The best climate change solutions right below our feet
Planet Earth: home to a growing number of Homo sapiens and a multitude of other creatures. It's a great place to live, but when it comes to the future of our planet, it doesn't look very promising. Rising temperatures, intense and sudden flooding, soil erosion, and macroplastic pollution threaten the existence of all beings.
There is so much bad news about our planet that we feel like giving up. We fear we are all heading for a cliff; most of us are in a state of paralysis, and some have given up. Some people, however, are racing to save our soil in hopes that our soil may save us.
What if there was another path?
This is the story of a simple solution, a way to heal our planet and keep our species off the endangered list. The solution is right under our feet and old as dirt. We call it soil, earth, or ground. Due to its vast scale and ability to sequester immense quantities of greenhouse gases, it could be the one thing that balances our climate, replenishes our freshwater supplies, and feeds the world.
Erosion of our soil
Farming is a big reason our environment is so problematic. Rapid erosion began long ago when humans developed the plow, which broke the soil to sow seeds.
Traditional plowing causes soil loss because it disturbs the soil's natural fertility by disturbing bacteria, fungi, and animals. It also releases carbon stored in soil organic matter into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.
Additionally, plowing increases the risk of erosion, which results in fertile farm soil being washed away into bodies of water. However, alternative methods exist to plant seeds and control weeds without plowing. More on that later.
Fields become infertile when soil and nutrients erode. In the 1930s, America experienced the largest man-made environmental disaster—the Dust Bowl. This was primarily caused by farmers tilling the fertile Midwestern plains and exposing the soil. Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Soil Conservation Service to save the nation's soil.
Plowing and tilling the soil continues today, as does Roosevelt Conservation Services. Today, it is called the Natural Resources Conservation Service. (NRCS) Dedicated and knowledgeable people like Ray Archuleta, who has worked there for over 31 years, say the following:
"We have a social problem; we have an education issue. And until we can get that fixed, we can't resolve our ecological problems. It was kind of amazing to me, as I was teaching all over the country how little our farmer producers don't know how the soil really works. They don't understand the basic ecological principles that everything runs on carbon; we are built from carbon, and the soil microbes are run by carbon. Carbon is the driving engine, and it runs the system."
Understanding our relationship with carbon
Contrary to popular belief, carbon is not our enemy. Carbon is the glue and the substance of everything on earth. We are made of carbon. There is a tendency right now for us to be at war with carbon, but carbon is a fundamental part of life on Earth. Plants use sunlight as energy, pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and turning it into carbon; that's how they grow. But 40% of that carbon fuel is sent down to its roots.
Carbon is the good guy; we are carbon. Every person is 16% carbon, which comes from eating leaf vegetation. Plants use sunlight energy and they pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, they turn it into a carbon fuel, and that's how they grow. But 40% of that carbon fuel is sent down to their roots. In other words, soil has the inate ability to sequester carbon dioxide out of the atmosphre
The connection between our soil and the atmosphere is more intricate and significant than we give credit. Most of our attention goes to how we burn fossil fuels and heat up the atmosphere. But if we better understood the relationship between the soil, plants, and the atmosphere, we could better understand that it's not only our emissions that are causing the problem but the lack of absorption from our soil.
Foraging plants and ground cover have unique properties in their rooting systems, allowing them to aggregate large amounts of carbon directly drawn from the atmosphere.
Modern agriculture plays a big part in climate change
Our soil contains an entire universe of life. In every hand of healthy soil, there are more organisms than the number of people living on planet Earth. These organisms process organic matter and turn it into nutrients the plant needs.
Pesticides: Taking care of the microbes in the soil is critical for human health. But spraying toxic chemicals does something else. Soils sprayed with pesticides are completely devoid of microorganisms; they kill the very microbes we need for our health and to pull carbon from the atmosphere.
Tilling: The more tilling done, the weaker the soil gets, and the more farmers feel compelled to use chemical sprays. This is the vicious cycle of modern agriculture. This cycle was developed as a result of war.
Modern agriculture also plays a big part in releasing CO2 into the atmosphere through tilling. Our soil and the plant life that grows in it are the ultimate regulators. They can remove and release vast amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. But if managed correctly, it could be the best CO2 remover.
The roots of industrial agriculture go back to a German scientist named Fritz Harber. He invented a process to make synthetic fertilizer to increase food production. His other scientific breakthrough was a poison called pesticides. Harber used his pesticides as the first chemical weapon in history. Then, he developed the poison used in the gas chamber of the Holocaust.
When the war ended, U.S. chemical companies brought Harber's poison to America and rebranded its toxic chemicals as "pesticides" for American farms. Suddenly, chemical fertilizers were available; farmers could toss them on the field and get results even if they had not taken care of their fields.
Together, these post-war time innovations created the most powerful industrial food production system the world has ever seen
We created an infrastructure around single industries and mono-crops. Farmers became specialized in one or two types of crops, and others specialized in livestock. This was a big philosophical shift in how we approached farming. Instead of understanding and honoring natural processes and caring for the soil, we simply throw these chemicals in the soil and then throw some more.
"It takes more nitrogen now to raise a bushel of grain than it did in 1960s"
These chemical fertilizers mask the problem of degraded soils. Modern agriculture is not designed for the betterment of the soil. And today, our most common crops are genetically engineered to resist the spraying of toxic pesticides.
The number one crop in the United States is field corn. And it's almost entirely sprayed with GLYPHOSATE, a chemical suspected to cause cancer. It is so over sprayed it found its way into our drinking water. These chemicals that were suspected to be dangerous, to begin with are now being used at rates that would have been inconceivable 20 years ago.
It goes into the soil and into the water; it goes into our bodies and is not just in the food we eat—it is everywhere. Most industrial, agricultural pesticides transfer directly through breast milk to babies. Over 200 peer-reviewed studies correlate the spraying of these toxic chemicals to ADD in children, pediatric cancers, and birth defects.
We now know that Glyphosate, also known as Roundup, affects the gut microbiome and can cause disturbances that can lead to cancer. These chemicals make us sick because as they kill the microorganisms in the soil, they also kill the microbes in our bodies. The body can handle temporary stresses, but it cannot handle chronic, repeated insults. Our ecosystem is the same way.
Since chemical agriculture started to ramp up use since the 1970s, we have lost 1/3 of the earth's topsoil. But industrial agriculture isn't just harming our soil. It is also creating a much larger problem.
Desertification of our Microclimates
A massive tsunami and a perfect storm involving climate change is bearing upon us. But fossil fuels, carbon, coal, and gas are by no means the only things causing climate change. Because the fate of carbon and water is tied to soil organic matter, we release carbon into the atmosphere when we damage soils.
Healthy soils absorb water and carbon dioxide. But when we destroy them, they release water and carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere, drying up the soil and turning it into dust. This process is called desertification, and how we deal with it could determine the fate of more than just our climate.
The soils, plants, and climate are connected. If you don't have plants, you'll have more evaporation. What we want is perspiration. When moisture leaves the plant, increasing humidity increases rain. Note that this rain is unrelated to the increase in rain we are experiencing with global warming. Microclimate rain is gentle localized inland rain.
Sixty percent of our rain comes from the ocean, but the other 40% comes from small water cycles that come from inland. With the death of our soils, we have disrupted the small water cycles.
We are changing the microclimate on Earth, and we are doing that to more than half the world. Desertification is a pressing threat to our climate and our species. About two-thirds of the world is desertifying as you read this.
In a NASA supercomputer model, the red and purple read Co2. Farmers till the soil in March and release tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, as shown. However, in June, when crops are growing, the inverse occurs as plants' roots absorb CO2. A covered planet is a healthy planet.
Social-political consequences
As soils become dust worldwide, 40 million people are pushed off their land yearly. By 2050, it is estimated that one billion people will be refugees from soil desertification. Poor land leads to poor people, leading to social breakdown. Poor land also leads to an increasing frequency of floods and droughts and mass immigration across borders. It creates the ideal condition for ideological recruiting from radical groups.
What we know right now, is the way we are feeding ourselves is undermining the very ecology that we depend upon. The long-term prognosis for our survival on this planet, given business as usual, is very poor.
Biosequestration of carbon
Agriculture is the most significant way humans impact our landscape. Over the centuries and millennia, agriculture has unleashed carbon into the atmosphere, which is now part of the legacy load of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Scientists and activists are concluding that soil carbon sequestration is effective and doable. Here are some notable projects and people involved in carbon sequestration through soil regeneration.
Paul Hawken has created one of the most comprehensive plans ever: Regeneration. Ending Climate Crisis in One Generation.
Biosequestration in Paul Hawken's plan is using plants, trees, perennials and techniques of raising animals and farming to capture carbon and store it in the soil and retain it for decades if not centuries. We mapped measured and modeled 100 most essential solutions to global warming. Meaning, solutions that we know how to use and scale it. And if we continue to scale in a vigourous way over thirty years, we can revert global warming.
The Paris Agreement Meeting
The United Nations held a Climate Summit in Paris in 2015 called COP21. Forty thousand delegates from 196 countries met to reach an agreement on how to address climate change. There were presentations and meetings and many speeches.
At a side meeting at COP21, Messier Le Foll, the French Minister of Agriculture, presented an idea that just might change the world.
This proposal offered real hope, and Stéphane Le Foll presented it. France maintains the largest agricultural science institution in Europe. It's called INRA and has been studying soil for one hundred years. INRA recently developed a program called the “4 per 1000” Initiative. Their goal is to increase the carbon content of the soils by 0.4% annually. That would sequester the same amount of carbon that humanity emits each year.
"The environment can hold more carbon than the atmosphere and the plants living on the surface of the soil combined. We have an incredible ability to store that carbon in the soil in a relatively short period."
At the 4 for 1000 event, many countries signed Stéphane Le Foll's pledge to draw carbon down into their soils. France, Germany, Australia, Poland, the United Kingdom, Japan, Lithuania, Estonia, and Bulgaria all signed the agreement.
Doing agriculture in a way that sequesters carbon requires a radical reduction in toxic pesticides, GMOs, and synthetic chemical use. However, the three largest contributors to carbon dioxide emission, the three largest agricultural producers, were missing from the agreement: India, the United States, and China. Not only that, but at the end of COP21, the United States announced that it had pulled out entirely from the Paris Agreement.
If we successfully balance our climate, we must switch to renewable energies. But none of that will alter the tremendous amount of carbon we put into the atmosphere. Since 1750, when the Industrial Revolution began, we have pumped about one thousand billion tons, known as gigatons, of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It is called our legacy load of carbon. Even if we stopped all greenhouse gas emissions today, that legacy load of carbon would still be there, warming the atmosphere for decades, if not centuries. If we all talk about reducing emissions, it is simply not enough.
The only call that makes sense for humanity is DRAWDOWN, a year-to-year reduction in carbon in the upper atmosphere. Anything else is climate chaos. We must start farming and growing our plants and trees differently to achieve a drawdown. This can be achieved in twenty years.
The very practices that heal our soil will heal our climate. To stabilize the earth's climate, we can use the most powerful carbon capture technology, the photosynthesis of the plants and the microorganisms in the soil. And the one type of farming that does this the best and draws down the most carbon is based on the concept of regeneration. Which simply means to repair the damage we did and make things better.
Regenerative Agriculture
Regenerative agriculture grows more food per acre. It is scalable to our entire agricultural system; the good news is that it is already being done.
Regenerative agriculture involves farming practices that benefit the environment and enhance productivity. Techniques like crop rotation and conservation tillage can improve ecosystem resilience and support long-term sustainability. These methods lower costs and increase net income, creating a win-win for farmers and the environment.
Adopting regenerative agriculture practices offers numerous benefits, both socially and environmentally. Farmers have strong incentives to embrace these methods, and many multi-generational cotton farms in the U.S. are committed to preserving soil health for future generations. This makes regenerative agriculture a wise choice for many growers.
Regenerative agriculture sequesters carbon in the soil and intentionally improves soil health, biodiversity, water quality, and air quality while ensuring the viability of farm production.”
Soil health is the bedrock of regenerative agriculture, enabling sustainable and productive farming systems. It encompasses the soil’s physical, chemical, and biological properties, which are interconnected and crucial for agricultural productivity and environmental quality. Healthy soil provides numerous benefits:
1. Enhanced nutrient cycling and availability: Healthy soil naturally provides essential nutrients, reducing the need for synthetic fertilizers to optimize yields.
2. Improved water retention and infiltration: Healthy soil efficiently stores and transports water, mitigating erosion, runoff, and drought-related challenges.
3. Increased organic matter – such as living plant roots and microorganisms – and carbon sequestration: Soil organic matter (SOM) enriches soil structure, nutrient provision, and water-holding capacity. It also plays a vital role in capturing atmospheric carbon dioxide, helping combat climate change.
4. Enhanced biodiversity and ecosystem services: Healthy soils foster diverse organisms, including beneficial bacteria, fungi, insects, and earthworms. These organisms contribute to essential ecosystem services such as nutrient cycling, pest control, and decomposition of organic matter. Source Cotton Today
By switching to regenerative agriculture, American farmers could increase their profits by 100 billion dollars annually and virtually eliminate government subsidies.
Regenerative agriculture combines four practices
No-Till Drill
A no-till drill is a heavy piece of equipment available everywhere. It is designed with a specialized disk setup that cuts through plant residue. It places seeds at the appropriate depth and then presses the soil back over them to ensure good soil-to-seed contact. The advantages of using a no-till drill for planting include erosion control and savings in fuel and time. The crop residue left on the field's surface protects the soil from erosion caused by water or wind.
You can grow crops with much less moisture with this type of equipment. This equipment will help you to grow topsoil. Traditional till equipment will destroy topsoil. Rainfall that falls on no-till drill soil goes right in the soil. Rain that falls on traditional till soil doesn't get absorbed and runs away, washing away soil micronutrients.
Soil that is not tilled stores more water, thus increasing microbe growth, which leads to more plant growth and even more local rainfall. This is the virtual cycle of regeneration. Soil rich in micronutrients sequesters more CO2 from the atmosphere.
For every 1% of organic matter in the soil - 10 tons of carbon per acre are sequestered
The Role of Livestock in the soil
The problem is not the animal. The problem is where the animals are. Cows can be good. "That is one of the most controverted statements at this point." Using cattle and allowing them to roam free literally revives enough space to create tremendous carbon absorption.
Cows are often blamed for contributing to climate change by emitting large amounts of greenhouse gases, but if we change how we raise them, they could be the solution, not the problem. The problem is how we feed and manage these animals on a global industrial scale. If these animals roam and graze freely, they will become CO2 soakers instead of CO2 farters. Read on.
Cows can be good. And that might be one of mankind's most controversial statements. Raising cattle might be one of the best weapons to fight climate change.
Land that has been holistically managed through planned grazing using cattle, the most vilified animal in the world, shows remarkable improvement compared to land that has been left in its natural state.
Using livestock to reverse desertification is scalable to about 2/3 of the world's land. "And nothing else is." Green pastures where cattle graze are the ideal environment for about 2/3 of the earth's surface. In these regions, there is no sufficient rainfall to support large trees with canopies. So, grass is the vegetation that can grow in these areas and where cattle can thrive. It stabilizes the soil and provides sustainable biomass that sequesters enormous amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere. This can be done at an extremely low cost in a relatively short amount of time.
Manure, urine, and animal hove keep this grass ecosystem growing and thriving. Animals roaming the earth never stay in one place for long. They act like growth stimulators; they feed the grass and leave for periods of time to completely regenerate the rich soil habitat. No plants are overgrazed this way. It is an organic and natural process that has happened in nature for thousands of years.
In the northern plains, for example, the soil organic constitution and maintenance were created by large herds of bison and elk, being moved by predators, grazing the landscape, trampling the carbon on the plants and the soil surface, and not coming back for maybe a whole year, allowing full recovery.
Turning bare soil into green pastures can potentially remove vast amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere. Cattle can be an essential regulator in symbiosis with pastures, providing much-needed aeration as they roam and nutrients from urine and poop.
The destruction of our natural environment
It wasn't that long ago that 60 million buffalos roamed the continent. In an attempt to starve the native Americans, the U.S. military and the railroads killed most of the buffalos. Only a few thousand of these majestic animals remained by the time this massacre ended.
Where buffalos once roamed, industrial agriculture now grows. Hundreds of millions of acres of crops feed animals; these animals are concentrated into feed lots; in turn, feed lots produce a tremendous amount of greenhouse gases. In grazing pastures, we have the inverse situation where greenhouse gases are sequestered from the atmosphere.
Earth Restorative Programs in Action
People are using regeneration practices all over the planet to heal the land and balance the climate. Some of these projects are big.
Humans have degraded twenty percent of the earth's land mass. When looking at the cattle of civilization, Rome and Greece, we find many of these places have turned into deserts. Sand is blowing over the ruins of great civilizations. Among many areas, the Loess Plateau, the cradle of Chinese civilization, where settled agriculture began, is today a desert.
Today, you see no vegetation if you stand anywhere in the Loess Plateau at higher elevations and look at a 360-degree angle. It was fundamentally ecologically destroyed. Today, it is the most eroded place on earth, inhabited by miserably poor people.
Loess Plateau Watershed Rehabilitation Project
At first, it was hard to imagine that such a devastated area could have been restored. From about 1994 to 2009, during 14 years, an area of 35000 square kilometers, a space approximately the size of Belgium. The project involved the participation of top Chinese scientists and international scientists from the World Bank. They created satellite mapping systems so that every water shed had unique addresses. The results were breathtaking.
Hundreds of millions of people were lifted out of poverty. Once illiterate people, their children now go to the top universities in the country.
Human beings emerged in paradise. We can regain paradise if we restore all the degraded land on the earth. If we start now to build a restoration economy, this would be the way to go forward. To see a stream return and flow and bring back fertile soil. To see biodiversity return to places that were devastated. This is where everyone can find tremendous satisfaction.
Let's restore a little bit of paradise every day. It is not that difficult. If we stop distracting ourselves with shiny objects and start to think of what is really important to us, it could restore the meaning of our lives. We are all in this together. Every action that we take affects every other action. So, what decision are you going to make that will have an impact on this beautiful planet?
From the smallest microbes to the largest creatures, our blue planet pulses with life. For millions of years, it has self-healed. Today, our special facets are its biggest task. Our mission is simple: we must harness the regenerative power of Earth itself.
Disclaimer: Some or most of the content in this post are transcriptions from the documentary Kiss the Ground itself, and all credits are given to its authors and participants of this film production. The intention of this post is to disseminate the important information contained in this valuable film.
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