About this episode

Colin Smith discusses the intersection of environmental advocacy and soil health, emphasizing the importance of planetary boundaries in addressing the polycrisis humanity faces.

This episode previously aired in February of 2024, Colin Smith of Land Lovers Network joined Alex MacGillivray (my former co-host) and I. Colin and I connected through anti–clear‑cut logging advocacy with the Calgary Climate Hub in Southern Alberta. Colin introduces himself as a lifelong Southern Albertan with a background as an electrician, small business owner, and caregiver, now extending his caregiving to land and ecosystems; he describes how caring for his grandmother during the pandemic led him to deep engagement with soil microbiology, the soil food web, and high‑quality composting, culminating in Compost Club meetups at an urban farm hub in Calgary. A major portion of this discussion unpacks the “nine planetary boundaries” popularized by Joe Brewer’s work on regenerating Cascadia, which I frame as “laws of the land” as literal earth system limits and a way to define the polycrisis humanity faces. Colin walks through boundaries including climate change, biosphere integrity, land‑system change, freshwater change, biogeochemical flows (nitrogen and phosphorus), ocean acidification, atmospheric aerosol loading, stratospheric ozone depletion, and novel entities like…

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