“We’ve been so focused on fossil fuels and the short-term methane from burping cows that we’ve missed the significant amount of carbon (and water) being lost from under our feet to the air and to the seas.” Nicole Masters, For the Love of Soil
Soil is the Elephant in the Climate Change Room
With 2800 billion tons of carbon, the world’s soils contain three and a half times more carbon than the 800 billion tons in the atmosphere. To return to 360 ppm carbon from the current 420 ppm, 100 billion tons of carbon must be removed (800 billion tons reduced to 700 billion tons). Nature has a global solution that we call photosynthesis.
The world’s biomass contains 564 billion tons of carbon. Photosynthesizing reduces the carbon in the air and increases the carbon in biomass. Plants push a fixed percentage of carbohydrates out of their roots to build soil whenever they photosynthesize. Unlike humans, plants always give the same percentage of carbon to feed the soil while producing biomass.
Soil, particularly humus, can store carbon for thousands of years, and wood stores carbon for hundreds of years. In soil, carbon storage is long-term, while carbon stored in wood is short-term.
At best, soil covers 25% of the world’s land surface, while approximately 40% is desert or degraded land. By converting desert and degraded land to healthy soil with plants, spreading green borders, and expanding oases, we can dramatically increase the amount of carbon drawn out of the atmosphere. If a quarter of degraded land could be regenerated, it would increase the atmospheric drawdown of carbon by hundreds of billions of tons.
Tell Beacon Hill that more green means less climate change.
The work that your organization is doing is so critical and urgently needed now. Thanks for educating us about what steps can be taken to develop and restore healthy ecosystems as individuals, communities and whole regions. This is inspiring information to have. Thank you!
Nature created a wonderful home for us, which we’ve truly abused. We can’t just try and tech our way out of the mess we’ve created. Using natural systems is the smart way to go.
As a resident of Springfield, I see the city cut down more mature trees every year (without replacement) and run enormous fossil-fueled tractors, trucks, grinders, and blowers that destroy the soil, air & water. Endless concrete & asphalt channel precious water into storm drains. It gets hotter & more polluted every year, we need climate leadership for all towns & cities in Massachusetts (and the nation).
In Phoenix, there has been so much construction that the wild birds are having trouble finding seeds. Desert landscape causes problems in urban areas for most birds. Most landscapers put plastic under gravel “lawns” so the infrequent rainwater doesn’t go there. Now that Phoenix has realized something needs to be done about water, I hope it’s not too late.
Candace Russell, Phoenix AZ
Any public necessity privatized is demeaned! Each private capitalist devalues the synergistic gains gleaned of civil relationships in producing/creating together! Literal system energy is finite. Money theoretically signifies the transfer of energy from one sub-system to another. When we fabricate that energy by just printing money, not borrow it from another sub-system that has excess, the value of everything is cheapened to where ultimately planet ecology becomes dysfunctional…dysfunctional to OUR (humanity’s) existence! Until we can rectify the energy injustice, how will it be possible to find progress in the climate reclamation battle? John Sonin, Douglas AK
We must do everything possible to take care of the health of the earth. It is our only home. Ruth Boice, Shamong NJ
I garden organically with native plants for the beauty and healthfulness of it — so I know it can be done. And we need for everyone to be doing it. Living soil throughout our lived-in spaces and farms could all by itself draw down enough carbon to control climate change. We need this! let’s do it!