David Takahashi works for the generations to come as shared by the Iroquois Confederacy. While our ancestors have been around for about six million years, the modern form of humans only evolved about 200,000 years ago. Civilization as we know it is only about 6,000 years old and industrialization started in earnest only in the 1800s. Much of our history has been living within the limitations of our planetary existence. Lately, we have forgotten how to go about this. By refreshing our memory, we can recover some of the harmonious practices we let go.
David’s earliest memories are watering the plants in his grandfather’s nursery. David worked as a Nurseryman/Landscaper through college. It would appear that gardening is in his genetic makeup. These days he has been repurposing his 1950 suburban landscape into a yard farm foodscape. He practices the triple bottom line of caring for the Earth, for the People, and sharing any surplus.
David’s late father-in-law was Charles David Keeling who recorded the concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere starting in the 1950s. He shared science’s predictions on the effects of persistent Green House Gasses. The predictions included mean temperature rise, disrupted weather patterns, wildfires, floods, strengthening tropical storms, ocean acidification, sea level rise, melting of glaciers and other effects. David lost his home in the Four Mile Canyon wildfire of 2010. He experienced the wildfire’s utter chaos. Post-fire debris flows buried his neighbors. The floods of 2013 ravaged communities. He noted the run of wildfires in Colorado in 2010-2013, each bigger than the preceding. These calamities were predicted.
David has taken a 60-year-old home and worked to make it energy efficient. He has converted the home from using natural gas to using renewable electricity: the natural gas line has been removed from the property. He has created a suburban micro-grid: he uses the energy from the sun to charge batteries, the batteries are used to power the household, and surplus energy is shared with the grid. He sees all this as preventing further harm to Earth systems. He sees that beyond blocking harmful actions, we also need to turn the dial back and reclaim lost ground. He sees agriculture as one of the few endeavors that actually can begin repairing the damages already done. He sees the Lexicon as instrumental in showing people the way and reminding them of what we instinctively know.
