Geotherapy
Geotherapy is the metaphor that earth's Biophysical environmental problems, like global warming, can be soundly diagnosed and corrected, in much the same way that a medical doctor diagnoses and heals a human body by restoring imbalances in a patient's health. Geotherapy refers to the process of restoring the earth's health by strengthening natural biogeochemical and physiological mechanisms that regulate the earth's planetary life support systems and control global temperature, sea level, atmospheric composition, soil fertility, food, and fresh water supplies. Geotherapy views human health and quality of life as a part of, and hence dependent on, the ecosystem services provided by healthy biomes. It also recognizes the urgent need to regenerate the earth's severely damaged ecosystem services for a sustainable future.
Geotherapy should not be confused with geoengineering. Geotherapy regenerates natural life support mechanisms, while Geoengineering aims to replace them with technological solutions. To avoid confusion between antithetic concepts, Geotherapy, sometimes also called BioGeoTherapy to specifically highlight its focus on the regeneration of natural biological mechanisms, is in direct contrast to hard engineering solutions.
Origins of geotherapy
The term geotherapy was coined in 1991 by Richard Grantham, a molecular biologist, during the French National Center for Scientific Research Colloquium on "Modeling Geotherapy for Global Changes". Grantham organized the colloquium, and with a panel of climate change scientists, co-wrote the Geotherapy Declaration. The declaration sets forth that a "global bioethic" must be adopted to combat climate change from the projected effects of overpopulation and, further, that scientists from all fields must devote themselves to applying their collective knowledge to create sustainable solutions to this global problem. The declaration stressed the gravity of the situation: that the survival of the human species and, in fact, the entire biosphere, was at stake – the 6th mass extinction had already begun and without a cultural shift, life on earth would pay the price. Grantham collaborated with many scientists and doctors, including cancer researcher Van Rensselaer Potter. Potter used graphical representations to map the effects of a shared cultural evolution on humanity's shared biological evolution. Both Grantham and Potter came from medical backgrounds and had similar ideas when it came to the planet, which they thought of as a body of a sick patient that must be first accurately diagnosed and then be prescribed a restorative remedy in order to heal from damages caused by imbalances created by anthropogenic forces.Declaration for Geotherapy and Bioethics
Accelerating environmental degradation threatens the habitability of the biosphere. We believe that corrective action is possible and urgent.
- Our goal is long-term survival in an acceptably maintained ecosystem.
- We, as human beings, take full responsibility for our actions by not sacrificing natural resources for short term gains and by working to make the world a better living place.
- This choice will influence our biological and cultural evolution; we cannot avoid it without grave consequences.
- A global bio-ethic should further develop a guide and motivate geotherapy and our cultural evolution.
- A root problem is excessive demographic growth; the earth's carrying capacity is being exceeded. With the present style patterns of development pollution of all kinds will increase as long as the population increases.
- We declare that scientists of all walks of life should adopt the aforementioned goals and participate in meeting at all levels to apply these principals.
The effort to create a worldwide bio-ethic that embraces the concept of geotherapy was unfortunately cut short soon after the Geotherapy Declaration was drafted in 1991 when Grantham became ill with a neurodegenerative syndrome similar to Parkinson's Disease. The illness rendered him unable to speak or write.