Carbon Tunnel Vision
Carbon can be calculated and therefore corporations are leveraging it to claim ‘net zero’ or sell credits and profit! Carbon and it’s role is misunderstood.
We don’t have a ‘Carbon’ problem. We have a storage problem.
Too much carbon is in our atmosphere in the form of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Too little carbon is in the soil. This fuels the hidden killer: water cycling.
No soil carbon > no capacity to store water > no ability to grow plants > no photosynthesis > no storage of carbon.
This is better viewed as a cycle, not a linear progression.
A cycle, like the wheel going round on a bicycle, is moving and so can be stopped.
Here’s the stick in the spokes:
Well managed livestock and cropping practices can build soil that holds carbon, therefore water, therefore more plants. What do plants do? Suck CO2 up and store it in the soil! Louder for the ones at the back!
Decarbonise the atmosphere.
REcarbonise the soil and therefore our economies.
We Can’t Hack our Climate, Bill
Solar Geoengineering is ‘hacking’ our climate to reduce global warming. We don’t have time to play with risky ideas like these.
Solar Geoengineering: Spraying particles into the atmosphere to block the sun, thereby reducing global warming. One of the latest innovations backed by wealthy do-gooders like Bill Gates
Gates is the founder of arguably the most successful tech company ever. Why are we surprised that he, and others like him, want to use new technology to fix our complex problem of climate change. New technology is precisely what he does, and what ‘made’ him. It is also the source of his huge wealth. Very rich, technology-minded, old people will not want to work together over the coming decades to grind out a method of policy upheaval and societal shift to slowly treat the root cause of climate change.
1) they haven’t got decades to spare at their age and patience. 2) The mindset that made them rich is precisely a mindset we have to drop in order to progress. 3) Their identity is too challenged by entertaining the idea that the ‘answer’ may not involve more technology and more linear thinking.
Pumping calcium carbonate, sulphur dioxide or sea water into the atmosphere might work. But it is an expensive, resource hungry, band-aid fix to a huge, complex problem.
Mass diversity loss, desertification, mega fires = climate change.
Why ‘Desert-Greening’ won’t Work.
Planting trees in deserts will not work. They were grasslands first.
Companies such as ‘Undesert’ are attempting to re-green desertified regions of the world by planting trees.
This will not help.
These areas have never been forest. They were grasslands.
They must go back to being grasslands before they can be forests. This is how Ecological succession works.
In the case of ‘Undesert’, it seems they have realised this. Their solution? Desalinate seawater to water their trees.
On paper, innovations like these look great. In this example, you could even argue that with rising sea levels, using sea water to water trees that are saving deserts is a great idea! Two birds, one stone?!
Unfortunately, concepts like these never address the root of the problem, and so never solve it.
Desertified land must be returned to diverse grasslands, which build soil. Soil holds water, stores carbon, and can grow food.
“Ultimately, the only wealth that can sustain any community, economy or nation is derived from the photosynthetic process - green plants growing on regenerating soil.”
— Allan Savory