All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis

Maher-Johnson’s poem reimagines ways to take care of the Earth or our victory gardens by creating a list of instructions: Rebalance, recognize, replant, regenerate, restore, replace, revisit, reject, rethink, relocalize, rekindle, refeel, revive, reestablish, respect, remember, reimagine, rebalance.

As a kid, Stengel worked at a farmer’s market in Pennsylvania and admired the families who farmed as their vocation. As an adult, she began doing agricultural research and interviewing farmers across the country It was in these interviews that she learned of the struggles of farmers everywhere and realized that the farming population is fading because farmland is too expensive for young and beginning farmers to buy.

Agriculture uses 90% of the world’s freshwater resources, and population growth requires more and more food; the agriculture system is therefore becoming increasingly unsustainable. While struggling to find a way to contribute, Stengel was introduced to Bren Smith, an ocean farmer in Connecticut. Smith asked Stengel to consider the ocean as a solution to unaffordable farmland and ecological sustainability.

Regenerative ocean farming can be an alternative to land farming, offering opportunities for new farmers and producing food without pollution. These ocean crops of seaweed, oysters, mussels, and kelp require no freshwater, feed, fertilizer, or pesticides. They are low maintenance and restorative to the ocean water. Kelp is a carbon sequester and oysters filter gallons of water each day, which helps to remove the nitrogen that creates aquatic dead zones. Seaweeds can be used as fertilizers, animal feeds, and in bioplastics.

Stengel joined Smith to start a nonprofit called GreenWave to support ocean farming. This method of farming provides the opportunity to involve underrepresented communities in farming. Women are taking the lead in ocean farming; they are the farmers, scientists, techs, and business people. This collaborative and inclusive approach to farming is “distinctly feminine” and aims to solve many problems at once (297).

In her poem, Dungy imagines that she speaks for the snail and many invertebrates from the time before spinelessness was seen as a negative attribute. She tells the reader to ask if she speaks for the moon jelly, to which she says that she will answer one thing today and another thing tomorrow and still be as consistent as anything on the Earth. Ask her if she speaks for the nautilus, and she says that she will be beautiful and useless, if that’s all you know to ask of her. She speaks of longing and distance and claims that the person with one chair and a candle burning at the table must understand this desire.

Penniman begins her essay with the story of Dijour, a teenager who at first refused to get out of the van at the Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, New York. Eventually, he joined the rest of the group, taking off his new Jordan sneakers so as to not dirty them. His bare feet sunk into the rich soil and began his reconnection to the land.

The relationship that Black people have with the land did not begin with enslavement and sharecropping; it came thousands of years before. For African American people, the land often seems like the oppressor. Penniman talks about the need to heal their relationship with soil by “relearning the lessons of soil reverence from the past” (302). Black people’s relationship with soil can be traced back to Egypt during the reign of Cleopatra. Over centuries, women in Ghana and Liberia have combined waste to create African Dark Earths, or black gold. It contains calcium, phosphorus, and more organic carbon than most soils. Soil quality is something that is nurtured over generations and not an inherent quality. Black land stewards brought this connection to the soil to the United States. George Washington Carver was one of the first to practice regenerative farming and helped other farmers care for their soil and retain its nitrogen.

One byproduct of colonialism, capitalism, and white supremacy is the disconnection of Black people from the soil. When European settlers began taking over land in the United States, excessive tilling quickly released 50% of organic matter from the soil into the air as carbon dioxide. Food production decreased significantly as well. Soil erosion continues to be an issue today, and the rate of erosion is significantly faster than the rate of soil formation. The further we separate ourselves from the connection to the Earth, the further we distance ourselves from and exploit those who work the soil. Most people who work the soil today are Hispanic or Latinx and do not receive the same protections as people in other fields.

Still, those who are experiencing the direct effects of climate change are also the ones creating the solutions. Black farmers now practice heritage farming to restore the land and soil to what it once was. Agriculture contributes about 24% of greenhouse gas emissions; to offset this, Black farmers are integrating practices like silvopasture and regenerative agriculture.

Penniman gives three examples of womxn-led farms that are implementing these practices: Keisha Cameron at High Hog Farm in Georgia; Larisa Jacobson at Soul Fire Farm in New York; and Germaine Jenkins at Fresh Future Farm. If more people farmed like these three womxn, we could potentially put 300 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide back into the soil (309). Some scientists believe that our estrangement from the soil contributes to mental health struggles. African cosmology believes that spirits and ancestors reside in the Earth and connect with those who connect with the soil.

The poem apologizes for insulting or ignoring the dirt and believing it was only a part of the background for the main characters: the plants, animals, and humans. The speaker compares this to loving only the stars and not the sky where they shine. The narrator claims that they never understood the dirt as a living equal—a character that is so different but made of the same materials as them. They implore the dirt to help them find ways to serve it for bringing us forth, feeding us, and receiving our bodies.

Schwartz introduces Katherine and Markus Ottmers, who live in far western Texas where there is little rainfall. They designed a building near their home to collect rainwater and condensation and didn’t realize how much water it was collecting until one of the valves burst; they were collecting about 60 gallons of water per day.

There is always moisture in the air above us, even in dry places. Scientist Antonio Donato Nobre says that there is more water in the air above the Amazon rainforest than in the Amazon River. Our planet manages its temperature by the phase changes in the water in the atmosphere. Schwartz therefore believes we should include water in our climate strategies; we can influence how water moves across our landscapes and atmospheres in order to regulate temperatures. Rather than thinking of water as only a noun, we should think of it as a verb, always expanding, changing, and working for our benefit.

Schwartz breaks down the behavior of water, beginning with infiltration. Often what we think is a lack of water is just the ground’s inability to absorb the water (an effect of soil without carbon in it). Transpiration, the “upward movement of water through plants” (315), provides 80 to 90% of our water; this process is a cooling mechanism that transforms solar energy into vaporous heat. This means that plants do the majority of the work in deciding the weather and climate. Finally, condensation occurs and turns the water from its gaseous form to its liquid form. The overall relationship is cyclical: Plants help bring the rain down and rain comes from the transpiration of plants.

We have to show humility and recognize the things we cannot control, but we also need to acknowledge where we do have control; one place where we see this is in the water cycle. If we embrace nature’s work and don’t interrupt its processes, there is little that we have to engineer. We can begin by starting our own climate victory garden, saving a section of the lawn for pollinator-attracting plants, and supporting farmers who grow things without pesticides.

Ray asserts that the organic and local food movement is the way to revitalize our communities and cultures. Agriculture is in the midst of a revolution. with humans balancing the needs of nature and the needs of humans, the ecology and the economy, and input and output. We are also on a psychological edge: knowing that we are in the middle of a climate crisis while also enjoying and appreciating the beauty that surrounds us. We make positive contributions while knowing that we are also complicit.