Organic

IPCC projections and models used to discuss climate change in the future tense: something we could head off. No more. As we’ve noticed, climate change discussions have switched tenses — glaciers will melt has become glaciers are melting. Agriculture will be stressed has become agriculture is stressed.

There’s a corollary. Talk of climate change prevention has become talk of mitigation and adaptation.

For cities, that means flood walls. For farms, it means a transition to agro-ecological farming methods, ways of farming that harmonize with natural processes rather than relying on external, artificial-or-chemical inputs, or genetic engineering, to increase yields.

That transition will have many benefits.

The first is that it will actually prevent climate change.

The headquarters of the White House Organic Farm Project is a yellow school bus. It has a second school bus -- turned upside down -- on its roof that's filled with dirt and is growing food. This odd bus is criss-crossing the country in the hope of inspiring the next president to turn the White House lawn into a vegetable garden. Here's the thinking behind the project, the brainchild of Daniel Bowman Simon, 28, and Casey Gustowarow, 27:

If we can show the president that we can grow some good food anywhere and everywhere against all odds -- 60 miles-an-hour wind gusts along the highway; changing climate zones -- one day we're in the desert, one day we're in the mountains -- why not try it again at the White House too?

Again? That's right, again.