Conservation usually starts from the idea that nature does best when we leave it alone. Rob Avis thinks that instinct is the problem.

Rob Avis P.Eng. (5th World) · Host: Jackie De Burca

In the first of a two-part series, Jackie De Burca talks to Rob Avis — a mechanical engineer who left the Alberta oil patch to spend the last two decades designing regenerative farms, homesteads and buildings — about beavers, entropy, and why the instinct to keep our hands off nature may be doing more damage than the interference it was meant to prevent.

Rob Avis was clearing forest for oil pipelines when he started doing arithmetic. He worked out roughly how many hours a human life contains — about 600,000 — realised he had spent a third of his, and asked what he wanted to do with the rest. In 2008, with oil at record highs and almost nobody interested in energy descent, he and his wife Michelle left engineering careers worth three hundred thousand dollars a year between them and moved in with her mother.

What he came back with is an argument that cuts against most environmental messaging. Humans are not inherently destructive, he says — we simply lack feedback. We are the first people in history able to see the damage we have done from orbit, and the same capacity that shows us the wreckage is the one we will use to repair it.

The centrepiece of this episode is a creek on his own farm in central Alberta, and the beavers the previous owner used to kill. To an untrained eye they have made a mess: trees down, land flooded. Rob's contention is that they are increasing the complexity of that landscape dramatically — and that the difference between damage and regeneration is not whether you disturb a system, but the scale, timing, placement and form of the disturbance.

From there the conversation widens into a genuine challenge to conservation by exclusion: national parks, Allan Savory's elephant cull, and the wolves of Yellowstone. In the next episode we get into method — how Rob actually designs a property, and what any of this means for roofs, streets and gardens.

00:00Intro — we live amongst our own ruins, and why Rob thinks that's a hopeful fact04:09600,000 hours — the calculation that took two engineers out of the Alberta oil patch10:09Three days of food — how deep a city's supply actually runs13:58Entropy and syntropy — Howard Odum, and how the Fertile Crescent became a desert14:55Energy slaves — the hidden labour inside a barrel of oil16:27The beavers on his creek — eight to ten families, and the owner who used to kill them17:18Vermin and invasive — judgements dressed as descriptions, and the 28-fold claim20:19The problem with national parks — Rob's case against conservation by exclusion22:57Allan Savory's elephants — a cull, and the land that degraded anyway23:49Yellowstone's wolves — what happened when the predators came back28:10Why bad news doesn't move people — the amygdala problem in environmental messaging28:51The canoe — look at the rock and you hit the rock33:39Who actually comes to this work — fear as an entry point, and why it's a poor place to stay35:34“It's the climate between our ears” — the problems are social, not technical36:33A Rosa Parks moment — why change never comes from the majority37:21Outro — Jackie on what Part 2 answers

Mechanical engineer, P.Eng. · Co-lead, 5th World

Rob Avis, P.Eng., is a mechanical engineer who left oil and gas in 2008 to learn how land could be managed better. He co-leads 5...