Land on Earth is not used optimally when dealing with climate change. Forest is cleared and the land full of stumps is ignored for years, because it is no longer valuable to the owner. Deserts are huges swaths of land that nobody is interested in, yet with the freedom to do anything you can bring them back to life. Land speculation locks up enormous amounts of land.
The housing market does the same thing. Empty houses occupy unused land. Nobody has any advantage from it, except perhaps the owner who hopes its price will appreciate. As banks constantly work to increase home prices its a no brainer to own property even if you don’t use it. This actually helps increase the price of property so there is a positive feedback, the less free land/property, the more worthwhile it becomes to hoard it.
Climate change needs to be fought, and those willing to put in the effort should not be obstructed by speculative ownership serving banks (the hope for more money serves the power of banks in the future) or economic ‘monculture’ single purpose ownership of land. Banks now own all the land, they raise a land tax on almost everybody (called ‘mortgage’). This is unjust because humans evolved on Earth, and have a right to its use, while banks are an artifact and have no need for it. You can run a bank from a computer suspended under a baloon. No Earth needed!
” If a man had let an arable field to a(nother) man for cultivation, but he did not cultivate it, turning it into wasteland, he shall measure out three kur of barley per iku of field. (29) “ (one example of not appreciating wasting land from 4000 year old law)
I think we should have a basic law which is akin to that of ancient times, the oldest written law known to man. I would make a new destinction. The old law was about productive use of land. If a land owner does not work his/her land and it lies fallow, anyone who does work it becomes the owner after a while. This was a rule to maximize wealth creation and possibly avoid people denying each other land like banks are doing today.
Such ownership law will be hard to push thru in a world where verybody believes and serves bank rule so desperately, it may require private funds, and groups may start buying land to prevent it from becoming speculative material (which may however trigger speculation).
The second law would be that if land can be used for alternative purposes, and it does not hinder the plans of the land owner, that use must be allowed. The use must be defined to avoid idiotic ‘uses’ like turning a desert into a sand scuplture museum. Another way to put it is that if 20 people come together and register for using a piece of land they don’t own for a wealth creating or climate combatting purpose, this must be allowed. That makes it more democratic.
The Roboeconomy, which is the next economy that is 100% renewables powered and that uses AI and robots a lot, will be different in the sense that activities can happen at next to no cost. A solar electric self sharpening lawn mower can run for months without any cost. If it is designed right and no accidents happen you maybe need to replace the blades but that is a completely different story from a gasoline powered one (where you also have to do that).
A roboeconmic tree planting system could be fully automatic, solar powered, using drones that drop pellets, remote controlled, self repairing etc. The roboeconomic economy is now developing with 100% battery recycling and other important elements. The control infrastructure is also being put into orbit (Starlink ao) so that even the remotest place can have autonomous machines doing important work to combat the rising CO2 and methane concentrations. Solar PV is dropping in cost. TinyML, micro AI is being developed. The tools are there to make much more and much better use of land, but the obstacle is BANK ownership and speculation.
A law that allows use of land owned by others should be part of emergency rules across the planet. There should be criteria set so that this does not open up the world to rogue mining operations. Maybe a rule should be that the result is either CO2 capture (through biomass or otherwise), food production (where the owner recieves a cut of the produce, not money) or fossil free habitation. That way humans can spread out which is better if we use renewables. Cities where both social but also a convienient point of sale for energy.