And here are your comments:

SUMMARY

Based on widely accepted scientific measurements, global emissions reduction efforts, while essential, have not succeeded in reducing levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases.

The annual rate of carbon released into the atmosphere is accelerating (for many reasons which need not be discussed here). Reducing emissions and building out alternative energy are necessary but insufficient to address global warming and, based strictly and objectively on atmospheric carbon numbers, have yet to show significant signs of success.

While we have gone through many phases of optimism – and a dramatic change is always possible – there is little evidence that such necessary atmospheric carbon reductions will take place in a suitable time frame. Indeed, the unprecedented rate of growth of atmospheric carbon to over 3 ppm during 2016 despite major advances in development and deployment of alternative energy is testament to an incomplete and not-yet-effective strategy. (See http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gr.html.)

The only practical, inexpensive and readily available “technology” for the massive carbon drawdown necessary is photosynthesis and associated biodiverse processes.  Such essential eco-restoration brings many advantages, including low cost, high food productivity, mitigating and often ending floods and drought, local economic self-sufficiency, and eliminating conflicts over scarcity. Land managers across the world have decades of eco-restoration experience on millions of acres. Evolving management approaches are highly effective and well-known outside of the conventional management practices that created the problem in the first place.

It is therefore time to reassess our climate strategies and proceed accordingly.

INTRODUCTION

When Michael Mann et al. introduced the hockey stick climate graph in 1999, they were representing global warming as an exponential process. We didn’t know at the time how rapidly exponential it was going to be, and the pace of acceleration caught just about everyone up short. Notwithstanding, apparently as a result of questionable assumptions about multi-decadal time frames for action, we still often discuss various distant (i.e., not this year or next) climate targets as if nature were going to accommodate our ineffectual responses.

We chronically speak of goals by 2030, 2050, 2100. Yet, while we’ve identified accelerating positive feedback loops such as melting ice and wildfires, we persist in talking and thinking about climate change as if it were a linear process.  To the exclusion of other possibilities, collectively we have single-mindedly focused on emissions or, to a lesser extent, on untested, expensive and frequently dangerous high-tech experiments.

Certainly there are scientists and activists who understand the alarming urgency for effective climate action. Unfortunately  the alarm is apparently not yet great enough to change the climate conversation to include the only feasible option left to humanity at this point in time, the power of the biological world to exert a positive influence on the course of events.  It is now almost midnight for switching course to give eco-restoration an equal or even greater share of our climate remediation efforts, which will surely fail unless we bring life back to billions of desertified and degraded acres across the earth.

ACCELERATING CARBON EMISSIONS AND TEMPERATURE RISE

[Atmospheric CO2, https://www.co2.earth/. Note change 2014-2015 was 3.02 ppm; 2015-2016, 3.40 ppm. There are variations from year to year, but the trends are clear.  See also http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gr.html for annual increase year over year since 1959]

[Global Surface Temperature, from Jim Hansen, “Young People’s Burden: Requirement of Negative CO2 Emissions,” http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2016/20161004_BurdenCommunication.pdf. Although 2015 through early 2016 was an El Nino year of more intense warming, the trends are nonetheless alarming.]

The annual growth rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide measured at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii jumped by 3.05 parts per million during 2015, the largest year-to-year increase in 56 years of research. In another first, 2015 was the fourth consecutive year that CO2 grew more than 2 ppm, said Pieter Tans, lead scientist of NOAA’s Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network. . . . The last time the Earth experienced such a sustained CO2 increase was between 17,000 and 11,000 years ago, when CO2 levels increased by 80 ppm. Today’s rate of increase is 200 times faster, said Tans. [emphasis added]  The big jump in CO2 is partially due to the current El Niño weather pattern, as forests, plant life and other terrestrial systems responded to changes in weather, precipitation and drought. The largest previous increase occurred in 1998, also a strong El Niño year. Continued high emissions from fossil fuel consumption are driving the underlying growth rate over the past several years.

http://www.noaa.gov/news/record-annual-increase-of-carbon-dioxide-observed-at-mauna-loa-for-2015

Jim Hansen, in his above-cited 2016 paper, “Young People’s Burden: Requirement of Negative CO2 Emissions,” states:

The growth rate of climate forcing due to human-caused greenhouse gases (GHGs) increased over 20% in the past decade mainly due to resurging growth of atmospheric CH4 [methane], thus making it increasingly difficult to achieve targets such as limiting global warming to 1.5°C or reducing atmospheric CO2 below 350 ppm. Such targets now require “negative emissions”, i.e., extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere [emphasis added].

Similarly, the IPCC AR5 (2013), stated:

A large fraction of anthropogenic climate change resulting from CO2 emissions is irreversible on a multi-century to millennial time scale, except in the case of a large net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere over a sustained period [emphasis added].

[http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdf, p 26]

LIMITS TO EFFECTIVENESS OF EMISSIONS REDUCTIONS

It is clear that at this point in history emissions reductions, were we to go to 100% tomorrow, would be insufficient to avoid serious impacts of global warming.  It is also clear that emissions reductions have had limited effects to date. It is particularly important to consider that positive feedback loops have been inadequately factored into the climate equation, and we are now seeing the accelerations characteristic of positive feedbacks in the form of rapid increases in temperature and greenhouse gas concentrations. More tangible as feedbacks are the growing number, distribution and intensity of fires, floods, droughts and other climate-related events.

Therefore. . .

It is reasonable, even urgent, to conclude that while we should pursue emissions reductions with all due haste and effort, 100% success immediately would still lead to climate catastrophe. We need to look elsewhere for solutions.

SOLUTIONS

The choices of approaches for eco-restoration, mitigation and reversal of global warming are many, and adaptable to a broad spectrum of habitats, biomes and latitudes. Options include but are not limited to reforestation, coastline revegetation, planned grazing grassland management, wetland restoration, applications of biochar and rock powders, permaculture and other intensive agricultural practices, regenerative water cycle management, elimination of all synthetic and fossil-based soil inputs, and focused attention on healthy and biodiverse ecosystems.

THE SCIENCE

The science of eco-restoration as an approach to global warming is supported by considerable study and data. Unfortunately, most of that information is scattered across many disciplines, as much of it was not originally pursued specifically with climate in mind.  New reports are coming out regularly, and many are indeed considering climate, but a coherent and comprehensive eco-restoration climate narrative is still in the early phases of development.  It is a project to which Biodiversity for a Livable Climate is currently devoting considerable effort.

Nobel laureate Albert Szent-Georgy once said, “Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen, and thinking what nobody has thought.”  Such is frequently the case with respect to eco-restoration and climate. The information is available but needs to be infused with meaning from a new paradigm in order to be readily understandable and broadly and effectively applicable, both at a land management level and in political and economic arenas.

OPPORTUNITIES

Briefly, there are several areas where individuals and organizations concerned with climate can play a significant role:

• Position eco-restoration as the main and top priority message with commitment to partnership, dialogue, and discussion among a broad group of stakeholders
• Provide institutional support for farmers and ranchers to transform our food system
• Lobby for federal, state and local action (laws and financing, tax incentives, etc.) for a broad spectrum of eco-restoration activities
• Fund and/or help to fund Biodiversity for a Livable Climate and similar organizations
• Educate professionals in elementary, secondary, and higher education on how to teach the eco-restoration paradigm.

Climate urgency is very clear.

There is an established belief in science that there are roughly 20-to-30-year time lags between a year of emissions and the perceptible  appearance of their effects. Therefore we are currently seeing the consequences of carbon concentrations 40 to 60 ppm less than at present. Furthermore, the signature of http://www.onlinephentermine.net/ positive feedback loops is acceleration – it is apparent that in the last 2 or so years we are witnessing that acceleration in spades, as heat records are broken right and left, wildfires rage, etc. etc. 

Those of us who research and educate about eco-restoration have these accelerating phenomena firmly in mind. What considerations might be at the top of the list in approaching our daunting portfolio of problems? Here are some suggestions:

1. Human technology is, along with the population growth made possible by technology, the foundation of the anthropocene era.  Technology’s ultimate end is to expand carrying capacity so that we can accommodate a growing population, and bears many unintended consequences of which global warming is one of the most serious. The technologies in question over the past few hundred thousand years include the intentional use of fire, development of hand tools, agriculture, wheels, shipbuilding, architecture, culminating in the industrial era and widespread use of fossil fuels. 
2. There is a long list of unintended technological consequences and progress traps that have effectively put an end to every large-scale complex society in human history.
3. The basic planetary life-support system – sunlight, photosynthesis and soils in terrestrial and aquatic habitats – is an absolute necessity for virtually all life on earth.
4. Catastrophic climate change is one of many symptoms of the widespread destruction resulting from human technologies.
5. The ecological damage we are seeing today is a result of unintended consequences which always result from human technologies. In other words, human technologies always bear risks, from minimal to catastrophic, that may take decades, hundreds, or thousands of years to manifest (a long time in human terms, but geological microseconds).
6. This sixth mass extinction is the culmination of human technologies in the service of short-term human survival, which is a natural outcome of responding to immediate needs, i.e., food, water, shelter, warmth, reproduction. That is, it’s nobody’s fault, it’s the way we’re built.

Therefore:

Any invocation of human technology will bring unanticipated risks that will inevitably result in harm eventually, sometimes serious, occasionally extreme enough to cause widespread extinction and loss of the biodiversity on which our life-support systems depend.  No life-support system, no life – we are not immune from extinction. 

The inevitable reasonable conclusion is that we cannot rely on human technologies to solve the problems we are facing because of the unknown dangers such technologies bring.  A corollary is to use the least complex and least invasive technology possible for maximum safety and, ultimately, effectiveness.

UNFORTUNATELY we are in the thrall of our technologies to the extent that the effects of technology are often invisible to us, leaving us to wander into progress traps and to fall victim to our own ingenuity. We fail to see the pending outcomes until it is too late and resort to more technology to cure prior technological ills, digging ourselves into holes that turn into graves. The poster child today is global warming, but there are many others.

FORTUNATELY the natural world has all the answers we need. We have only to develop the ability to see them. We are blind to the power that brought us liquid water, an oxygen atmosphere, a narrow temperature range suitable for life, and millions of species for an exquisitely complex and biodiverse world. The same natural world that resulted in the evolution of homo sapiens sapiens in the first place.

In sum, our faith is entirely upside-down, believing in the world of nuts, bolts, copper wires, silicon chips and rocket ships, thinking that these are more important and powerful than biological systems. We won’t successfully address climate or any other ecosystem disasters until we understand this fallacy through and through, at a visceral as well as an intellectual level.

When we start to understand how the natural world functions – as complex systems – only then will we grasp what we need to do.

Those of us who work in eco-restoration face daunting odds because a paradigm shift is required, and the places where our cultural habits dictate that we look for answers don’t have them. The answers we desperately need cannot reside in the dominant paradigm which brought us these problems in the first place. The solutions lie elsewhere.

Fortunately, we know many of those solutions, they’ve already been applied on millions of acres on five continents. These solutions – from planned grazing to reforestation to permaculture to biochar to rock powders to wetland and ocean restoration – are all ready to go, far cheaper than anything tech, with many associated benefits for water and carbon cycles, control of floods and droughts, food production, economic justice, and on and on.

THEREFORE

Based on this reasoning and experience, one can only conclude that complex and/or untested technologies such as geoengineering (as distinct from geotherapy) should be off the table. They are potentially ineffective, expensive and/or very dangerous. Unfortunately they fit in neatly with the dominant paradigm, and getting excited over something techno-cool that we know little about is a reflex well-conditioned into our daily lives, only all too often turning out to be a snake-oily empty promise. Unfortunately, we no longer have time to play with empty promises.

From nature’s perspective geo-engineering makes no sense whatsoever, despite promises resulting from the misleading oversimplification of complex systems.  Solar radiation management (SRM) is readily available with intact ecosystems and healthy water cycles. Similarly for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) – photosynthesis can remove all the atmospheric CO2 we need. Artificial trees, deep well injection, etc. are similarly pointless – untested, expensive, potentially dangerous – we only go there because the dominant paradigm is blind to its own shortcomings and the power of nature, while we wax ecstatic over our reflex cultural loyalties. And because we are rightly desperate.

Many people request persuasive evidence that biological drawdown and ecosystem restoration alone can prevent a continuous thaw of the permafrost and other climate phenomena, given how late the hour is.  Coming from the land of the dominant (reductionist) paradigm – and we all struggle with its powerful constructs – such a request makes sense.

This is a common request, and at first blush not unreasonable, so let me take a moment to deconstruct it. There are many tricky and undefined (and perhaps undefinable) words in that sentence: “persuasive,” “evidence,” “alone,” “prevent,” “late.” There are also assumptions about mechanisms of drawdown, permafrost thaw, biological drawdown and eco-restoration. Suffice it to say that such requests are rife with undefined elements, and the key is that “seeing is believing” (not the other way around). That is, if you are prepared to believe what you’re asking for you will see it. Otherwise, it will continue to be invisible, and the conventional response to such invisibility is that “the science” isn’t there (wherever “there” may be).

When we refer to “the science” in the mainstream sense, we’re mostly referring to academic and reductionist science (where systems interactions are discounted), associated with revered institutions, experimental protocols, statistical analyses, and peer-reviewed studies. 

But we should keep in mind that before any scientific field is mainstream, it isn’t. No academic support, no peer review, no formal studies – but plenty of evidence, perhaps derided as “anecdotal,” but without which there would be no science at all.

So how does one arrive at a comfortable place of “seeing persuasive evidence”? 

When we’re studying systems such a personal transition is different for different people, but involves exposure to many new ideas, plenty of illustrative stories (“anecdotes”), conversations with numerous people, perhaps reading technical literature (or perhaps not), reflection on nature vis-a-vis human affairs, seeing the magic of eco-restoration first-hand, perusing some wonderful books by nature writers, and contemplating the vastness of the universe, the amazing existence of life on earth (perhaps nowhere else) – until you begin to recognize life as a force greater than any other on earth. Earth – it would be a dead rock in space, like Mars or Venus – without life.

I hope this longish post is helpful – I know that connecting these dots is not obvious. I’ve been on this winding road for the better part of a decade, the understandings are a personal evolution as much as anything.  

There is, thankfully, a great deal of knowledge and experience out there that has opened up a new paradigm of life on earth, into a universe of great possibility and hope where there are positive tools for regenerating a bountiful planet, where a healthy global ecosystem can take care of global warming and so many other pressing problems.  We humans have a vital role to play.

Let us proceed in partnership with nature on the path to biodiverse abundance, with enthusiasm and joy, guided by the gods within.*

*  Harking back to the original meaning of “enthusiasm,” en- (in) + theos (god).

Solar panels on rooftops. Hybrid and electric vehicles. Meatless Mondays. What do all of these indicators of societal progress have in common? They are just some examples among the many widely attainable, lifestyle modifiers for reducing energy consumption in our fossil fuel-addicted world. But while replacing SUVs with hybrid cars and changing lifestyle habits to reduce individual carbon footprints is important, it simply isn’t enough to reverse climate change. We have long surpassed the point where phasing down fossil fuel emissions alone will arrange for a biologically-diverse and livable climate.

The rapid rise of atmospheric CO₂ to levels recently exceeding 400 parts per million (ppm) is an unprecedented climatic event in the past several centuries of modern human evolution (Royal Society 2014). The speed and scale of current climate change trends is truly remarkable, making adaptation by both humans and the natural world a complex and unique challenge. In addressing this challenge, many politicians, climate activists, and policymakers often point to reducing fossil fuel and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as the sole answer. Science is telling a different story, however, and it is time for us to listen.

Even in the best case scenario for GHG emissions reduction–a zero sum emissions scenario–global temperatures will not decrease fast enough to reverse the current trends of climate change. Climate models indicate that even with a zero emissions scenario, atmospheric temperature will continue to rise and, at best, stabilize or slowly decrease over decades to even centuries before hitting safe levels (Zickfeld et al. 2013, MacDougall et al. 2012). To reduce temperatures there must be a net removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, for which there are multiple viable strategies that actuate the CO₂ capture and storage potential of the biosphere. This truth is well known among a minority of climate scientists and activists, but continues to be omitted from conventional dialogues about the climate change crisis.

Natural carbon sinks exist in biomes and ecosystems around the world. Biomes differ in the extent of their carbon sequestration capacity, but there is massive carbon-storing potential in natural resources around the globe for long-term climate stability. By working with natural systems to sequester carbon from the atmosphere and store it in the world’s trees, plants, and soils we can effectively reverse climate change and lay a foundation for sustainable global vitality.

Forests:

Forests contain the highest reserves of soil carbon worldwide (about 35% of the global total) and have a proportionately high ratio of carbon storage to spatial coverage (SWS 2013). The biophysical influences of forests on atmospheric temperatures depend on multiple factors that affect carbon sequestration, such as the regional climate system (Jackson et al. 2008). Tropical forests promote the evaporation of water from land to air, contributing to cloud formation that increases the amount of sunlight reflected back to space. Boreal forests have a much more limited capacity for carbon storage due to limited sunlight, cooler temperatures, the long-term presence of snow and ice throughout each year, and other factors. Replacing snow covered land with trees that absorb more sunlight in northern countries can actually accelerate warming regionally, creating a positive feedback loop that leads to further loss of highly-reflective snow and ice (DellaSala et al. 2003).

The biophysical influence of temperate forests is complex and highly variable on a region-to-region basis (Field et al. 2007). Some studies show that replacing temperate forests with grasslands will cool surrounding surface areas, while other studies show the opposite. While temperate forests can store between 150 and 230 tons of carbon per hectare (Kemper et al. 2009), these forests can contribute to a warmer atmosphere because they are darker and absorb more sunlight than grasslands and croplands. As the dynamic of temperate forests and atmospheric temperatures varies greatly, increasing temperate forest coverage might not be the best solution for carbon sequestration in all regions of the globe (Jackson et al. 2008). Thus, ecosystem assessments are crucial for determining whether increasing temperate forest coverage will benefit atmospheric CO₂ concentrations on a case-by-case basis.

Climate researchers often suggest that the greatest potential for carbon sequestration in forests lies in the tropics; avoided deforestation, forest restoration and afforestation in these regions can play a significant role in mitigating global climate change (Jackson et al. 2008; Shukla et al. 1990; Dickinson 1992). In other regions of the world, forest projects and policies should be crafted to seek a balance between protecting ecosystem services and stabilizing local and global temperatures. In dryland ecosystems, forestry projects that consume scarce water resources are not favorable to other types of ecological restoration projects, such as grassland restoration (Jackson et al. 2008; Hurteau et al. 2008).

Grassland soils:

Excluding Greenland and Antarctica, grassland biomes constitute approximately 40% of the global land surface area and possess massive potential for sequestering carbon in arid and semi-arid areas of the world (Safriel et al. 2005; Savory 2013; Teague et al. 2011; Tainton et al. 1999). Healthy grasslands provide habitat for a biologically diverse range of plant and animal species, and also serve as a large reserve for soil carbon (Safriel et al. 2005; Savory 2013). While temperate forests can store carbon in above-ground biomass, grasslands have higher soil organic carbon (SOC) capacity, storing carbon in stable complex biomolecules for hundreds to even thousands of years (Scurlock and Hall 1998; Savory 2013). Studies estimate that grassland SOC carbon stocks comprise up to 30% of the total soil carbon worldwide (Anderson 1991; Scurlock and Hall 1998).

Grasslands that sustain abundant stores of SOC have higher rates of water infiltration and retention and are less susceptible to environmental degradation such as soil erosion and drought. These “non-forest” biomes, primarily located in the terrestrial regions of the Northern Hemisphere, constitute a significant fraction of the “missing carbon sink” in the global carbon budget (Scurlock and Hall 1998). Widespread mismanagement of grassland ecosystems has degraded their primary production functioning and SOC storage abilities, leading to a “desertification” crisis worldwide, characterized by processes such as vegetation degradation, water and wind erosion, salinization, soil compaction and soil nutrient depletion (Safriel et al. 2005). Although grasslands are currently facing desertification around the globe, proper land management can restore vegetation cover to protect soils from erosion and enhance the carbon sequestration capacity of these vital ecosystems (FAO 2004; Savory 2013).

Wetlands:

While forests and dryland ecosystems contain the most soil carbon globally, the carbon density of wetland ecosystems is three and six times that of forests and grasslands/shrublands, respectively (Society of Wetland Scientists (SWS) 2013). The deep organic-rich soils of coastal wetlands contain carbon reserves that have been sequestered over millennia (Emmiett-Mattox et al. 2011). These tidal ecosystems are able to store large quantities of carbon for two primary reasons: high-nutrient conditions that promote the rapid growth of carbon-sequestering plant biomass (primary production), and anaerobic soils that suppress microbial decomposition in the water-logged environment, allowing for long-term carbon storage (Chmura et al. 2003; SWS 2013; Mitsch and Bernal 2013). Tidal saline wetland ecosystems, including salt marshes and mangrove swamps, exhibit remarkable rates of belowground biomass production and enormous capacity as carbon sinks (Chmura et al. 2003).

While wetlands do emit carbon dioxide and methane (CH₄), studies with analysis on model carbon fluxes over a 100-year period indicate that most wetlands are net carbon sinks (SWS 2013). In addition to their carbon storage capacity, wetlands provide a multitude of environmental benefits including habitat for a diverse range of species, water filtration mechanisms, and protection against floods and storms (Mitsch and Bernal 2013). Wetlands cover roughly 6% of the earth’s land surface and contain over 10% of the “global carbon pool” (IPCC 1996; Erwin 2009), making the health of wetland ecology an important segment of the global climate picture.

Biochar:

Biochar is a stable, carbon-dense form of charcoal created from the burning of plant material under low-oxygen or zero-oxygen conditions, called pyrolysis. Biochar is primarily produced by wildfires and can exist in some soils for hundreds of years (Lehmann et al. 2009). Controlled fire produces biochar that has the ability to simultaneously enrich soil health, sequester carbon, and promote additional growth of carbon-absorbing plants (Rostad and Rutherford 2011; Schwartz 2013). While biochar production currently remains an experimental strategy for global carbon sequestration, when applied responsibly it appears to have potential for aiding in efforts to enhance the long-term carbon storage of the biosphere.

Conclusion

A focus on fossil fuel emissions reduction as the primary solution to reversing climate change will continue to be ineffective. Arbitrary goals to reduce emissions by 10, 30, 50 or even 80 percent are not going to prevent future warming. Basic scientific principles dictate that atmospheric CO₂ concentrations will not decline without a significant rise in the carbon sequestration mechanisms of the biosphere. The good news is that there is enormous carbon sequestering potential in multiple ecological systems around the globe. The only question now is whether we will work to enhance the carbon storage capacities of nature or effectively continue to weaken them.

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In September, members of the United Nations will convene a round of climate change negotiations. It’s not hard to guess what is on the table: greenhouse gas emissions reductions. Yet after almost three decades of effort, during which atmospheric carbon concentrations have only gone up, another meeting focused primarily if not exclusively on emissions reductions appears to hold little promise for success.  While emissions reductions are of course essential and we must keep working to end the burning of fossil fuels, we also have to do something else. Something that brings new hope to addressing global warming.  That something is soils.

Biodiversity for a Livable Climate (BLC) seeks to redirect the climate conversation to include large-scale carbon sequestration through ecosystem restoration.  Given that we know that healthy soils have the potential to sequester vast amounts of carbon dioxide, indeed enough to potentially reverse climate change, why haven’t policies seized upon this simple, apparent opportunity?  I have found the following questions helpful:

1.  Have GHG emissions reduction efforts reduced emissions?  Clearly not.  Despite admirable attempts and sincere commitment, climate policies have resulted in little meaningful mitigation of the climate crisis.  Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have climbed to 400 parts per million (ppm), far above what most scientists agree is the upper bound of a safe level.  Emissions continue rising annually, and all the while disruptions from climate change – in the form of rising temperatures, unpredictable water supplies, widespread drought and more violent storms – are being felt on every continent with ever-increasing frequency and intensity.

2.  Why haven’t efforts to reduce GHG emissions been successful?  The reasons are legion, but they include perceived economic risk, presumed threats to maintaining and improving the quality of life around the globe, and the time needed to effectuate a wholesale restructuring of energy infrastructure and policies.  U.S. EPA’s efforts over the course of the Obama Administration are a case in point.  Not only  have regulatory efforts been besieged by lawsuits and legislative attacks fueled by industry and states, even those willing to comply simply have not had the time or the resources to implement an aggressive GHG reductions framework.  While the Obama Administration has made inroads, it has chosen a path that is necessarily fraught with opposition and constrained by the resources of states and citizens alike.

Even assuming, however, that we could overcome all of the forces that keep us from effectively pursuing a low- or zero-carbon energy system, there is another question to ask:

3.  Would it be enough?  Again the answer is no.  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in a  recent report to policymakers made clear that unless long-term significant reductions in atmospheric concentrations of CO2 occur, we are committed to a future defined by climate disruptions.  Because excess carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for decades or centuries, it wreaks havoc on the planet for for a long time.   We must halt the current climate momentum by actively drawing down CO2 and storing it safely in soils.

There is no doubt that GHG emissions reductions are important.  What is objectionable is the steadfast insistence on focusing almost exclusively on GHG emissions reductions.  Expanding our horizons is long overdue when there is a simple, safe, and proven solution to the climate crisis: large-scale soil sequestration of CO2 through ecosystem restoration.  It is well known that healthy ecosystems can sequester and safely store vast amounts of carbon.  We know that each emission of GHGs today commits us to a planet and future defined by all but certain catastrophic climate change.  Conversely, every molecule of CO2 sequestered today through the vast, untapped potential of soils is an investment in a livable planet where humans can thrive.

Why then have we failed to undertake this simple solution?  Naysayers have paralyzed the conversation, raising two – ultimately unpersuasive – objections.  Their first objection is that we are unable to predict with absolute certainty how much carbon can be sequestered.  This is a red herring: the potential of the biosphere to sequester carbon is a much more powerful force in mitigating climate change than gradually moving to a low carbon world will ever be in the time frame needed.

Moreover, reducing GHG emissions will only address the status quo, and with positive feedback loops such as melting arctic ice in play, barely that; to reverse climate change and ensure a livable planet, we must remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Naysayers also object because of the uncertainty of the time span in which given amounts of carbon sequestration will occur.  Again, this is a red herring – it’s like rejecting a proven medical cure for a terminal illness because one isn’t sure for how long the treatment will be necessary.

Both of these objections amount to the supposition that perfect knowledge should be required before we take action – that is, the hope that science can and will one day provide us with absolute certainty.  First, at the risk of sounding trite, the most substantiated bodies of scientific evidence are called “theories” exactly because scientific knowledge is continually growing and assumptions about the way the world works are constantly revised.  Second, and more importantly, if we required absolute certainty before taking any action, progress on nearly ever scientific front – ranging from medicine to space exploration – would have been significantly impeded.  The ultimate irony, of course, is requiring certainty about the climate benefits of ecosystem restoration when we know that GHG emissions reductions by themselves are not enough.

Efforts at ecosystem restoration must begin immediately.  Though this will require a herculean effort on all fronts, it is a much more workable solution.  Unlike significant reductions in GHG emissions, worldwide ecosystem restoration will not create the disruptions in daily life implied by a swift shift to a low-carbon global economy requiring vast amounts of new infrastructure for energy and transportation.  If anything, it will only serve to improve the lives of citizens around the globe by enhancing soils and restoring water cycles, thereby creating, among other things, more productive and resilient food production systems.

Adaptation measures are also likely to be discussed this September at the United Nations in New York.  By enhancing food security and improving soils and water cycles, ecosystem restoration can contribute to these measures while also sequestering vast amounts of carbon.  The task before us is clear: what is needed now is to introduce some reality-based sanity into the global climate conversation.

“Everything is connected to everything else.” – Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle

Like most climate activists, for a long time I thought that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were THE driving force behind climate change.  It followed that reducing emissions was our overriding goal. 

 A steady stream of messages from both the climate movement and the mainstream media are constantly reinforcing the perception that GHGs and the climate emergency are synonymous.  The most prominent activist organization is named after atmospheric carbon levels.  Even the climate deniers reinforce this focus when they react against the claims of scientists and activists  about carbon.  GHGs and what to do (or not do) about them frame the debate.

Biodiversity for a Livable Climate is dedicated to expanding the terms of the climate conversation.  We want to bring to the table measures for restoring degraded and desertified lands, re-establishing balanced water cycles, managing forests and reforestation, and restoring ocean food chains.  This is not instead of working to reduce GHG emissions, but in addition.  These are measures that have the potential to store huge amounts of carbon in the soil, reduce flooding and drought by stabilizing local climates, address the immediate dangers posed by the world’s diminished water supplies, restore habitable environments for innumerable species,  increase food supplies and create jobs.  Why would such measures not be on the climate table in addition to emission reduction?

Spanning the specific benefits of individual measures is the overarching need to restore the balance of Earth’s interconnected natural systems.  Why would we not place carbon reduction into this larger ecological context?

*          *            *

 
I can think of several reasons why it’s not easy to change the conversation.

 It takes a lot of emotional work to face the seriousness of the climate emergency.  A big part of that work involves trying to gain some degree of intellectual mastery of the situation.  Once you feel like you understand what’s going on, it’s natural to become invested in that explanation.

We climate activists who are not ourselves scientists (the vast majority of us) face the challenge of sorting out scientific explanations, drawing our own conclusions and figuring out whom in the public arena we trust.  When prominent climate scientists and activists make statements that focus exclusively on carbon build-up and the urgent need for reductions, most of us are willing and eager to believe them.  Then along comes ecologist Allan Savory promoting a holistic land management system which can restore degraded grasslands so quickly and effectively that, if done on a large enough scale, atmospheric carbon can be reduced by storing it in healthy soil (http://savoryinstitute.com/).  And along comes a team of Slovakian water scientists saying that the depletion of ground water and its impact on regional water cycles may have more effect on climate instability than GHGs (http://www.vodnaparadigma.sk/indexen.php?web=./home/homeen.html).  And along comes Biodiversity for a Livable Climate saying we need to change the climate conversation.  Who are these people?  Why should we trust them with their different, more complex messages?  How can we make sense of apparently conflicting claims?

If we really try to take seriously the ecological framework – which changing the conversation invites us to do – the challenges multiply.  We may celebrate Barry Commoner’s wisdom that everything is connected to everything else, but how do you actually parse out the innumerable devils in the avalanche of environmental details?  Problems with one cause and one solution seem manageable, or at least capable of being understood, even if the solution  fails to materialize.  Trying to take in the true complexity of the Earth’s interconnected systems can be intellectually and emotionally overwhelming.

Underlying all particulars of the climate emergency is a crisis of imagination.  Humans are hard-wired to respond in concrete ways to our immediate environments and to the tangible data that we can see and touch, that we experience having a direct bearing on our lives.  It is already a leap to make connections between an abstract number representing carbon accumulation up in the atmosphere, the melting of ice in distant places, and dire threats to our collective and personal futures.  Now we are being asked to make more leaps to more distant places and possibilities, to African grasslands and water evaporation cycles and ocean phenomena, to connect all these dots and see  how they lead to greater possibilities for a sustainable future.

*          *            *

If greenhouse gas emissions were rapidly declining; if the arctic were not already melting; if our forests weren’t burning; if extreme weather events were not multiplying; if methane were not already seeping out of thawing permafrost – under these imagined conditions, we might get away with a single-minded focus on carbon (or we might not).  But the hard reality is that carbon emissions continue to rise, and climate change is careening out of control.

This is a moment when we need somehow to find and act from our best selves.  Which means stretching as far as we possibly can to face the hard realities and to consider options that have the potential to address them.  It also means facing our own limitations and the almost unbearable emotional challenges of the climate emergency, and finding creative ways to cope and to support one another.

Changing the climate conversation does not ask us to accept new claims only on faith.  It asks us to engage in the difficult and necessary work of investigating possibilities for climate stability in addition to and beyond human-caused carbon emissions.  It means doing our best thinking and drawing on our best resources, opening our minds and our hearts to new ways of responding to the brave new world that bears down upon us.  

With a record drought in California, floods in the UK and snow paralyzing areas of the South that have hardly met a plow, people are starting to make the connection between climate change and water. But generally the cause-and-effect link only goes one way, noting how climate change will affect water by putting stress on global water sources while parts of the world get soaked. This is a real concern. But we’re not seeing the other part of the picture: the effect that water can have on climate. You see, water in its various forms is an important thermoregulator of climate. By working with the water cycle—most basically by keeping water on the land in soil and vegetation—we can address climate changes locally, regionally and even beyond.

Photograph of the square and adjacent park in Trebon, Czech Republic, taken with a thermal camera. The differences in temperatures between the vegetation, facades and roofs of the houses – from 15°C (59°F) to 30°C (86°F) – are visible.
[From New Water Paradigm, p. 33]

There’s a group of Eastern European scientists who’ve written a book called The New Water Paradigm: Water for the Recovery of the Climate. I have to say, it fairly blew my mind. Co-author Jan Pokorny, a Czech scientist, explains how evapotranspiration, the upward movement of water through plants, is the “most powerful vehicle for solar energy transformation” in existence. Living plants transpire, which is a cooling mechanism. When soil is covered up, paved over, or dried out, there’s no transpiration and the ground heats up – as is happening more and more in the middle of the country, our once vaunted “breadbasket” – as well as around the world. If we focus on keeping soil moist and covered with plants, we can build microclimates of cooling. Microclimates can eventually add up to macroclimates, and this shifts multiple dynamics that affect climate.

It’s useful to consider that water vapor is the predominant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, not carbon dioxide. Water vapor makes up between 1 and 4 percent of the atmosphere, whereas carbon dioxide is 0.0397 percent (that’s the parts-per-million figure we hear about.) Water has a greater capacity to absorb thermal energy than any other known substance. At the same time, it’s in constant flux, moving through the atmosphere and between forms, shape-shifting from gas to liquid to solid and back again. For this reason water vapor is hard to measure and plug into climate models.

We don’t have to wait for carbon dioxide levels to come down in order to mitigate climate change – we can begin to restore the water cycle, which will in turn restore ecosystems. Moreover, we need to do this. For here’s what we don’t talk about when we talk about climate change: we can draw all the carbon out of the atmosphere that we want and still have the problems we now associate with CO2-driven climate change. As Walter Jehne, a soil microbiologist and Director of Healthy Soils Australia puts it:

Water is not a secondary feedback; it can be used as a primary vehicle of climate relief.

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Water for the Recovery of the Climate – A New Water Paradigm, is available at https://www.vodnaparadigma.sk/indexen.php?web=./home/homeen.html.  Michal Kravcik, one of the authors of the New Water Paradigm, blogs on the California water crisis:
https://www.goldmanprize.org/blog/michal-kravcik-reflects-california%E2%80%99s-water-crisis

At Biodiversity for a Livable Climate, removing carbon from the atmosphere by regenerating ecosystems and restoring biodiversity is our non-profit mission. Supporting farmers, herders and ranchers around the world to work in ways that both sequester carbon in soils and provide major benefits in productivity is a key means to that end. Unfortunately, the resources that carbon farmers need to accomplish this are currently in short supply. We need to develop a conceptual framework outside the current carbon-market mechanisms to advance the soil solution to global warming, and to provide funds, training and supplies that make worldwide carbon farming on billions of acres a reality.

To date, market mechanisms have been the primary basis for addressing the growing atmospheric carbon burden. Carbon credits for carbon stored or not released employ trading schemes to offset emissions that are in theory capped by national governments and international protocols, in particular Kyoto. Values are assigned to carbon emissions in the expectation that as emissions become more expensive, emitters will find it more economical to prevent emissions or to pay other enterprises that are somehow keeping carbon out of the atmosphere (“offsets”).

From the overall perspective of annual carbon emissions and growing greenhouse gas concentrations, carbon markets have not worked. While there may have been localized successes around the world in a variety of verified carbon offset projects (e.g., http://www.scsglobalservices.com/verified-carbon-offset-projects), presumably making climate acceleration less bad, the market approach of commodifying carbon has not achieved significant or meaningful results in any practical sense.  There is little reason, other than market theology, to believe that any such outcome will occur in anything resembling a reasonable climate time frame.

Furthermore, many objections have been raised to carbon markets, for example with respect to prevention of deforestation (REDD http://guides.wikinut.com/Global-Warming-and-Deforestation%3A-How-Green-is-REDD/2cf5k_s7/). Assessing results is fraught with methodological questions and arbitrary conventional assumptions that are subject to scientific and political uncertainty. In particular, current belief in direct measurement of soil carbon dictates whether an approach to climate is “legitimate” or not.

These process formalities are, generally speaking, obstacles to the actual and practical sequestration of atmospheric carbon in soils. While valid verification is necessary to justify investing money and resources in carbon farming, a different funding approach, one that is more suitable to the task at hand, is necessary.

Land managers have long known how to determine the health of the soil by visual observation, touch, color, and aroma. We also know that biodiversity in soils is necessary for soil health because, among many things, having thousands of different species of soil biota creates stable biological carbon molecules from atmospheric carbon dioxide captured by green plants through photosynthesis.

From this we can derive a qualitative methodology that bypasses the shifting grounds and uncertainties of quantitative measurement, measurement that is impractical – in terms of time, accuracy, cost and technological requirements – in the context of the necessary and immediate carbon farming in local communities worldwide.

Let me offer a brief example to illustrate. An extreme yet unfortunately common occurrence is desertification. A formerly healthy and diverse ecosystem becomes barren through exploitation, toxicity, misuse and carelessness. This has occurred in many different ecosystems, from grasslands to forests to lakes and oceans.

On a desertified grassland, for example, you will see little but bare soil, perhaps an occasional tree, a few shrubs, some struggling tufts of grass. Ninety-five percent or more of the ground will be naked earth. Such land supports minimal life above and below the surface; because it is dry and crusted, it cannot absorb water, which is sacrificed to evaporation or runoff; and has lost most of its biological carbon to the atmosphere.

Within one to three years of the beginning of an eco-regeneration project, depending on a variety of factors, changes will begin to become apparent. Animals, birds, insects, plants, fungi and microbial life will return. So will water. And so will carbon. It’s simply the way nature works, over millions of years. It’s entirely predictable.

Reversing desertification by applying holistic planned grazing in Zimbabwe
(photos courtesy of the Africa Center for Holistic Management).

Can we say exactly how much carbon? No. Even the best measurements over thousands of acres have significant margins of error. But the point here is that measurement, for all practical purposes of sequestering carbon in soils, is unnecessary. Every blade of grass is literally atmospheric carbon dioxide transformed into solid living matter, no longer polluting the atmosphere and causing global warming. And for each plant that you see reaching for the skies, there is more complex carbon stored in the ground. About this there is no scientific doubt.

Back to the carbon farmers. How can we determine how to pay them for their work, for their extraordinary contributions to reversing climate change? If the commodity model currently in play, which requires quantitative carbon measurement, does not apply, is there a model that does?

While the continued existence of life on earth should not be a business decision (after all, who would profit from a dead planet), we are swimming in a sea of misleading economic models. As a transition, I would suggest that an appropriate one for carbon farming would be the one we use for western medicine.

We pay our health care providers for a service, not for results. In fact, we often pay the most money for services that have the least likelihood of the results we want, such as therapies for life-threatening conditions like advanced cancer or severe trauma. The services we pay for have presumed results, often backed by well-developed science such as antibiotics for non-resistant bacterial infections, but we don’t pay for the results, which are never assured. We demonstrate faith in the providers and pay them for the service, in advance, with zero probability of refund.

I think that this model is appropriate to carbon farming and can provide us with an even higher probability of positive outcomes than mainstream medicine. The way to pay carbon farmers is for their services: to manage land in a way that we know from long experience results in healthier soils and carbon sequestration. The precise quantity of carbon stored is not at issue.

We would monitor species diversity, local water cycle improvement, the percentage of bare land and the observable qualities of soil. These are accurate data easily acquired with no technology beyond pencil and paper. We use such data to assist carbon farmers in improving their process, but we pay them for their work on the process. We do this because we know as a certainty, backed by nature’s millions of years of experience, that the process works in sequestering atmospheric carbon. Paying for the service rather than the outcome also provides security carbon farmers need during years of lowered productivity due to natural and anthropogenic variability of weather. Of course they are also paid for the fruits of their labor in the marketplace, whether crops or animal products.

Removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere is urgent. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with measuring soil carbon, the issue is that it is a cumbersome and expensive process, and carbon markets are subject to complexities, loopholes and flaws that only slow our response to the global climate emergency.

We need to act now. Soils are the only feasible carbon sink in the time we have left. Millions of carbon farmers, working on billions of acres, are the key.