TED Community » james greyson

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Helping civilisation get unstuck and away from the crumbly cliff-edge.

An idea worth spreading

How to get global security (reversing all major problems, including all people, uniting all societal goals) bit.ly/7switches
How to 'turn around' as a civilisation, http://bit.ly/posdev
How to get education without training for herd thinking, http://bit.ly/2ndswitch
How to get economic growth by rapidly cutting impacts and 'precycling', http://bit.ly/3rdswitch
How to reverse the arms race, http://bit.ly/fourthswitch
How to reverse the worldwide loss of nature, http://bit.ly/switch5
How to reverse wealth inequalities and 'stop the ship sinking', http://bit.ly/6thswitch
How to escape the debt mountain and end this ridiculous austerity, http://bit.ly/switch7
How to reverse climate change, www.microchar.net
The world's simplest cheapest carbon-negative household cooker, http://bit.ly/C-ve

Talk to me about

Talks, advising, researching and writing about policy switches that create the necessary speed and scale of change.

People don't know that I'm good at

Composting lawn mowings. Punt chauffering.

My TED Story

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAZO7rm6IdU

Comments

• TEDCred score: +0.50 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• +1

  A comment on Conversation: Anticipating that we are in the Anthropocene, How shall we proceed?

  Mar 27 2012: Good point about being overwhelmed with doom since this would be the rational response to our situation! Being overwhelmed also seems to drive our rational responses, so we get two stage thinking. 1st shrink the problem until it feels manageable, then 2nd 'solve' the shrunken sub-problem. We've been doing this for 40 years and of course the actual problems do anything but shrink!
  
  Have made suggestions for paradigm change in my research for nato on global security, http://bit.ly/7switches

• A comment on Talk: James Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change

  Mar 15 2012: Hansen is brilliant about the problem but not ambitious enough with solutions. We need solutions that match up to the scale and connectedness of the problem, not just problematic single-focus solutions like Fee and Dividend.
  
  Suggest 3 steps:
  1. Recognise that proposals and actions to date are hopelessly ineffective. This creates imaginative space for something new.
  2. Recognise climate as a symptom of a wider systemic failure, part of which is acceptance that resources flow linearly towards becoming wastes. Climate change is an outcome of some resources ending up as some kinds of wastes.
  3. Design a change process that fixes the system not just the symptom. For example switching from a linear to circular economy can be done by market price correction. See http://climatecolab.org/web/guest/plans/-/plans/contestId/4/planId/15101

• A comment on Talk: Josette Sheeran: Ending hunger now

  Aug 8 2011: I offer readers my article on why world hunger hasn't been ended - due to problem-solving that looks just one way, to the circumstances of the symptom. And how world hunger can and must now be ended - by looking both ways, to the circumstances of the symptom and to the 'system'. The systemic solutions are vastly more powerful, like turning off the tap instead of mopping up. Without this new scale of problem-solving we can expect food insecurity to worsen and spread. So worth doing! http://t.co/AmkvE6S
• +3

  A reply on Talk: Josette Sheeran: Ending hunger now

  Jul 29 2011: Yes food security is an issue wrapped up with every other global issue, with any lasting solution requiring both/and. BOTH action to address the symptom of lack of food AND action to reverse the systemic trends for all the inter-related issues.
  
  Josette does a brilliant job with the first part but the absence of any effective action on the second part means she is left mopping up at the end of a 'problem pipe' that has the tap turned on full. Turning off the tap is beyond the remit of the WFP but equally it seems to be beyond the remit of every piece of the UN.
  
  Perhaps this is an opportunity for the UN Rio+20 summit; how to break out of a 40 year long delusion that the global situation can be divided up and managed in bits? The apparent 'unsolvability' of global problems might be not much more than neglecting to deal with the whole-that-is rather than the pieces-that-we-perceive. We might find that there are rather simple leverage points for shifting the whole global system (reversing multiple problems) if only people start asking about them :-)

• A comment on Conversation: Burying charcoal to improve crop yield and offset CO2

  May 12 2011: This conversation ends soon so thanks Jason!
  
  Biochar is my pick for the practical solution with the greatest potential to really turn things around in time. Greenhouse gases can be removed from the air, soils can be revitalised, ecosystems and forests can be renewed, food security can be regained. All of this can be done in every country, cheaply, simply and fast - let's do it.
  
  I'd like to open-source my design for an easy make-it-yourself biochar woodgas cooker so if anyone has thoughts on possible start-up funding or international collaborators please contact me via my TED profile. Thanks!
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: Burying charcoal to improve crop yield and offset CO2

  May 2 2011: Anna thanks for the kind mention. My woodgas cookers (http://bit.ly/C-ve )are domestic scale, extendable to shared/communal cooking. Space heating or industrial use of woodgas/biochar would need something more intricate than my tin can tech. Liquid woodgas-based fuels are interesting as a replacement engine/boiler/generator fuel but would expect that direct burning of the woodgas is more efficient if you don't really need a liquid (?).
  
  Biochar is vital for reviving both soils and climate so I want to see people using woodgas cookers daily in both 'developing' and 'developed' countries. Most of the energy value of dry biomass is in the woodgas rather than the charcoal! Woodgas cooking should coincide with a world-wide end to charcoal making processes that emit unburnt woodgas to air since this is hostile to both health and climate. With unseasoned wood it's also ridiculously inefficient for delivering heat for cooking.
  
  I'm fond of hardwood twigs for my cookers since the same volume of fuel burns for longer. However a preference for hardwood seems to be a legacy of wanting hardwood for cooking-charcoal. When using softwoods or agricultural wastes in woodgas cookers with biochar byproduct you can get any desired cooking time just by adding more fuel. The resulting lighter-weight charcoal is easier to crumble into compost so better than hardwood biochar IMHO.
  
  Well done Jason with your excellent work. Also well done you and Lindsay for your sensitive help for George, who I'm hoping will be curious now to try it for himself :-)
  
  Rolf, the question of scale is interesting. Big biochar machines is one way to get scale. Large numbers of small machines (woodgas cookers) is another. Both can provide large-scale agricultural use though the potential for mishandling of biomass is greater with the big-business approach. The economics is also interesting; a combination of biochar business finances and wider economic reforms that have barely begun, http://bit.ly/CoLabEntry

• A comment on Talk: Amy Smith shares simple, lifesaving design

  May 1 2011: Lovely video. Seems an opportunity to make use of the woodgas that is otherwise lost as strong GHG during charcoal making. I've designed and used such a stove for cooking and water-boiling over the past year, producing a lot of charcoal which goes into compost then garden soil. A net carbon-negative process.
  
  In situations where cooking could be done only indoors without chimney then the charcoal byproduct from woodgas cooking could be burnt indoors. Otherwise it's better to cook with woodgas in a sheltered outdoors spot and save the charcoal as biochar for compost then soil then new growth of food and trees.
  
  Here's the link to my page about workshops to build woodgas cookers from old tin cans. No metal joining or drilling needed; last week I had 10 yr olds making one. http://bit.ly/C-ve Runs on waste biomass, scrap wood or twigs; no need to cut trees. When I can find an international agency partner I'm keen to make designs available on 'creative commons'.