Re-Carbonizing the Planet

Reader Contribution by Stan Slaughter
Published on January 9, 2013
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Scientists and MOTHER EARTH NEWS’s readers know that our climate is changing rapidly. We tend to blame our cars, factories and all that burning of fossil fuels. Most of our efforts towards improving the situation so far have also been directed towards reducing those same fossil fuel-generating sources.

BUT, while these goals are necessary and valid, we are mostly ignoring the production of carbon dioxide from natural sources. Jim McNelly, president of Renewable Carbon Management, and founding member of the US Composting Council, calculates that of the increased CO2 in our air, roughly half came from fossil fuel burning and HALF has come from vaporizing biomass. 

Here’s another way to think about this. Since the start of the industrial revolution until now all the coal, oil and natural gas burning we’ve done is roughly equalled by all the deforestation and vaporization and erosion of organic carbon that was in or on the soil. This is huge, yet we never hear about this “other half” of the story. Also telling is that while cutting emissions of CO2 is critical, a huge potential exists to remove carbon from the air and sequester it back in the soil. While cutting emissions is linear, putting carbon back in the soil works geometrically because more organic matter in the soil means that plant growth is more vigorous which fixes more carbon in the plants. 

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