Don't Panic, Go Organic

 Rodale is on the cutting edge of research to determine the best farming techniques for rebuilding our soil, sequestering carbon, returning nutrition to our food, and health to ourselves.

"If you do just one thing to change the world, go organic."
"Going organic is the single most critical (and most DOABLE) action we can take right now to stop our climate crisis. Every acre of ground that's farmed organically has the potential to pull thousands of pounds of warming greenhouse gases out of our air."
"Organic farming is a real, attainable solution to our current global climate crisis! Organic farming can actually remove greenhouse gases from the air - helping to reverse the climate crisis!"
"Organic living can stop the climate crisis. When you combine the impact of protecting the beneficial mycorrhizal fungi in the soil (which absorb and neutralize carbon) and eliminating all the toxic chemicals (and their packaging and the energy spent producing them), the carbon problem in our atmosphere is practically solved. We still need more renewable energy, but restoring the earth's ability to sequester carbon is a good place to start. And you'll do it while eating."
-Maria Rodale, Organic Manifesto: How Organic Farming Can Heal Our Planet, Feed the World, and Keep Us Safe
Thanks to Organic Consumers Association for the quote.

Video - Organic Farming Lessens Global Warming

Powered by Coal on 60 minutes

BioChar and the wonders of the soil.

Look after the soil, keep it chemical free, and it will look after you.



Thanks to Replanting the Rainforest and EcoInteractive for the heads up on this fascinating video and the following excerpts.

"What is Biochar? Biochar is charcoal that is created by heating biomass (plants) under low oxygen conditions, which sequesters the plants’ carbon, rather than releasing it into the atmosphere. When Biochar is used to amend soil, the resulting Terra Preta sequesters more carbon, increasing its own volume. The activity of friendly microorganisms, called arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, increases as well. The fungi spread beyond the original carbon, fix additional carbon, stabilize the soil and assist in nutrient uptake by plants. Biochar also improves soil fertility, reducing the need for synthetic fertilizers. It conserves water, prevents erosion and acts as a natural carbon filter for water by removing chemicals from runoff.

Biochar is inert and remains in the soil for thousands of years. It cannot be cut down, burned down, nor is it susceptible to erosion. It is self-renewing.

Biochar could be a solution for:

• Hunger and Food Insecurity
• Deforestation and Biodiversity Loss
• Excess Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere
• Methane and Nitrous Oxide emissions from soil
• Renewable Energy"

Ancient Carbon Sequestration technology discovered!

Plant Trees and Create Healthy Soil, that's it, that's all there is to it.
Of course this means we'll have to stop treating forests and soil like they are just there to be wasted. That can't be too hard .... can it?

Lester Brown, the guru behind Plan B at the Earth Island Institute, lays it out for you over at celsias.

Here's an excerpt,

"A successful deforestation ban may require a ban on the construction of additional biodiesel refineries and ethanol distilleries. Against this backdrop of growing concern about the forest-climate relationship, a leading Swedish energy firm, Vattenfall, has examined the large-scale potential for foresting wasteland to sequester carbon dioxide. They begin by noting that there are 1.86 billion hectares of degraded land in the world--land that was once forestland, cropland, or grassland--and that half of this, or 930 million hectares, has a decent chance of being profitably reclaimed. Some 840 million hectares of this total are in the tropical regions, where reclamation would mean much higher rates of carbon sequestration.

Vattenfall estimates that the maximum technical potential of these 930 million hectares is to absorb roughly 21.6 billion tons of CO2 per year. If, as part of a global climate stabilization strategy, carbon sequestration were valued at $210 per ton of carbon, the company believes that 18 percent of this technical potential could be realized. If so, this would mean planting 171 million hectares of land to trees.

This area--larger than that planted to grain in India--would sequester 3.5 billion tons of CO2 per year, or over 950 million tons of carbon. The total cost of sequestering carbon at $210 per ton would be $200 billion. Spread over a decade, this would mean investing $20 billion a year to give climate stabilization a large and potentially decisive boost. This global forestation plan to remove atmospheric CO2, most of it put there by industrial countries, would be funded by them. An independent body would be set up to administer, fund, and monitor the vast tree planting initiative. Aside from the Vattenfall forestation idea, there are already many tree planting initiatives under way that are driven by a range of concerns, from climate change to desert expansion, to soil conservation, to making cities more habitable. ...

A number of agricultural practices can also increase the carbon stored as organic matter in soils. Farming practices that reduce soil erosion and raise cropland productivity usually also lead to higher carbon content in the soil. Among these are shifting from conventional tillage to minimum-till and no-till, the more extensive use of cover crops, the return of all livestock and poultry manure to the land, expansion of irrigated area, a return to more mixed crop-livestock farming, and the forestation of marginal farmlands.

Rattan Lal, a Senior Agronomist with the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center at Ohio State University, has calculated the range of potential carbon sequestration for each of many practices, such as those just cited. For example, expanding the use of cover crops to protect soil during the off-season can store from 68 million to 338 million tons of carbon worldwide each year. Calculating the total carbon sequestration for the practices he cites shows a potential for sequestering 400 million tons of carbon each year at the low end, and 1.2 billion tons of carbon per year at the more optimistic high end."

Once again the "technology" we need is right there in front of us, not 20 years off like the myth of clean coal. It's the technology of lifting our eyelids, a radical process of opening our eyes and our minds at the same time. Let's shift the $200billion out of the rich man's bailout program currently under way in Washington and Wall Street and pay for something truly worthwhile, a genuine investment in the future, the planet's future.

What's more important? - By Robb

Is preserving the habitat of a rare mudfish more important than installing a tidal barrage that will provide carbon free energy? Need we sacrifice the natural world in order to save it for our use?

We need to careful not to let such issues divide us. If a researcher in mudfish habitat wants to stop a tidal barrage because it will destroy the habitat then that should have equal weight to the carbon free energy produced by the barrage. After all, when not if, sea levels rise the mudfish habitat will be destroyed anyway. The tidal barrage however is a big system solution designed to continue business as usual, to encourage people that real change on their part is not necessary. People need to realize that without the intact habitats, like the mudfishes, to support biodiversity we are in just as much trouble after we have the barrage.

My grandfather used to tell me "it is a poor man who won't stoop to pick up a coin". Global warming and biodiversity are two sides of the same coin. A coin we must trouble ourselves to pick up. The natural environment should be looked to as our saviour in it's ability to provide the necessities of life from oxygen to breathe, food to eat, and the only reliable method of carbon sequestration.

Without that coin we will not be able to buy our daily bread.

A real American Heroe - By Robb

This morning I watched the beginning episode in a new series by Dr. Iain Stewart. He has produced some wonderful earth science programs for the BBC. His new one is specifically about Climate Change. This first episode details the history of the debate and the science. I was gratified to see Dr. James Hansen making commentary, both in 1988 before congress and today for this series. Then I found this article in the Independent online.

Nasa scientist appears in court to fan the flames of coal power station row

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
Thursday, 4 September 2008

"Prof James Hansen: Urged Gordon Brown to refuse planning application to build new coal-fired units at the Kingsnorth plant in Hoo, Kent"

You can read the whole article at

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/nasa-scientist-appears-in-court-to-fan-the-flames-of-coal-power-station-row-918057.html

Tar Sands oil crimes video part 1

As oil companies ride rough shod over the environment of Alberta in a rush to extract profit from the earth they are destroying carbon sequestering arboreal forest ecosystems, creating huge toxic tailing ponds, leaving a legacy of cancer in the local communities through the toxification of the Athabasca river, and burning enough natural gas/day to heat 3 million Canadian homes. And who are they doing this for? American drivers, who else.

Tar Sands oil crimes video part 2

Tar Sands oil crimes video part 3

Toilet Paper and Carbon Sequestration? - by Robb

We’ve just returned from 2 weeks on the Coast Path in Cornwall. When we backpack we tend to get a bit obsessive about the weight we carry. We both carry a book to read and my practice is to tear out the pages of mine as I finish them and either use them as fire starter or toilet paper. Saves weight, saves resources, and is a sure fire carbon sequestration technology. How so?
First lets look under the seat at toilet paper. The following quote is from the Sustainable Concepts Newsletter http://www.designforward.net


“Toilet paper, that ubiquitous and apparently indispensable component of modern life, is often manufactured by cutting down the world's forests. In Canada, clear-cut logging claims half a million acres of Ontario and Alberta's boreal forests each year with much of the destruction earmarked for virgin paper tissue products. Similar activity is taking place in the Southeastern U.S. Recently, Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council have started campaigns to educate the public on the environmental impacts of using these kinds of products.

The good news is that all of this industrial pressure for tissue products can be avoided simply by using recycled paper toilet tissue. In fact, if every household in the U.S. replaced just 1 roll of virgin toilet paper with just 1 recycled roll 424,000 trees would be saved!”

Article & Picture © GreenLine Paper
More Info at Kleercut... http://www.kleercut.net/en/

So what is the link to carbon sequestration? While all the business as usual folks go on about clean coal and developing carbon sequestration technology we are literally flushing away the most effective carbon sequestration technology there is, trees.
So please use toilet paper made from recycled content or even better don’t buy it at all, use recycled newspaper or old books and either put it in the bin, burn it in your woodstove, or throw it in your composting toilet. I can’t think of anything better to do with all those old Michael Crichton novels.