Terra Cognita
Author: The Carbon Pilgrim
What a difference twenty years make.
On April 23rd, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced a major voluntary, incentive-based effort to address climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, expanding renewable energy production, and increasing carbon sequestration in partnership with various agricultural producers across the nation. Specifically, this effort aims to achieve a net reduction of 2% of greenhouse emissions by 2025, or the equivalent of taking 25 million cars off the road, according to the press release.
While this goal is not particularly ambitious, frankly, it does represent a startling change from the type of conservation priorities on federally owned lands that I encountered when I co-founded the Quivira Coalition nearly twenty years ago. It’s an important indication not only how serious climate change has become as a policy issue, but also a testament to how far soil carbon has risen as a climate change mitigation strategy. If you had told me as recently as 2010, when I began researching a book on soil carbon, that the Secretary of Agriculture would be supporting publicly the implementation of practices that sequestered carbon in soils, I would not have believed you.
But here’s what the press release said: “USDA intends to pursue partnerships and leverage resources to conserve and enhance greenhouse gas sinks, reduce emissions, increase renewable energy and build resilience in agricultural and forest systems.”
Here are some of the USDA’s Building Blocks for Climate Action announced at the April press conference: