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"If humanity wishes to
preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization
developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate
evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need
to be reduced from its current levels [398 ppm.] to at most 350
ppm " ~
Dr.
James Hansen
Reversing Global Warming.
Since Dr. James Hansen, a leading climatologist, warned in 2008
that we need to reduce the amount of CO2 in the Earth's
atmosphere to 350 parts-per-million (ppm) in order to preserve
life on Earth, little has been done to get us there.
It's getting late. If we're going to preserve a livable Earth,
we the global grassroots, must do more than mitigate global
warming.
We must reverse it.
How?
Hint number one: not by
politely asking out-of-control corporations and politicians to
please stop destroying the planet.
Hint number two: not by
pinning our hopes for survival and climate stability on hi-tech,
unproven and dangerous, "solutions" such as genetic engineering,
geoengineering, or carbon capture and sequestration for coal
plants.
Hint number three: not
by naively believing that soon
(or soon enough) ordinary consumers all over the planet will
spontaneously abandon their cars, air travel, air conditioning,
central heating, and fossil fuel-based diets and lifestyles just
in time to prevent atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse
gases from moving past the tipping point of 450 ppm or more of
CO2 to the catastrophic point of no return.
We can reverse climate change
by sequestering several hundred billion tons of excess CO2 using
the "tools" we already have at hand: regenerative, organic
farming, ranching and land use. And we can make this
world-changing transition by mobilizing a vast green corps of
farmers, ranchers, gardeners, consumers, climate activists and
conservationists to begin the monumental task of moving the
Carbon Behemoth safely back underground.
As thousands of farmers, ranchers, and researchers worldwide are
demonstrating, by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of
CO2, methane, nitrous oxide and black soot, and qualitatively
ramping up plant photosynthesis (i.e. the capacity of plants,
trees, and grasses to move CO2 from the atmosphere through their
roots into the soil) on billions of acres of farm land, range
land, and forest, we can
sequester enough CO2 to restabilize the climate.
Moving the Carbon Underground.
We're talking about mobilizing the global grassroots, not as
passive observers, but as active participants, producers and
conscious consumers, implementing and promoting on a mass scale,
tried and true, low-tech, beneficial practices that naturally
sequester enormous amounts of atmospheric carbon in the soil.
These traditional, regenerative practices include no till
organic farming, planned
rotational grazing (carbon ranching), composting of organic
wastes, the use of cover crops, planting trees, and preserving
and restoring forests, wetlands, riparian zones, grasslands,
peat bogs, and biodiversity.
As Courtney White, author of the recent book,
Grass, Soil, Hope, puts
it:
" if land that is bare,
degraded, tilled, or monocropped can be restored to a healthy
condition, with properly functioning carbon, water, mineral, and
nutrient cycles, and covered year-round with a diversity of
green plants with deep roots, then the added amount of
atmospheric CO2 that can be stored in the soil is potentially
high.
"Globally... soils contain about three times the amount of
carbon that's stored in vegetation and twice the amount stored
in the atmosphere. Since two-thirds of the earth's land mass is
grassland, additional CO2 storage in the soil via better
management practices, even on a small scale, could have a huge
impact."
The noted food writer, Michael Pollan, in his
introduction to White's book, explains the basic concepts of
plant photosynthesis and the benefits of regenerative
agriculture:
"Consider what happens when
the sun shines on a grass plant rooted in the earth. Using that
light as a catalyst, the plant takes atmospheric CO2, splits off
and releases the oxygen, and synthesizes liquid carbon-sugars,
basically. Some of these sugars go to feed and build the aerial
portions of the plant we can see, but a large percentage of this
liquid carbon-somewhere between 20 and 40 percent-travels
underground, leaking out of the roots and into the soil. The
roots are feeding these sugars to the soil microbes-the bacteria
and fungi that inhabit the rhizosphere-in exchange for which
those microbes provide various services to the plant: defense,
trace minerals, access to nutrients the roots can't reach on
their own. That liquid carbon has now entered the microbial
ecosystem, becoming the bodies of bacteria and fungi that will
in turn be eaten by other microbes in the soil food web. Now,
what had been atmospheric carbon (a problem) has become soil
carbon, a solution-and not just to a single problem, but to a
great many problems.
Besides taking large amounts of carbon out of the air-tons of it
per acre when grasslands are properly managed, according to
White-that process at the same time adds to the land's fertility
and its capacity to hold water. Which means more and better food
for us...
This process of returning atmospheric carbon to the soil works
even better when ruminants are added to the mix. Every time a
calf or lamb shears a blade of grass, that plant, seeking to
rebalance its "root-shoot ratio," sheds some of its roots. These
are then eaten by the worms, nematodes, and microbes-digested by
the soil, in effect, and so added to its bank of carbon. This is
how soil is created: from the bottom up."
Wake Up Before It's Too Late.
If you are unfamiliar with the enormous impact of industrial
food and farming and non-sustainable forest practices on global
warming (chemical and energy-intensive, GMO, industrial food and
farming practices generate 35 percent of global greenhouse gas
pollution, while deforestation, often agriculture-driven,
generates another 20 percent) and the concept of natural carbon
sequestration through regenerative land use, please take a look
at the comprehensive 2013 scientific
study called "Wake Up Before It's Too Late," published by
the United Nations Commission on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
And if you need a strong dose of good news, to counteract the
typical gloom and doom message around the climate crisis, please
read the 2014 Rodale Institute
study on regenerative organic practices. See also:
http://thecarbonunderground.org.
Given that hundreds of billions of tons of carbon originally
sequestered in agricultural soils are now blanketing the
atmosphere and cooking the planet, our life-or-death task is to
move this massive "legacy load" of CO2 (now 50 ppm of CO2,
likely to be 100 ppm in 20 years, past the danger zone) back
underground, as soon as possible. This Great Sequestration will
buy us the time we need to reduce fossil fuel use by 80-90
percent or more and reverse global warming.
Taking Down Factory Farms and
Industrial Agriculture. Of course moving several hundred
gigatons of CO2 back underground and reversing global warming
will not be easy. Getting back to 350 ppm of CO2 in the
atmosphere will require nothing less than a global food and
farming revolution: shutting down factory farms, boycotting
genetically engineered foods, including factory-farmed meat and
animal products, and putting billions of intensively confined
farm animals back on the land, grazing, where they belong.
Restabilizing the climate means putting an end to gigantic GMO
soybean and palm oil plantations and industrial timber
operations. It means preserving tropical forests, and planting
and nurturing hundreds of billions of native trees in deforested
urban and rural areas.
Reversing global warming means putting an end to the
energy-intensive, chemical-intensive, genetically engineered
industrial food and farming system that is not only destroying
public health, torturing animals, polluting the water,
overgrazing pastures and rangelands, driving family farmers off
the land, and destroying biodiversity, as well as pumping
billions of tons of CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, and black soot
into the air.
Reversing climate change also means stopping industrial
agriculture from continuing to dump billions of pounds of
chemical fertilizers and pesticides on the already heavily
tilled, compacted, and eroded land-practices that
destroy the Earth's natural ability to sequester vast
amounts of carbon. These unsustainable farming, ranching, and
land use practices, according to a leading world expert, Dr.
Rattan Lal, have already caused the release of 25-70 percent
(hundreds of billions of tons) of all the carbon originally
sequestered in agricultural soils.
As a consequence of this decarbonization and destruction of the
Earth's topsoils, almost a quarter of all arable land on the
planet is fallow. But as Dr. David Johnson of New Mexico State
University has recently shown in a scientific study for Sandia
Labs, by implementing regenerative organic practices, "The rates
of biomass production we are currently observing in this system
have the capability to capture enough CO2 (50 tons of CO2/acre)
to offset all anthropogenic CO2 emissions on less than 11
percent of world cropland. Over twice this amount of land is
fallow at any time worldwide." (
The Soil Will Save Us,
Kristin Ohlsen p. 233)
As the well respected author Kristin Ohlson commented to Dr.
Johnson in a telephone conversation about this staggering
assertion: "Aren't you afraid to say this? Aren't you afraid
that saying that will let the oil and gas companies off the
hook? As well as people burning down forests and all the rest of
us with big carbon footprints? Aren't you afraid?"
Ohlson continued: "I thought I could feel a wary shrug over the
phone."
Dr. Johnson then replied: "I don't see anything on the horizon
that touches the effectiveness of this approach We're not going
to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions anytime soon, because we
depend too much on oil and gas, and the rest of the world wants
our lifestyle. The whole idea is to get something that works
right now, the world over, to make a significant impact on
reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide." (
The Soil Will Save Us,
pp. 233-34.)
If industrial agriculture and GMOs are marginalized through
mandatory labeling, marketplace pressure and public policy
change, if fossil fuel consumption in all sectors is steadily
reduced, and regenerative organic practices are put into action
globally, with a focus on the 22 percent of the planet's soils
which are degraded and currently fallow, we will be able to
sequester
100 percent of current, annual (35 gigatons) carbon dioxide
emissions.
Small Farmers Can Cool the Planet. The world's two and a half
billion small and indigenous farmers and rural villagers
currently manage to produce 70 percent of the world's food on 25
percent of the world's land. These so-called "subsistence
farmers," who have always struggled to survive, now find that
climate change, the steady expansion of GMOs and industrial
agriculture, and so-called "Free Trade" agreements, are making
their farming and survival much more difficult. But these same
small farmers, ranchers, pastoralists and forest dwellers,
because they have, in most cases, retained traditional knowledge
and practices, including seed saving and animal grazing, are
open to adopting even more powerful regenerative organic
practices. And of course these regenerative, climate-friendly,
low-tech land-management techniques will also increase yields,
reduce rural poverty, conserve water, improve soil health, and
prevent erosion. Study after study
has shown that small agro-ecological farms significantly
out-produce industrial farms-while sequestering carbon.
The solution to climate change, desertification and world hunger
is literally in the hands of the world's two-and-a-half billion
family farmers-but only if those farmers are supported by
conscious consumers and activists, driving public policy,
marketplace, and land-use reform on a global scale. This won't
happen unless we focus on economic justice and land-use reform.
Investments and public funds, local to international, must be
shifted from greenhouse gas-polluting factory farms and
chemical-drenched genetically engineered crops to regenerative
organic farming techniques that benefit small-scale and
sustainable farmers, as well as consumers.
Land grabs and "free trade" agreements orchestrated by
industrialized nations and multinational corporations must be
stopped.
The Point of No Return.
The U.S. and global climate movement desperately needs a more
sophisticated (and international) strategy beyond just
pressuring politicians, corporations, banksters, and the White
House into shutting down coal plants, fracking and the tar sands
pipeline. What we need is a holistic Zero Emissions/Maximum
Sequestration strategy that can galvanize a grassroots army of
hundreds of millions of small farmers and conscious consumers,
not only in the U.S., but globally.
Although millions of misinformed and/or befuddled Americans
remain in denial, a critical mass of the body politic is
beginning to understand that global warming and climate chaos
pose a serious threat to human survival. What they are lacking,
however, is a coherent and empowering understanding of what is
actually causing global warming, as well as a practical roadmap
of how we-individually, collectively and globally-move away from
the dangerous precipice where we find ourselves.
The only remaining significant disagreement among informed
climate researchers centers on
how long we can survive the still-rising 400 ppm of CO2
in the atmosphere (485 ppm if we include other GHGs such as
methane, nitrous oxide, CFCs and black soot). Current consensus
seems to be 15-25 years before we reach a "point of no return"
whereby climate change morphs into irreversible climate
catastrophe.
Faulty Solutions. Flawed
Strategy. The U.S.-based climate action movement, led by
350.org, has done an excellent job of protesting against the
coal, oil and gas industries. This high-profile movement has
also popularized the notion that fossil fuel consumption must be
drastically slashed (by 80-90 percent) and replaced by renewable
forms of energy, and that individuals and institutions must
divest from the fossil fuel industry, making sure that 75
percent of fossil fuels reserves are left in the ground.
But strategic components of 350.org's roadmap for change are
seriously flawed.
First of all, 350.org's reliance on over-simplified official
statistics (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--IGCC)
on what is causing excess GHG emissions in the atmosphere (i.e.
utilities, industry, transportation, and housing) fails to take
into account the fact that our industrial food and farming
system (production, transportation, processing, waste, and land
use), including its impact on deforestation and the soil's
ability to naturally sequester CO2, are the
leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions.
Our climate dysfunctionality is in large part a function of how
we farm and eat. Yet the most prominent voices in the climate
movement continue to downplay, or ignore entirely, this fact.
Even the most optimistic climate activists admit that
atmospheric concentrations of CO2 will likely reach 450 ppm in
the next several decades before leveling off. Unfortunately the
climate movement up until now has offered no real strategy for
how we can get from 450 ppm or more to the safe level of 350
ppm.
Even if the U.S., China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, the EU, and
other nations stop all emissions sometime in the next 20 years,
we will still have dangerous levels (450 ppm or more of CO2 and
other greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere-levels that will
gradually melt the polar icecaps, burn up the Amazon, spawn
disastrous storms, floods, and droughts, and destroy
agricultural productivity.
This is not just a basic error in analysis and a failure of
imagination. It's a "doom-and-gloom" formula that leaves us with
little or no hope.
We, the members of the regenerative organics movement, invite
you to educate yourself about the
good
news of regenerative organics and natural carbon
sequestration. Please join and help us unite the climate
movement, the organic movement, the animal rights, family
farmer, and conservation movements into a mighty force for
transformation and regeneration.
Join us and noted author Vandana Shiva under the banner of
"Cook Organic, not the Planet," at the People's Climate March in
New York City on September 21, or at one of the many local
actions on that day, and at forthcoming U.S. and international
gatherings.
The hour is late. But we still have time to turn things around
by stopping the Carbon Criminals and Earth Destroyers and moving
as quickly as possible toward a regenerative farming, ranching,
and land use system capable of reversing global warming.
Ronnie Cummins is
international director of the
Organic Consumers Association and its Mexico affiliate,
Via
Organica.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_30945.cfm