usurp and run roughshod over the resources that give us life, to take the same majority share of the profits from this deleterious process called economic growth.
A return to an imaginary prelapsarian, pristine past, in which nature sits undisturbed, would not only be impossible, but inadvisable. Ideal nature as a hermetically sealed snow globe that should be enjoyed only by looking in from the outside, keeping the flora and fauna thriving so we might occasionally enter as wealthy tourists, is a concept that is partially responsible for the destruction we’ve witnessed, the carelessness, resentment and division between peoples. We must be able to touch, see, smell, taste, hear, and even be nature – experience its challenges and bounty – to know its value and beauty, to be effective stewards…to survive.
In point of fact, humans’ relationship with nature has not always been that hands-off or this domineering. Society, technology, and nature were once intertwined, inextricable. For instance, the anthropologist William Balée estimates “…at least 11.8%...of the non-flooded Amazon forest was ‘anthropogenic’—directly or indirectly created by humans. Some researchers today regard this figure as conservative. ‘I basically think it’s all human-created,’ Clement told me. So does Erickson, the University of Pennsylvania archaeologist who told me in Bolivia that the lowland tropical forests of South America are among the finest works of art on the planet” (Charles C. Mann, 1491 343-4, emphasis mine). Self-reproducing lushness, holding hands with humans, as wealth.
Nor will simply slotting the environment into the position commodities currently fill, centering images of natural resources as covetable possessions in our extant cultural networks instead of designer shoes and yachts, solve the problem of our neglect. What we have left of nature will be poisoned by the objectives a company like Instagram inherently serves: sell, sell, sell; own, own, own. And though social media’s effect on desire is not all to blame, I certainly believe the underfunding of national parks and the like is connected to the consumptive principles baked into such platforms.
So how do we innovate where it counts: in our relationship to technology and nature, and in their relationship to each other?
In this thought swirl, seagrass meadows undulate.
Seagrass meadows are composed of rhizomatic, flowering plants that necessarily, eventually die, in the process releasing some measure of carbon. But organic matter decays much slower on oxygen-depleted seabed than on land: “…oxygen-free sediment traps the carbon in the dead plant material which may then remain buried for hundreds of years.” This makes seagrass meadows the 2nd most efficient ecosystem for capturing and storing carbon in the world, beating out salt marshes, mangroves, and rainforest.
Their carbon-catching power is not so secret or hard to unlock as carbon-rich soil, though regenerative agriculture seems more oft discussed. And they are more likely to return and flourish than the #1, tundra, which hold more carbon than seagrass meadows but are melting worldwide due to rising temperatures. Tried and true, they do not present the same kind of risks as the geoengineering projects enumerated on podcasts and in news publications (why does injecting sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere, even as an example of what not to do, get so many mentions, when we have so many other solutions at our fingertips?), providing only benefits, like protection against storm surge, or essential habitat for lobsters, bay scallops, and winter flounder.
Like most ecosystems, seagrass meadows are on the decline globally. But this is not inevitable. They are sensitive to the ocean’s absorption of heat from the atmosphere and acidification, but their fate is currently more attributable to other anthropogenic activities. Socially solvable water quality issues, like nitrogen pollution from sewage and fertilizers, or different forms of nutrient loads.
And there are success stories. In Chesapeake Bay, 9000 acres of seagrass meadows have been restored. That’s enough to offset 1800 cars driving 15000mi/year. New York State has also recognized seagrasses as a resource, and the state’s need to protect them, through a slew of legislation. The state even briefly had a Seagrass Coordinator, and a 2009 goal of not only maintaining seagrass acreage but increasing it by 10% by 2020.
But you don’t hear about them much. The Seagrass Coordinator role has sat empty since 2018, and the state’s goal of a 10% gain has not been met. While the surface of the ocean has never marked the limits of our collective imagination, it does seem to place seagrass meadows at a disadvantage in their ability to permeate a drawdown discourse.
This project, whatever it becomes, will aim to change that. It envisions and sees as realizable an Amazon of the ocean. Seagrass stretching farther than the eye can see.
Necessities and possibilities include: the immediate propagation of seagrass, partnering with planting programs for a rapid expansion of acreage; the dispersal of the knowledge of propagation (including water quality requirements, possibly seeds where appropriate) so that anyone who wants to plant a meadow can; an underwater installation; developing some sort of clear, non-plastics-based material (maybe like jellyfish mesoglea?) to serve as an ecofriendly Lily Pad, so that more people could enjoy and interact with the seagrass meadow ecosystem without destroying it; videos, possibly on the ferries to Fishers Island, where 90% of the existing seagrass in Long Island Sound lives; demonstrations of the uses of seagrass; an offbeat “natural” media network for seagrass appreciation that avoids the pitfalls of monetization, or perhaps a RollerCoaster Tycoon-esque game but for natural climate solutions; and much, much more.