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Soil Solution

Page history last edited by PBworks 16 years, 8 months ago

In a recent presentation to Terry Gompert's hi-density grazing workshop in

Nebraska, Allan Savory noted that desertification and global warming are two sides

of the same coin: ecosystem malfunction.

 

Biosphere Media (related to the managingwholes.com website) has published a US/UK edition of Allan Yeomans's controversial book Priority One: Together We Can Beat Global Warming.

 

This book, which I've mentioned before on this list, seems to me the only complete book on global warming in that it addresses the need to reclaim the excess carbon in the atmosphere back into the soil, as well as switch to nonfossil energy sources. It also describes some of the forces arrayed against these solutions. "The undue influence of the coal, oil, and gas industries on every aspect of American politics has blinded Americans to the opportunities we have to stop global warming," Yeomans says.

 

Most of those active against climate change are focusing only on reducing emissions. This is absolutely necessary, but insufficient. When you give people advice on solutions that they know at some level to be ineffective or partial, expect conflict and resistance.

 

Soil is the largest carbon sink that we have influence over. Most scientists and organizations underestimate soil's potential to store carbon because they are looking at industrial agriculture, or at what happens when these practices stop. The modest gains they record tend to reinforce the notion that soil can serve as an offset or mitigation of continued fossil fuel burning. But if we use the soil's potential to do this we are missing a huge opportunity.

 

Much of the carbon in the atmosphere today has come from the soil via tillage, exposure to the elements, or chemicals. If we put it back into the soil, using solar energy captured by plants, it will help us with every single problem we have. But as Allan Savory also noted in Nebraska, governments, universities, industries, or the major media have little incentive to lead here. It is up to us.

 

see also http://managingwholes.com/priorityone.htm

 

Priority One is available through booksellers in North America and the UK.

Biosphere Media (http://biospheremedia.org), PO Box 393, Enterprise, OR 97828;

541-426-5783.

 

Peter Donovan

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