Earth’s Emergency Exit: John D. Liu on Why Ecosystem Restoration Can’t Wait

Welcome to this ClimateGen episode recorded during COP29 in Baku, a conference unashamedly hijacked by the fossil fuel industry. John D Liu is a renowned ecologist, filmmaker, and an environmental advocate. Liu's later career has been dedicated to large-scale ecosystem restoration, emphasizing the profound impact of natural regeneration in combating climate change. His pioneering work with the ecosystem restoration camps and his advocacy for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration have made significant contributions to global environmental efforts. This discussion offers profound insights into reimagining our future through the lens of ecological restoration and sustainability. If you are concerned about the future, then why not travel with me through every COP conference from COP21 in Paris to COP28 in Dubai by ordering my book COP OUT, How governments have failed the people on climate. In Cop Out, you'll gain insights into what is actually going on in these supposed world-saving conferences and how we have ended up in this dire era of dangerous consequences. You can order Cop Out via the link in the notes or in any online bookstore worldwide in paperback and audio version. 2025 has opened with terrifying wildfires in Los Angeles, demonstrating the climate catastrophe is not only here, but that it is tearing great holes in the fabric of our societies. I will be posting many more interviews and also adding many more archive interviews on key topics to the members area. Thank you for listening, sharing, and also to all subscribers for support.

John, it's good to see you. Thank you for eventually making it to the—

Forgive me, forgive me.

How has your career, which is extensive, how has that shaped your worldview, especially regarding climate, ecology, and I'd say even a little bit sociology.

It's sort of an eccentric way of life. So I've been able to go everywhere in the world throughout my life, even as a child. And what I noticed was that there are short waves and long waves. And in the short waves, it's really ephemeral. It's not something that you really want to put your life's energy into too much because it's gone in a moment. And the long waves are connected to eternal time. So they're cosmic in nature or evolutionary in nature. And they're symbiotically related to other life forms. And this is completely different than the kind of materialistic view that most people have. And it puts into perspective the shiny objects that titillate, you know, but actually are glitter or nothing.

Okay. These sort of shiny objects that you're talking about, they form our sort of patterns of consumption today and are kind of destroying it in a funny way. Well, in a real way.

I think what's happening is that we have inverted reality. So it's similar to the sacred texts. I mean, if you study religion or you study philosophy, are you studying cosmology, then you start to see, oh, you know, there's this concept of the sacred and then there's the concept of the profane. And if you pursue the profane, well, you know, it's tempting, but there's no substance. It doesn't bring you any satisfaction. And so now in the society and the dominant political, economic, and cultural paradigm that has created this globalized materialistic society, it isn't really satisfying. I mean, if you pursue that, you can get a yacht or you can get a jet plane, but then you want a bigger yacht and a bigger jet plane. And it really doesn't, it leaves a hole in your soul.

You're speaking kind of hypothetically, but these are absolutely real now.

Well, this is depression and suicide, trauma, psychological problems and lack of happiness, lack of joy, you know, all of that. So that's pretty prevalent, you know, and when you see, say, children or young people, the young generation, when they say that they don't want to have children, Or they say people are bad, you know, humans are bad. Well, no, they're not. They have free will. They can choose to be bad or they can choose to be good, sort of, you know. I mean, and I mean, all of that's relative because it's all going to disappear. And so if you are looking at what is lasting, what remains, why the indigenous people or all the cultures that have ancestor worship, or have the understanding that you're not selfishly here for yourself for a moment, and then you burn out and whatever you did, that's fine, that's good for you, but nobody else matters. Nobody who came before and nobody who came after. That's not true. We are creating the future. So we're determining the future. And why all these people are here in the COP is because we are realizing we're inheriting the mistakes of the past, and the mistakes of the past have led to a predictable catastrophic outcome.

And if you— COP is quite a good example in a way, because beneath the main structure, there is a lot of this consciousness you're talking about. There's a lot of community among people here where you get indigenous peoples, you get NGOs, you get a lot of people feeding in. But the actual structure itself is still part of the bad system because it doesn't actually deliver the outcome. It can't deliver the outcomes that it's set up to to do? So you were talking about the individual and then we were talking about we and this is individual versus the collective. How do you make that collective more effective?

This is a question of consciousness. So when we talk about we, I mean, we, the two of us are sitting here. Is that we? Or, you know, there's everybody who came to the COP. Is that we? Or what is we? Me? And if you take that rhetorically or linguistically and you break it down, then in some dimension, it's all life or everything is we, because we are part of the cosmos. We are part of the universe. We are part of the solar system. So what is we? And if we become myopic and then you say we are one ethnic group or we are one class of people or we are one club or, you know, something, their football. Yeah. You know, this is very Klan-ish or, you know, something tribal. But if we go further and we have this other perspective, we see that we're in symbiotic relationship with all other life forms. And so, I mean, here we are in the COP. We were talking about the CO2 levels. I mean, if the CO2 levels go over a certain level, our cognitive, everybody's cognitive ability will go down. So, you're coming here. So, we should actually be in a primary forest where the oxygen levels are, you know, and the CO2 is 300 or 250 or something. And, we would all be smiling and happy. But now, everybody's running around negotiating for their own group. They think "we" is their friends and their tribe. Yeah, their flag. Yeah. We need to get beyond that to see like, well, that's not exactly how it works because we've driven to extinction so many species of plants and animals. Now, if we look at how evolutionary succession took place, it took place without human beings and human beings came late to this feast. And when we arrived, we had certain powers or certain capabilities, and we use those capabilities for ourselves. We thought that this is in our best interest to take out the massive predators, so we started killing off the massive predators. So there's a string of extinctions. It's not funny, but you know, if we don't laugh, then we're going to cry about what this means. So when you take out the top of the food chain, you alter the predator-prey relationships. And when that happens, you've started altering the earth systems, the, the whole ground cover and everything. So we did that. And then we went to semi-nomadic herding where we're trying to substitute domesticated animals for wild animals. Yeah. And so we're not quite understanding yet how the animal movements and migrations are affecting the soils and they're, leaving nutrient density, they're clearing out some other things, and they're leaving the seeds, and everything is interrelated. Then we come up with agriculture about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, and we think, well, that's a great idea, you know, because we can express the kind of plants that we want, and we've killed the wild animals. So now we have the domesticated animals we want, and we have the plants that we want. What could go wrong? You know, and without knowing, you know, this is not a scientist, it's not a agrarian, you know, it's a Neanderthal with a sharpened stick and he creates monocultures and plowing at the same time. So he's killing the plant matter that he doesn't want and he's exposing the soils to direct solar radiation. Well, how could that be good? You know, I mean, if you analyze it from an evolutionary succession, that's crazy. You know, you're going to irradiate the top layer of the soil where the microbial and fungal communities are making mineral nutrients bioavailable. Available to plant life. It can't be right. Oh no. And so, nobody talks about it. This is not lunch and discussion by normal people in the modern world. And so, they didn't know that and they didn't know that then and they still don't know that generally around the world. And, we need everybody to know that. And, when we're talking about climate changes, it's not CO2. We have to understand CO2 is an indicator. The CO2 was in the atmosphere and it was pulled out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis. And the idea that we could manufacture vacuum cleaners to suck all the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and put it back into the soil is ludicrous because the cost of the materials, the extraction of materials, the energy to run these machines and the machines last how long? I mean, because we're talking 3.8 billion years of photosynthesis. We're not talking about like 100 years or 1,000 years or 10 years, and the machines could maybe work 10 or 20.

I mean, we're also talking about a trillion tonnes. Yeah, absolutely.

They're talking about it needs to be removed. Yeah, exactly.

And if you look at the sort of famous scientists like Johann Rockström, who are saying, well, humanity has this safe operating space and it's rapidly diminishing it. If you look at the the ecology that you're investigating, the land use that you've been looking at, how does that attach itself to this idea of expanding the safe operating space for not just humanity, but for all life forms?

Generally, I think the whole COP and the whole political, cultural, economic modeling that we have is based on this way of life is immutable.

Yeah.

That there's nothing else. I usually don't talk about capitalism or communism or that kind of stuff, but there's one joke that says there's a lot of people who can imagine the end of the world, but cannot imagine the end of capitalism. You know, that's kind of where it's at. So they have attached to an ideology and this particular ideology is based on dominance and greed, you know, and competition. So if you can outcompete everybody else and that everybody's working in their own behalf and in competition with everyone else, and if you can outcompete them, then you win. Well, the guy who dies with the most stuff doesn't win. You know, there's no, like, the ideas within these philosophies or within this way of thinking is false. And so what we've done now is that all of the things, like, we have all these plastic things. I mean, that's all from petroleum products. And we have metal that we've extracted, and huge use of more fossil fuels have turned into metals. We've smelted, you know, so on. And then we're saying that we are kept alive by this stuff. We have this stuff. We have buildings. Now we're building buildings that are crooked or that are, you know, look like— and why are we doing that? Because we can, you know, we are man, we can do it, you know. Well, this is ridiculous. How long even can those buildings or these plastic things— and these plastic things don't actually deteriorate, but their useful lifetime is in years.

Yes.

Yeah. And what we're talking about is the pollution going for, you know, like very long periods of time and over thousands and tens of thousands and maybe who knows what, and it's permeating everything. I mean, you find persistent organic pollutants. The highest incidence of this is in Inuit bodies, in the bodies of the Inuit people, because they eat blubber from the seals and from the whales. That is bioaccumulative up the food chain. And so if they eat that stuff, then it's in their bodies. So the women can't breastfeed because they're poisoning the children and there's cancer everywhere. And so we're calling that value. We're saying, we're saying that that is the basis of our economy because if you do something, it creates GDP, but where's the value? It's if you add the cost of the suffering and the poison and the thousands and millions of years of pollution. It's bankrupt the minute it appears.

I think you're articulating something now which a lot of people are feeling. Yeah. And they know it.

They know it.

But it's a bit like, can't imagine the end of capitalism. You were talking about competing.

Yeah.

And I was working down in southern Portugal in Alentejo. And one of the key drivers for building resilience, building adaptation, adapting to this new climate, which is getting a lot worse, was collaboration. There's people who had never spoken to each other, they kept their distance, they were the competitors, they started collaborating, they started sharing a lot of ideas. As soon as they did that, the whole area went woof in its resilience and they pushed that threshold against the rising temperatures of their survivability or viability. And I just wanted to hear some of it because you've got a vast more experience than I have in this sort of area of how you see that sort of collectivism, how it can work, collaboration.

Well, I think it's first necessary to understand the science because if you just say let's collaborate but we don't know what to do, there's not really— ignorance is bliss, you know. You don't know. So you're excused. I mean, what are you going to do? You know, like, okay, save the world. You know, like what? So if you actually study this and you go, well, like, oh, okay, we're worried about temperatures, like temperature differentials. And what do temperature differentials do? You know, like temperature differentials cause wind. So like if you have a hot and cold beside each other, then it's going to create wind. If you have a zebra stripe, you know, there's black and white, and the solar radiation hits the black and it's absorbed, and it's reflected from this, you're gonna have temperature differentials, wind. Oh, whoa, you know, like, okay, we learned a little physics. So what can we do with that physics? You know, what happens with that physics? Okay, so when you understand that the biology over evolutionary succession altered the physics. And by altering the physics, it pulled down all the carbon dioxide and put it into the ground and created an enormous pedosphere above the lithosphere. So this living layer on top of the geologic and sedimentary layers of pre-evolutionary time where the Earth was at first molten but then cooled, that's still mineral, you know, sort of. And then on top is the bodies of all the life that has ever lived and the microbes and insects and, and the continuous renewal of the organic layer. So that goes on for billions of years. Before human beings arrived. And as that happens over vast periods of time, we get an oxygenated atmosphere which alters with ozone layer and electromagnetic fields, which are similar to the ones surrounding human beings or any life form. So the Earth is alive. And so that alters the physics of the sunlight coming in. And then there's another layer of this because the height of the canopy in a climax equilibrium— is way different than if you have like miniaturized trees or nothing, right? You know, like, or hardened infrastructure that's just a heat sink. Once you start thinking about these things, you have to run the logic a few times, but maybe a lot. But when you do, you go, oh, well, you know, I wonder when you realize, okay, you have wind speed, wind direction, you have vortex activity, you have the infrared and various light spectrums, which are altering or sterilizing the pedosphere. Well, that can't be right, you know, it's not a good idea. That's like the opposite of evolutionary succession.

Yeah.

And then when you value the things that you've extracted and, and created this wasteland now that you've laid bare, and you say, well, the stuff that we took out of there is more valuable than the living system. Well, no, it's not. That's going to last you a year or 5 years or 10 years or even 100 years or 200 years. It doesn't matter. It's junk. It's a flash in the pan disappearing. You know, go look at a Lamborghini or a Ferrari. Oh, isn't that lovely? Well, no, it's a piece of rusty junk. You know, look at our 100-story buildings. Oh, that's big. No, that's like a pyramid where the future people go like, what were they thinking of? I mean, there'll be TV shows about like, oh, I don't know. But so the consciousness of human beings, it's pretty funny. But the consciousness of human beings are what's different about us. So if we could look and use our intelligence and use our creativity to understand these things instead of like coming here and like, oh, let's compete. You know, I want this and I want that. Well, Who cares what you want? You know, no one's going to remember you in 1,000 years. You know, like, the point is that the planet's going to be destroyed, not what you want. Who cares? And so that hasn't yet dawned on people, and they haven't yet seen in total. And I mean, that's why I'm here. Yeah, because nobody says this. So let's say it, and then it's said and it's out there, you know. Like, if you listen to this and you go, "Well, that makes kind of sense, huh?" You know, then you need to realize that if everyone got into a meditative state and they went through all the logic and they came to this conclusion that the ecological function, the oxygenated atmosphere, the freshwater system, the fertile soils, and the amazing biodiversity And also the rights, the birthright of all life to live is more valuable than stuff. And the idea that, okay, I am the mogul who makes plastic chairs, you know, and I make billions of plastic chairs and they're spread all over the world and I get lots of money.

Yeah.

What? You know, like, why? You know, ooh, do we really need plastic chairs? And I mean, are you superior because you made the plastic chair? You know, that's grotesque. You know, philosophically, it's unsupportable. So you can't really go, yeah, yeah, that's fine. That's okay. It's like war. I mean, why would we have war? You know, like, how could that be good?

You've identified basically, yes, the stuff is valueless. And there is something beyond that which we have to nurture, restore it in many ways. We're still locked within this system, which is proving very difficult to change because it's fighting back. The politics is getting tougher, it's getting more authoritarian. It's saying, no, we're not going to change, we're actually going to double down and do it more. But at the same time, more people are waking up. It's a very funny time. I mean, the warn— it's almost like the system's trying to warn itself, but the system also doesn't want to listen. Have you seen ways that you think could cut through that?

Well, I think once you come to grips with the two things, one is the ecological systems are failing.

Yeah.

So you're seeing that and you're going, oh, that is a trend line. So from a scientific measurement point of view, when you measure the trend starts doing that and the frequency and the intensity of the impacts increases, then, well, pay attention. You know, if you pay attention to that and you say, okay, if we do nothing and we carry on, then it becomes predictable. So you can see, okay, at this point we're going to crash. And so we're going, we're in our Ferrari, and we're, we got the pedal to the metal, and, you know, we're going, and we're not going to slow down, we're not going to put the brakes on, we're not going to turn, you left, we're not going to stop. So inevitably we're going to crash. So logic works, you know, logic is a good idea. You know, it would be good to be logical, you know. And there is a lot of data when you ask people like, why wouldn't we do that? Well, people are bad, or people are illogical, or people are, you know, unpredictable, or, you know, well, people are either aware of these things or they have been distracted or they have been subjected to misinformation and led down some thing which is beneficial to somebody else. So what I see happening is we can't directly attack the status quo because the status quo doesn't care what we think or anything. It just cares about how the GDP goes. It could be legal for single individuals to have like billions or trillions of dollars and more than several African countries or something. But it can't be right, you know, that's, that's just ludicrous. When they have this unbelievable money, unbelievable power, and they want to express that, they like it, that, you know, they don't want to change. Well, I don't think going to hang out with them and say, hey, you know, I think you should maybe. They don't care. They're not asking John, what do you think? You know, so who cares? Well, people who have children care, you know, people who love each other care, people who are thinking about their grandchildren care, people who are thinking about generations to come, they care. And that could be everybody. So that's not a class issue. Yeah, the issue is really about whether you understand that all life has a right, a birthright to life. And we have perverted everything by flipping the economy. We have inverted the economy, we have inflated the derivatives, and we've devalued the source. So we've said that the source of life is zero or less than zero because we can just rape it. Until it's gone. And the products have value. Well, I mean, if you, if you think about that for just a little while, you know, I mean, half a second, yeah, it doesn't take too long to get it. When you do that, you realize we created a system where you have to have infinite growth of materialism. Well, we have finite resources. That's what Johan Rockström is saying, that This is planetary boundaries and we're exceeding the planetary boundary. Well, you can't infinitely grow based on finite resources. So, well, that's just an impossibility. So that system is false. And the values which are assigned to the derivatives are false because they can't be higher than the source, which emerged over billions of years and created, constantly filtered, and continuously renewed the systems, the life support systems on the only planet we know of with an oxygenated atmosphere, fresh water, fertile soils, and wonderful biodiversity. So this is not hyperbolic. It's not hyperbola. It's true that this is what is. And when we actually study what is, then we kind of have to come to this conclusion.

You—

it's not like John says it's not my opinion that fertile organic soils are the basis of, you know, that's not like, or yeah, John said that the hydrological cycle cycles below the, in the lower hydrological cycle. This is a reality. And if you kill it, well, then that water is going to go into the upper atmosphere where it's going to come down in Valencia sometime and it's going to kill lots of people, or it's going to have multiple vortex activities, which are going to take out Philippines or, you know, this is where we are.

I mean, this is where we're arriving at now.

Yeah, we're seeing the results. So once you understand the cause, yes, and then you see the effect, well, you know, I mean, it's like, oh, okay, cause effect. Well, all right. So this isn't something that you have to have a theory about. This is not, this is very expensive, not theoretical. It's physical.

Consequences.

So as you sit here now, what's the future? Yeah, it's kind of most people, and I include myself in this, we're trying to navigate this era of consequences because it is very scary. And it's like you said, young people saying, I don't want to have kids. They're saying, well, I'm not going to invest in a pension. I'm not going to, why would I need to do that? Why would I need to do this? Why would I need? Because they're not actually envisaging an older life.

Well, the solution is that we come together, those who understand it, and we create a societal organization which reverses again the economy, which values ecological function higher than materialism, and that gives rights to all living beings. And in that way, we know how to restore the Earth. It's not like an impossibility. It's— we know how to lower the surface temperatures. We know how to rehydrate the dehydrated biomes. We know how to revegetate the de-vegetated landscapes. But it's not to do this for the benefit of those in power or those who have money. It's to do that for the good of all life. And we have created 80 ecosystem restoration communities around the world in the last 7 years, and they're growing, and that they will continue to grow. And we're working on how can those be optimized. Each of those are living laboratories. So people have come together and said, well, I'm done. I don't want to work in a cubicle to buy and sell plastic goo gahs that come around the world in a container ship. I mean, what's the point? The point is not to survive. The point is to live. We want to achieve our heart's desires, and everyone wants to express their creativity and their intelligence and their life force.

And with the 80 communities you've already established, how are they growing? I mean, do they communicate with each other?

They do. The 80 communities that are in this particular group is not the end of it. There are thousands of communities around the world because anybody who understands this can just do this.

Yeah.

And when you do this, but you can't do it really alone. So a lot of people are saying, well, my wife and I are going out to, you know, and we're gonna do it. Yeah, well, good luck. You know, that's a, that's a long slog. But if you get critical mass of people in a community working together, then you have, you have a band and you have, uh, you, you have maybe more than one band. You have classical and bluegrass and jazz and, and tree, you know, or rock and roll if that's what you want. And you have dancing and you have theater and you have movies and you have basically everything. Plus you have really good food because you move from annual monocultures to perennial polycultures. And that basically gives you both ecological function and it gives you productivity. But you have to change the agricultural system. You can't drive a tractor through and hoover up everything once a year and leave it exposed to solar radiation. You're having perennial plants and it's multi-story cropping where you're harvesting every day.

Yeah.

What's— and you bring it in, you're eating fresh food and you're eating diverse foods. So it's healthier food.

Yeah.

And it has more micronutrients, more nutrients and you're conscious of it as opposed to like you're getting some processed thing which has like 80 chemicals in it. What is that? And then you have to care for the children. You have to care for the elderly. You have to have healthcare and education. You have to have recreation and you have to have just a little bit of work, but you have to value what's truly valuable higher. And so a lot of the stuff that we think we need, we don't need, we want. So if we want what we need, we're going to be in much better— and we share. So if we share, everybody has everything. If we just grab it and say, this is mine, you don't have it, I have it, you know, well, that's ridiculous. You know, let's just share it and then everybody has everything. We should learn this in kindergarten. And, you know, if you don't share the crayons, well, somebody's going to cry, you know, that's—

Well, look, we really have run out of time now. So thank you very much. I would like to speak to you again and expand on—

Come at 4 and join me and we'll have this conversation with others.

Okay.