Tag Archive for: Reverse Global Warming

Organic Agriculture Can Help Address Climate Change, Feed the World

The role organic agriculture can play in fighting climate change effects and in boosting food security was the main theme of a debate held in the COP22 Green Zone by the federation of Moroccan organic agriculture professionals (known by its French acronym FIMABIO.)

Speaking on this occasion, Andre Leu, President of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), underscored that organic agriculture can reverse climate change.

He highlighted the global momentum towards adopting organic agriculture to counter climate change, notably through the “4 for 1000” initiative, which aims to increase the amount of organic matter in soil by 4 per thousand (0.4%) each year, which would be enough to compensate for all global greenhouse gases emitted due to human behavior.

Organic agriculture practices are conducive to the global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions before the point of no return, he said.

 KEEP READING ON THE NORTH AFRICA POST

Agriculture Takes Center Stage As COP22 Begins in Morocco

Author: Judith Schwartz November 7, 2016

COP21, the global climate conference in Paris last year, resulted in an agreement on cutting atmospheric carbon. Now, COP22, which starts today in Marrakech, Morocco, will focus on how the world will adapt to climate change and mitigate its effects, especially in developing countries. The meeting is expected to have a greater focus on agriculture, and specifically on Africa.

In Paris, agricultural solutions—notably soil’s role as a carbon sink—entered global climate discussions. The chief vehicle was the French-led 4-per-1,000 Initiative, a pledge to increase carbon stocks in agricultural soils by 0.4 percent a year, a rate that proponents said would stem the rise of atmospheric carbon. The objective, says the French Ministry of Agriculture, “is to show that agriculture is part of the solution. It aims to increase organic carbon storage in soils, with a goal of improving food security and mitigating and adapting to climate change.”

Four-per-1,000 has more than 170 signatories, including 32 countries. The U.S. has not publicly supported it, instead aligning with the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture, which is more oriented toward industry and includes biotechnology as one approach.

A new initiative, Adaption of African Agriculture (AAA), would place agriculture at the heart of climate talks. At a September meeting, a coalition of 27 African nations adopted the “Marrakesh Declaration,” which calls attention to the continent’s vulnerability to climate irregularities—such as the drought that has left 30 million southern Africans food insecure—and the risks borne by smallholder farmers.

KEEP READING ON FERN’S AG INSIDER

Carbon Sequestration Potential on Agricultural Lands: A Review of Current Science and Available Practices

Author Daniel Kane:

Recent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggest that even if substantial reductions in anthropogenic carbon emissions are achieved in the near future, efforts to sequester previously emitted carbon will be necessary to ensure safe levels of atmospheric carbon and to mitigate climate change (Smith et al. 2014). Research on sequestration has focused primarily on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and reforestation with less attention to the role of soils as carbon sinks. Recent news reports of melting glaciers and ice sheets coupled with a decade of record-breaking heat underscores the importance of aggressive exploration of all possible sequestration strategies.

Soils have the potential to sequester carbon from the atmosphere with proper management. Based on global estimates of historic carbon stocks and projections of rising emissions, soil’s usefulness as a carbon sink and drawdown solution appear essential (Lal, 2004, 2008). Since over one third of arable land is in agriculture globally (World Bank, 2015a), finding ways to increase soil carbon in agricultural systems will be a major component of using soils as a sink. A number of agricultural management strategies appear to sequester soil carbon by increasing carbon inputs to the soil and enhancing various soil processes that protect carbon from microbial turnover. Uncertainties about the extent and permanence of carbon sequestration in these systems do still remain, but existing evidence is sufficient to warrant a greater global focus on agricultural soils as a potential climate stability wedge and drawdown solution. Furthermore, the ancillary benefits of increasing soil carbon, including improvements to soil structure, fertility, and water-holding capacity, outweigh potential costs. In this paper, we’ll discuss the basics of soil carbon, how it can be sequestered, management strategies that appear to show promise, and the debate about the potential of agricultural soils to be a climate stability wedge.

KEEP READING ON NATIONAL SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE COALITION

Prince Charles Joins Clean Soil Project to Combat Climate Change

Author: Fiona Harvey 

Prince Charles urged governments, individuals and businesses to take greater care of the world’s soils as part of an initiative aimed at keeping carbon locked in soil, rather than escaping into the atmosphere and causing global warming.

The “4 per 1000” project is a pledge to reduce the amount of carbon leaked from soils by 0.4% a year, which would be enough to halt the rise of carbon dioxide levels in the air. Nearly 180 countries have signed up to the initiative that was set up by the French government as part of its efforts to make the Paris agreement on climate change, signed last year, a success.

At a ceremony this week to celebrate the initiative, the prince said that the preservation of farmland, forests and soils were of “absolutely critical importance – for, in my experience, the fertility and health of the soil is at the heart of everything”. Drawing on his own work as an organic farmer, he contrasted organic methods with the “previously conventional” farming systems which he called “toxic”.

The 4 per 1000 initiative does not require farmers to adopt organic methods, but does encourage more attention to farming techniques, which are currently contributing to the erosion of soils around the world.

KEEP READING ON THE GUARDIAN 

Young People’s Burden

Author: James Hansen | Published on: October 4, 2016

Young People’s Burden: Requirement of Negative CO2 Emissions, by twelve of us[1], is being made available as a “Discussion” paper in Earth System Dynamics Discussion on 4 October, as it is undergoing peer review.   We try to make the science transparent to non-scientists.  A video discussion by my granddaughter Sophie and me is available.  Here I first note a couple of our technical conclusions (but you can skip straight to “Principal Implications” on page 2):

1) Global temperature: the 12-month running-mean temperature is now +1.3°C relative to the 1880-1920 average in the GISTEMP analysis (Fig. 2 in above paper or alternative Fig. 1 below).  We suggest that 1880-1920 is a good choice for “preindustrial” base period; alternative choices would differ by only about ±0.1°C, and 1880-1920 has the advantage of being the earliest time with reasonably global coverage and reasonably well-documented measurement technology.

Present 12-month running-mean global temperature jumps about as far above the linear trend line (Fig. 2b in the paper) as it did during the 1997-98 El Nino.  The linear trend line is now at +1.06°C, which is perhaps the best temperature to compare to paleoclimate temperatures, because the latter are “centennially-smoothed,” i.e., the proxy measures of ancient temperature typically have a resolution not better than 100 years.  The present linear trend (or 11-year mean) temperature is appropriate for comparison to centennially smoothed paleo temperature, because we have knowledge that decadal temperature will not be declining in the next several decades.

 

2) The growth of the three principal human-caused greenhouse gases (GHGs: CO2, CH4, N2O) are all accelerating.  Contrary to the impression favored by governments, the corner has not been turned toward declining emissions and GHG amounts.  The world is not effectively addressing the climate matter, nor does it have any plans to do so, regardless of how much government bureaucrats clap each other on the back.

On the other hand, accelerating GHG growth rates do not imply that the problem is unsolvable or that amplifying climate feedbacks are now the main source of the acceleration.  Despite much (valid) concern about amplifying climate-methane feedbacks and leaks from “fracking” activity, the isotopic data suggest that the increase of CH4emissions is more a result of agricultural emissions.  Not to say that it will be easy, but it is still possible to get future CH4 amount to decline moderately, as we phase off fossil fuels as the principal energy source.

KEEP READING ON CLIMATE SCIENCE AWARENESS AND SOLUTIONS

Climate Scientist James Hansen: We Aren’t Doing Nearly Enough to Slow Climate Change

Author: Natasha Geiling | Published on: October 4, 2016

James Hansen, former NASA director and well-known climate scientist, is out with another dire climate warning: The last time that the Earth was this hot, the oceans were about 20 feet higher than they are right now.

And while that doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re in for an unstoppable, 20-foot rise in sea level (although it ostensibly could get that bad), it does mean that the world is leaving a dangerous, and expensive, climate change problem for future generations.

“There’s a misconception that we’ve begun to address the climate problem,” Hansen told reporters on a press call Monday. “The misapprehension is based on the Paris climate summit where all the government leaders clapped each other on the back as if some great progress has been made, but you look at the science and it doesn’t compute. We are not doing what is needed.”

Hansen’s warning is based off a new, yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper — submitted Tuesday to the Earth Systems Dynamics Journal — that he authored with 11 other climate scientists. In the paper, the authors argue that the Earth has warmed by about 1.3°C relative to pre-industrial levels, and that the atmospheric concentration of the most potent greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide — has been accelerating in recent years. The last time the Earth was this hot was during the last inter-glacial period, known as the Eemian, when sea level was about 20 to 30 feet higher than it is today.

KEEP READING ON THINKPROGRESS

Our Best Shot at Cooling the Planet Might Be Right Under Our Feet

[ English | Español ]

Author: Jason Hickel | Published on: September 10, 2016

It’s getting hot out there. Every one of the past 14 months has broken the global temperature record. Ice cover in the Arctic sea just hit a new low, at 525,000 square miles less than normal. And apparently we’re not doing much to stop it: according to Professor Kevin Anderson, one of Britain’s leading climate scientists, we’ve already blown our chances of keeping global warming below the “safe” threshold of 1.5 degrees.

If we want to stay below the upper ceiling of 2 degrees, though, we still have a shot. But it’s going to take a monumental effort. Anderson and his colleagues estimate that in order to keep within this threshold, we need to start reducing emissions by a sobering 8%–10% per year, from now until we reach “net zero” in 2050. If that doesn’t sound difficult enough, here’s the clincher: efficiency improvements and clean energy technologies will only win us reductions of about 4% per year at most.

KEEP READING ON THE GUARDIAN

The Dirty Way to Feed More People and Help Stop Climate Change

Author: Tove Danovich 

Modern agriculture has not been kind to the soil. Since intensive agriculture took off in the 1950s, farming in the United States has emphasized harvest yields over environmental (or taste) concerns. Then, with the Green Revolution in the 1960s, we exported those ideas around the world. Yet over the last decade, it’s become apparent that treating the soil to maximize yield can strip both our food and the soil of important nutrients.

On average, 70 percent of all land has degraded soil, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service. In an overview on land degradation, the NRCS wrote, “The productivity of some lands has declined by 50% due to soil erosion and desertification.” In Africa, poor soil may have caused yield reductions of as much as 40 percent. Globally, loss caused by degradation “costs the world about $400 billion per year,” according to the NRCS.

But in the fight against climate change and global hunger, lowly soil may be our greatest resource.

Schoolchildren learn that trees and plants turn “bad” air into “good,” and adults know that deforestation exacerbates rising levels of greenhouse gases. “But those trees have roots,” pointed out Ephraim Nkonya, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute who specializes in land management and natural-resource use in sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia. “We see trees above the ground and get fixated on their importance,” Nkonya said. But stopping climate change is less about planting more trees to make up for losses owing to deforestation than about taking better care of the land we have. Changing agricultural practices to focus on better land management and decreased deforestation could reduce nearly a third of carbon emissions.

Plants—all plants, not just trees—draw carbon out of the air to help them grow, and what they don’t need is drawn through their roots into the soil. Eighty percent of all terrestrial carbon resides in the soil, according to a 2012 Nature article by two members of the Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management at Iowa State University. While two-thirds of carbon dioxide emissions come from burning fossil fuels, a third comes from soil organic carbon loss “due to land use change such as the clearing of forests and the cultivation of land for food production,” the authors wrote.

KEEP READING ON TAKEPART

Enterrando el Carbono: Revirtiendo el Calentamiento Global

[ English | Español ]

Por Ronnie Cummins, OCA, septiembre de 2014, Traducción de Ercilia Sahores, Vía Orgánica AC

“Si la humanidad quiere preservar un planeta similar a aquel en el cual la civilización se desarrolló y al que la vida en la tierra se adapta, la evidencia del cambio climático y el paleoclima sugieren que el CO2 debe reducirse de sus niveles actuales de 398 ppm. a un máximo de 350 ppm “ ~ Dr. James Hansen 

Revirtiendo el Calentamiento Global.  Poco se ha hecho desde que en 2008 el Dr. James Hansen, un destacado climatólogo, advirtiera que debemos reducir la cantidad de CO2 en la atmósfera terrestre a 350 partes por millón (ppm) para preservar la vida en la tierra.

Se está haciendo tarde. Si vamos a preservar un planeta vivible, nosotros, los movimientos de base debemos hacer más que mitigar el calentamiento global:

Debemos revertirlo

¿Cómo?

Pista número uno: no pidiendo a las corporaciones y a los políticos, que están completamente fuera de nuestro control, que dejen de destruir el planeta.

Pista número dos: no cifrar nuestra esperanza para la supervivencia y la estabilidad climática en “soluciones” tecnológicas, no probadas y peligrosas tales como la ingeniería genética, la geoingeniería o la captura del carbono y su secuestro para plantas de carbón. Pista número tres: no creer inocentemente que pronto (o lo suficientemente pronto) los consumidores en todo el globo abandonarán espontáneamente sus autos, viajes aéreos, aires acondicionados, calefacción central y una dieta basada en combustibles fósiles y su estilo de vida justo a tiempo para prevenir las concentraciones atmosféricas de gases de efecto invernadero para que pasen desde el punto de inflexión de 450 ppm o más de CO2 hasta un catastrófico punto de no retorno.

Podemos revertir el cambio climático al capturar varios billones de toneladas de exceso de CO2 utilizando las ‘herramientas” que ya tenemos a mano: la agricultura y ganadería y el uso de suelo orgánico y regenerativo. Podemos lograr esta transición que cambiará el mundo al movilizar una multitud de grupos verdes de campesinos, rancheros, jardineros, consumidores, activistas climáticos y conservacionistas para que comiencen la tarea monumental de mover el monstruo de carbono allí donde está seguro: debajo de la tierra, oculto.

Como está siendo demostrado por miles de campesinos, granjeros e investigadores alrededor del mundo, al reducir las emisiones de CO2 producidas por el gas del efecto invernadero (GEI), el metano, el óxido nitroso y el hollín, y en forma cualitativa mejorar la cooperación de la fotosíntesis de las plantas ( la capacidad de las plantas, árboles y pastizales para mover el CO2 de la atmósfera a través de las raíces y hacia el suelo) en billones de acres de tierras cultivables, tierras de pastoreo y bosques, con lo cual podemos capturar el suficiente CO2 como para volver a estabilizar el clima.

Sepultando el Carbono. Estamos hablando de movilizar los movimientos de base globales, no como testigos pasivos sino como participantes activos, productores y consumidores conscientes que implementen y promuevan a gran escala, de manera probada y confiable y sin ayuda de la tecnología, prácticas benéficas que naturalmente capturarán enormes cantidades de carbono atmosférico en la tierra.

Estas prácticas regenerativas tradicionales incluyen el cultivo orgánico sin arado, el pastoreo rotativo, retención de carbono mediante la agricultura tradicional, composta de desecho orgánico, el uso de cultivos de cobertura, el plantar árboles, preservar y restaurar los bosques, los humedales y zonas ribereñas, pastizales, turberas y la biodiversidad.

En palabras de Courtney White, autora del libro “Pasto,Suelo,Esperanza” (Grass, Soil, Hope):

“El suelo ralo, degradado, arado o que no ha tenido rotación de cultivos puede ser restaurado y ser nuevamente sano a través de un ciclo apropiado de carbono, agua, minerales y ciclos de nutrientes, mientras esté cubierto a lo largo del año por una diversidad de plantas de raíces profundas. De esa manera la suma de CO2 atmosférico que puede ser almacenado en el suelo es potencialmente alto.

“Globalmente, el suelo contienen unas tres veces la cantidad de carbono que es almacenado en la vegetación y el doble del que es almacenado en la atmósfera. Dado que dos tercios de la masa de la tierra es pastizal, un almacenamiento adicional de CO2 en el suelo a través de mejores prácticas, ya fuere a pequeña o gran escala, tendría un impacto tremendo.”

LEE MÁS ARTÍCULOS EN ESPAÑOL

The Carbon Underground: Reversing Global Warming

[ English | Español ]

“If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current levels [398 ppm.] to at most 350 ppm ” ~ Dr. James Hansen

Reversing Global Warming

Since Dr. James Hansen, a leading climatologist, warned in 2008 that we need to reduce the amount of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere to 350 parts-per-million (ppm) in order to preserve life on Earth, little has been done to get us there.

It’s getting late. If we’re going to preserve a livable Earth, we the global grassroots, must do more than mitigate global warming.

We must reverse it.

How?

Hint number one: not by politely asking out-of-control corporations and politicians to please stop destroying the planet.

Hint number two: not by pinning our hopes for survival and climate stability on hi-tech, unproven and dangerous, “solutions” such as genetic engineering, geoengineering, or carbon capture and sequestration for coal plants.

Hint number three: not by naively believing that soon (or soon enough) ordinary consumers all over the planet will spontaneously abandon their cars, air travel, air conditioning, central heating, and fossil fuel-based diets and lifestyles just in time to prevent atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases from moving past the tipping point of 450 ppm or more of CO2 to the catastrophic point of no return.

We can reverse climate change by sequestering several hundred billion tons of excess CO2 using the “tools” we already have at hand: regenerative, organic farming, ranching and land use. And we can make this world-changing transition by mobilizing a vast green corps of farmers, ranchers, gardeners, consumers, climate activists and conservationists to begin the monumental task of moving the Carbon Behemoth safely back underground.

As thousands of farmers, ranchers, and researchers worldwide are demonstrating, by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of CO2, methane, nitrous oxide and black soot, and qualitatively ramping up plant photosynthesis (i.e. the capacity of plants, trees, and grasses to move CO2 from the atmosphere through their roots into the soil) on billions of acres of farm land, range land, and forest, we can sequester enough CO2 to restabilize the climate.

Moving the Carbon Underground

We’re talking about mobilizing the global grassroots, not as passive observers, but as active participants, producers and conscious consumers, implementing and promoting on a mass scale, tried and true, low-tech, beneficial practices that naturally sequester enormous amounts of atmospheric carbon in the soil.

These traditional, regenerative practices include no till organic farming, planned rotational grazing (carbon ranching), composting of organic wastes, the use of cover crops, planting trees, and preserving and restoring forests, wetlands, riparian zones, grasslands, peat bogs, and biodiversity.

As Courtney White, author of the recent book, Grass, Soil, Hope, puts it:

” If land that is bare, degraded, tilled, or monocropped can be restored to a healthy condition, with properly functioning carbon, water, mineral, and nutrient cycles, and covered year-round with a diversity of green plants with deep roots, then the added amount of atmospheric CO2 that can be stored in the soil is potentially high.

“Globally… soils contain about three times the amount of carbon that’s stored in vegetation and twice the amount stored in the atmosphere. Since two-thirds of the earth’s land mass is grassland, additional CO2 storage in the soil via better management practices, even on a small scale, could have a huge impact.”

The noted food writer, Michael Pollan, in his introduction to White’s book, explains the basic concepts of plant photosynthesis and the benefits of regenerative agriculture:

“Consider what happens when the sun shines on a grass plant rooted in the earth. Using that light as a catalyst, the plant takes atmospheric CO2, splits off and releases the oxygen, and synthesizes liquid carbon-sugars, basically. Some of these sugars go to feed and build the aerial portions of the plant we can see, but a large percentage of this liquid carbon-somewhere between 20 and 40 percent-travels underground, leaking out of the roots and into the soil. The roots are feeding these sugars to the soil microbes-the bacteria and fungi that inhabit the rhizosphere-in exchange for which those microbes provide various services to the plant: defense, trace minerals, access to nutrients the roots can’t reach on their own. That liquid carbon has now entered the microbial ecosystem, becoming the bodies of bacteria and fungi that will in turn be eaten by other microbes in the soil food web. Now, what had been atmospheric carbon (a problem) has become soil carbon, a solution-and not just to a single problem, but to a great many problems.

Besides taking large amounts of carbon out of the air-tons of it per acre when grasslands are properly managed, according to White-that process at the same time adds to the land’s fertility and its capacity to hold water. Which means more and better food for us…

This process of returning atmospheric carbon to the soil works even better when ruminants are added to the mix. Every time a calf or lamb shears a blade of grass, that plant, seeking to rebalance its “root-shoot ratio,” sheds some of its roots. These are then eaten by the worms, nematodes, and microbes-digested by the soil, in effect, and so added to its bank of carbon. This is how soil is created: from the bottom up.”

Wake Up Before It’s Too Late

If you are unfamiliar with the enormous impact of industrial food and farming and non-sustainable forest practices on global warming (chemical and energy-intensive, GMO, industrial food and farming practices generate 35 percent of global greenhouse gas pollution, while deforestation, often agriculture-driven, generates another 20 percent) and the concept of natural carbon sequestration through regenerative land use, please take a look at the comprehensive 2013 scientific study called “Wake Up Before It’s Too Late,” published by the United Nations Commission on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

And if you need a strong dose of good news, to counteract the typical gloom and doom message around the climate crisis, please read the 2014 Rodale Institute study on regenerative organic practices. See also: https://thecarbonunderground.org.

Given that hundreds of billions of tons of carbon originally sequestered in agricultural soils are now blanketing the atmosphere and cooking the planet, our life-or-death task is to move this massive “legacy load” of CO2 (now 50 ppm of CO2, likely to be 100 ppm in 20 years, past the danger zone) back underground, as soon as possible. This Great Sequestration will buy us the time we need to reduce fossil fuel use by 80-90 percent or more and reverse global warming.

Taking Down Factory Farms and Industrial Agriculture

Of course moving several hundred gigatons of CO2 back underground and reversing global warming will not be easy. Getting back to 350 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere will require nothing less than a global food and farming revolution: shutting down factory farms, boycotting genetically engineered foods, including factory-farmed meat and animal products, and putting billions of intensively confined farm animals back on the land, grazing, where they belong.

Restabilizing the climate means putting an end to gigantic GMO soybean and palm oil plantations and industrial timber operations. It means preserving tropical forests, and planting and nurturing hundreds of billions of native trees in deforested urban and rural areas.

Reversing global warming means putting an end to the energy-intensive, chemical-intensive, genetically engineered industrial food and farming system that is not only destroying public health, torturing animals, polluting the water, overgrazing pastures and rangelands, driving family farmers off the land, and destroying biodiversity, as well as pumping billions of tons of CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, and black soot into the air.

Reversing climate change also means stopping industrial agriculture from continuing to dump billions of pounds of chemical fertilizers and pesticides on the already heavily tilled, compacted, and eroded land-practices that destroy  the Earth’s natural ability to sequester vast amounts of carbon. These unsustainable farming, ranching, and land use practices, according to a leading world expert, Dr. Rattan Lal, have already caused the release of 25-70 percent (hundreds of billions of tons) of all the carbon originally sequestered in agricultural soils.

As a consequence of this decarbonization and destruction of the Earth’s topsoils, almost a quarter of all arable land on the planet is fallow. But as Dr. David Johnson of New Mexico State University has recently shown in a scientific study for Sandia Labs, by implementing regenerative organic practices, “The rates of biomass production we are currently observing in this system have the capability to capture enough CO2 (50 tons of CO2/acre) to offset all anthropogenic CO2 emissions on less than 11 percent of world cropland. Over twice this amount of land is fallow at any time worldwide.” ( The Soil Will Save Us, Kristin Ohlsen p. 233)

As the well respected author Kristin Ohlson commented to Dr. Johnson in a telephone conversation about this staggering assertion: “Aren’t you afraid to say this? Aren’t you afraid that saying that will let the oil and gas companies off the hook? As well as people burning down forests and all the rest of us with big carbon footprints? Aren’t you afraid?”

Ohlson continued: “I thought I could feel a wary shrug over the phone.”

Dr. Johnson then replied:  “I don’t see anything on the horizon that touches the effectiveness of this approach  We’re not going to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions anytime soon, because we depend too much on oil and gas, and the rest of the world wants our lifestyle. The whole idea is to get something that works right now, the world over, to make a significant impact on reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide.” ( The Soil Will Save Us, pp. 233-34.)

If industrial agriculture and GMOs are marginalized through mandatory labeling, marketplace pressure and public policy change, if fossil fuel consumption in all sectors is steadily reduced, and regenerative organic practices are put into action globally, with a focus on the 22 percent of the planet’s soils which are degraded and currently fallow, we will be able to sequester 100 percent of current, annual (35 gigatons) carbon dioxide emissions.

Small Farmers Can Cool the Planet

The world’s two and a half billion small and indigenous farmers and rural villagers currently manage to produce 70 percent of the world’s food on 25 percent of the world’s land. These so-called “subsistence farmers,” who have always struggled to survive, now find that climate change, the steady expansion of GMOs and industrial agriculture, and so-called “Free Trade” agreements, are making their farming and survival much more difficult. But these same small farmers, ranchers, pastoralists and forest dwellers, because they have, in most cases, retained traditional knowledge and practices, including seed saving and animal grazing, are open to adopting even more powerful regenerative organic practices. And of course these regenerative, climate-friendly, low-tech land-management techniques will also increase yields, reduce rural poverty, conserve water, improve soil health, and prevent erosion. Study after study has shown that small agro-ecological farms significantly out-produce industrial farms-while sequestering carbon.

The solution to climate change, desertification and world hunger is literally in the hands of the world’s two-and-a-half billion family farmers-but only if those farmers are supported by conscious consumers and activists, driving public policy, marketplace, and land-use reform on a global scale. This won’t happen unless we focus on economic justice and land-use reform. Investments and public funds, local to international, must be shifted from greenhouse gas-polluting factory farms and chemical-drenched genetically engineered crops to regenerative organic farming techniques that benefit small-scale and sustainable farmers, as well as consumers.

Land grabs and “free trade” agreements orchestrated by industrialized nations and multinational corporations must be stopped.

The Point of No Return

The U.S. and global climate movement desperately needs a more sophisticated (and international) strategy beyond just pressuring politicians, corporations, banksters, and the White House into shutting down coal plants, fracking and the tar sands pipeline. What we need is a holistic Zero Emissions/Maximum Sequestration strategy that can galvanize a grassroots army of hundreds of millions of small farmers and conscious consumers, not only in the U.S., but globally.

Although millions of misinformed and/or befuddled Americans remain in denial, a critical mass of the body politic is beginning to understand that global warming and climate chaos pose a serious threat to human survival. What they are lacking, however, is a coherent and empowering understanding of what is actually causing global warming, as well as a practical roadmap of how we-individually, collectively and globally-move away from the dangerous precipice where we find ourselves.

The only remaining significant disagreement among informed climate researchers centers on how long we can survive the still-rising 400 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere (485 ppm if we include other GHGs such as methane, nitrous oxide, CFCs and black soot). Current consensus seems to be 15-25 years before we reach a “point of no return” whereby climate change morphs into irreversible climate catastrophe.

Faulty Solutions. Flawed Strategy. The U.S.-based climate action movement, led by 350.org, has done an excellent job of protesting against the coal, oil and gas industries. This high-profile movement has also popularized the notion that fossil fuel consumption must be drastically slashed (by 80-90 percent) and replaced by renewable forms of energy, and that individuals and institutions must divest from the fossil fuel industry, making sure that 75 percent of fossil fuels reserves are left in the ground.

But strategic components of 350.org’s roadmap for change are seriously flawed.

First of all, 350.org’s reliance on over-simplified official statistics (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change–IGCC) on what is causing excess GHG emissions in the atmosphere (i.e. utilities, industry, transportation, and housing) fails to take into account the fact that our industrial food and farming system (production, transportation, processing, waste, and land use), including its impact on deforestation and the soil’s ability to naturally sequester CO2, are the leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions.

Our climate dysfunctionality is in large part a function of how we farm and eat. Yet the most prominent voices in the climate movement continue to downplay, or ignore entirely, this fact.

Even the most optimistic climate activists admit that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 will likely reach 450 ppm in the next several decades before leveling off. Unfortunately the climate movement up until now has offered no real strategy for how we can get from 450 ppm or more to the safe level of 350 ppm.

Even if the U.S., China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, the EU, and other nations stop all emissions sometime in the next 20 years, we will still have dangerous levels (450 ppm or more of CO2 and other greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere-levels that will gradually melt the polar icecaps, burn up the Amazon, spawn disastrous storms, floods, and droughts, and destroy agricultural productivity.

This is not just a basic error in analysis and a failure of imagination. It’s a “doom-and-gloom” formula that leaves us with little or no hope.

We, the members of the regenerative organics movement, invite you to educate yourself about the good news of regenerative organics and natural carbon sequestration. Please join and help us unite the climate movement, the organic movement, the animal rights, family farmer, and conservation movements into a mighty force for transformation and regeneration.

Join us and noted author Vandana Shiva under the banner of “Cook Organic, not the Planet,” at the People’s Climate March in New York City on September 21, or at one of the many local actions on that day, and at forthcoming U.S. and international gatherings.

The hour is late. But we still have time to turn things around by stopping the Carbon Criminals and Earth Destroyers and moving as quickly as possible toward a regenerative farming, ranching, and land use system capable of reversing global warming.

***

Ronnie Cummins is international director of the Organic Consumers Association and its Mexico affiliate, Via Organica.