Volunteer

I am a volunteer with F4CR here in Nakivale refugee camp in Uganda where I live with my family as a refugee. The strong motivation to work within the Foundation for Climate Restoration is that this is the subject that concerns everyone and me as an Agronomist Engineer by training. My restoration activities are based in intelligent or regenerative agriculture for the protection, the Restoration and the fertility of the soil in order to give its power of agricultural production but also its role of sequestering carbon. Following the training of farmers, especially young people, in new agricultural techniques, we not only improve production but also reduce the effects of climate change. I am proud to work for this great foundation and to bring my knowledge and experiences for the benefit of my whole community and everywhere in the world.

I volunteered with F4CR March 2021 because I understood the importance of the concept of climate restoration as the logical continuation of mitigation and adaptation. I think this is a great last hope for starting over, restoring the climate, saving the global environment and saving humanity. My country, Madagascar, is very affected by the negative impacts of climate change, yet it is not one of the main destroyers of the environment. So, I am getting involved at the front with an act of citizenship, to contribute to the genesis of this movement and to have resolutions adopted for climate justice in Africa.

Even if the world ceased burning fossil fuels tomorrow, it would only stop making the problem worse, because in the last 200 years we’ve put a trillion tons of climate-wrecking CO2 into our atmosphere. But, what could I do? Then I heard a talk about something new, the Climate Restoration Movement. The speaker said that if humanity worked together, there are technologies that could take those trillion tons of CO2 out of our atmosphere. I saw a hope, a solution to humanity’s greatest problem ever. I thought about my daughters and my grandson, and the severely damaged world of their future if we failed to act. I realized I wanted to get involved in the Climate Restoration Movement, but how? Then I found out about the Foundation for Climate Restoration’s commitment to the removal of the trillion tons of CO2 by the year 2050. So I volunteered, and became the head of the newly formed New York chapter of the Foundation. When we succeed in 2050, if I’m still here I’ll be 103 years old. But even if I’m not, our world will be here and liveable, for everyone’s children. Join us.

My family vowed to do our part to save the planet, but it wasn’t until we discovered the Foundation for Climate Restoration (F4CR) that we learned that there was the possibility and opportunity to extract CO 2 out of the atmosphere. Since that discovery, we’ve noticed many in society has discussed initiatives to clear the air. But it will take more than good intentions and chatter to save our planet; we must lobby for governments and corporations to take action! Do your part by getting involved in F4CR or similar grassroots organizations to effect change. Our children’s lives depend on it!

I was completely enrolled by these powerful, forward-thinking scientists, engineers and change-makers, all of whom had realized that while where we were headed was better than not doing anything, with reducing emissions and planning for adapting to rising waters, etc., these efforts were missing the point of what needed to happen: We needed to not just reduce emissions to net zero; we had to accomplish the unfathomable feat of removing 1 Trillion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. These members and colleagues of F4CR had computed the scientific facts of the matter and of the engineering technologies that could actually cause conditions in which our climate could recover to pre-industrial conditions, a time when our world population thrived as a human species!

There is something powerfully attractive about a message of hope and action versus doom-n-gloom. Personally, that’s why I find climate restoration and CDR so attractive, and I believe that’s why people are pouring into the CDR space looking for ways to get involved and help. There may be some quirk of human nature that cleaning something up and restoring it is more attractive than just keeping things from getting a lot worse?