Atmospheric carbon dioxide has to be reduced to near pre-industrial levels quickly and this can only be done by the manufacture and creation of humus-rich fertile soil. The numbers are there in PRIORITY ONE. We have no realistic alternative. There is just no other way.
Let us also not lay such an insane burden as global warming on the shoulders of our children and their children, for at least four generations to come.
The Kyoto establishment of a carbon credit trading system was never created with the intention of encouraging the production of fertile and productive soil. Increasing soil fertility invariably necessitates ending the widespread use of agrochemicals. The industrial lobbyists at Kyoto never realized how easy, healthy and rewarding it is to farm without poisoning the soil. That was their mistake. By us sequestering the actual carbon credit system to encourage the sequestration of carbon dioxide into soil humus, we can totally stop global warming. For the world this was serendipitous. It was never in the fossil carbon industries' game plan.
The clear-cut marketing objectives of the fossil carbon corporations are first to maintain, and second to expand the sales of their two major products. And those two major products are transport fuels and agrochemicals. Their marketing experts saw the threat of global warming driving down sales. It was obvious that global warming had to be handled as a long term and ongoing public relations exercise. The creation of carbon credits was a clever concept that ideally suited the PR strategies. (For their other strategies see PRIORITY ONE Chapter 9: STRATEGIES, GUIDELINES, TACTICS AND PLOYS FOR MARKETING AND PROMOTING FOSSIL FUELS AND PETROCHEMICAL PRODUCTS)
If you, as a citizen in a town or city are beginning to feel guilty or responsible or even altruistic about global warming issues and wish, somehow, to contribute to its termination, or at least mitigation, then you become the "mark". You are the one the PR gurus must target. By skillfully utilizing those feelings you are coerced into buying these things called "carbon credits" or Certified Emission Reductions, CER. A CER was nominated as one ton of carbon dioxide or its equivalent. A carbon credit is deemed to be created when one ton of carbon dioxide is prevented from entering the atmosphere or has been removed from the atmosphere. Carbon credits had that ring of environmental responsibility. And it all sounds fine, but it isn't, for as is so common these days, the devil's in the detail, along with all the dirty tricks.
Certifiable carbon credits can be claimed and created by the building and establishing of some of the minor alternative to fossil fuel systems. Solar cells on a house qualify, but only if you install more solar cells than you could possibly need and the qualifying excess electricity is sold into the electricity grid. When the excess home generating capacity is built and paid for, and the bureaucratic compliance requirements are fulfilled, it is unlikely that the tiny yearly income would finance a once-a-year family dinner.
Some geothermal, some hydro and some solar thermal systems, provided they are new, can qualify. Collecting methane gas being formed by rotting garbage in town land fills - waste dumps - and burning it to generate power, can qualify. However it is conceded that these would have at best a miniscule impact on fossil fuel sales. Nuclear energy, on the other hand would eliminate the production of huge quantities of greenhouse gasses by replacing fossil fuel power plants. Nuclear energy is specifically excluded as a Kyoto approved source of carbon credits.
Agricultural chemical companies invariably operate on the quite fictional belief that food production is dependent on the quantity of agrochemicals poured onto the land to grow that food. Our Western societies will always produce the quantity of food we want. At agrochemical marketing head office it is thus blind faith that more chemicals will be sold if available farmland areas are massively restricted - hydroponics being their ideal scenario.
In agriculture, the major system for generating carbon credits is structured so that a farmer who takes good fertile productive agricultural land out of production, by filling up that land with tree seedlings, to be carefully nurtured and grown into a forest, can then claim carbon credits. Part of the technical requirement is that, what amounts to a covenant, is placed on that land. The covenant is a guarantee that the land will never again be farmed. In addition the covenant precludes the timber grown from any possible or practical future use. And this covenant is structured to last for a hundred years. If the trees die, or if they burn they have to be replaced by the farmer.
"Afforestation" and "reforestation" to fix supposedly sinful "deforestation" are the marketing gurus new buzzwords, the new holy grails, altars on which, for a hundred years honest farmlands are sacrificed to the gods of oil.
For the farmer, or any subsequent buyer who wishes to harvest the timber, or use the land for food, or as grazing land, or even as a golf course, it all becomes illegal and impossible. It can only be reclaimed for future use when all the carbon credits are refunded in hard cash, or replaced by credits from some place else. The landowner is not even allowed to use the timber to build a house. He can't even build a log cabin. According to the Kyoto carbon credits rules our farmer's house has to be built from high fossil fuel energy dependant materials. Kyoto effectively demands houses built of steel or aluminium, concrete, bricks or plastics. Never wood.
Yet trees are not in any way a viable carbon sink. That concept is a manufactured fiction. As the numbers in STRAIGHT TALKING show, we would need to grow almost twenty times more wood every year that humanity could ever possibly use, just to prevent further carbon dioxide build up. For all except the fossil carbon industries, it's financial insanity. It's designed to placate the multitude. But it won't happen and temperatures will still continue rising. And world weather systems will continue chasing some new and unattainable stability.
Carbon credits therefore are a system whereby decent responsible townspeople are connived into effectively bribing farmers to take the nations land out of production, and to in fact, support the marketing of massive quantities of agrochemicals.
In fact, fortunately for us carbon dioxide can be removed or sequestered from the air very easily by using slightly modified agricultural practices - practices similar to those used by organic farmers. (See PRIORITY ONE Chapter 8 all at www.yeomansplow.com.au) Organic farmers are well aware that the majority of strong agricultural chemicals, by their very nature and design, kill the soil microbes and earthworms that are critical in the manufacture of stable soil humus and soil fertility.
We remove the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it into healthy and stable soil organic matter. See how, in both PRIORITY ONE Together We Can Beat Global WARMING and STRAIGHT TALKING on ending global warming. Not only do we halt global warming but we produce healthy, fertile, productive soil in the process. And as a bonus, the food grown on such soils are invariably far more nutritious and consistently better tasting. (Try an organic peach.)
This is all eminently sensible and utterly practical. Human health would improve worldwide. But of course agrochemical sales would plummet! The Kyoto carbon credits protocol specifically excludes the concept of exempting the enhancement of the fertility of soils from qualifying as a source of carbon credits. How very convenient for the agrochemical companies. This is madness and it cannot be tolerated.
If the Kyoto committee won't certify carbon credits created by soil fertility enhancement then responsible citizens and responsible farmers should establish their own certification procedure. There are any number of established and respected organizations capable of establishing practical and trustworthy certification procedures. (What about the one you're in?)
To test for increases in soil organic matter, which is now often simply described as soil carbon, is easy. I would suggest that soil samples be taken randomly over the farm's paddocks. Samples should be taken to a consistent depth; I would suggest 600 mm (24 inches). The depth is not critical provided that on any one farm the same depth is used every year. Fibrous materials, roots etc. should be removed, and then an actual carbon test for weight (mass) should be measured. Any officially approved lab can do this, and would certainly suffice. That then becomes the base year.
Carbon credits are then assigned for yearly increases in carbon content above that base year. Cheating or inconsistent readings are self-corrected by subsequent yearly readings. Carbon dioxide quantities are simply calculated knowing that carbon dioxide contains 27.27% carbon. Testing is thus simple, cheap and effectively foolproof.
Tree enthusiasts advocate planting endless trees of endless varieties. Then they like to argue that the number of trees in a paddock or field or forest at any time, and the mass of carbon residing in the trunks, in the tree branches, and in the allied foliage, of all those trees is easier to calculate. Ridiculous. Imagine the time involved each year in such an exercise. Imagine the cost to sustain a worthless forest for a hundred years, and like any forest, it too would be constantly subject to total destruction by fire.
Don't spend your money buying carbon credits that are structured and labeled and based on planting worthless trees on valuable agricultural land; and additionally create extremely flammable shrub covered waste lands requiring constant surveillance and fire protection.
Also what often appears as worthless soil can often and quite rapidly be converted into rich and healthy soil. Soil that helps halt global warming, produces valuable crops and enhances our combined wealth. Don't buy carbon credits to grow trees that squander that potential.
Another piece of nonsense being promoted is allocating carbon credits to farmers who don't till their soil, ever. It's promoted as "no-till". The whole concept is irresponsibly counterproductive, especially in the hands of distant, office bound bureaucrats. Correct cultivation is part and parcel of some of the most efficient techniques known for rapid soil fertility creation. Logic says; let the farmer decide the best means of improving his own soil. Credits are then only created by measured increases in soil carbon, so it rewards for tangible results.
Buy carbon credits that are so labeled, that you know will increase the productivity and wealth of your nation, and simultaneously, totally correct the disastrous mistake that is world global warming.
Direct carbon taxes is the other option. Such a tax would be very simple to establish. It would also be extremely easy to structure, to mandate, and to administer. Such an option would never in any way suit the fossil fuel and agrochemical industries. For those industries anything would be better than a simple carbon tax. If for PR reasons a system has to happen, then they require it to be a system that is primarily voluntary, frustratingly confusing, utterly obtuse and hopelessly ineffective. I think they succeeded.
No wonder the current carbon trading system receives so much behind-the-scene oil industry PR support.
The current carbon credit system effectively "taxes" cooperative, responsible citizens and corporations, and at the same time gives financial advantages to uncooperative, irresponsible citizens and corporations. As now structured, the system actually encourages further global warming along with the intensification of agrochemical based agriculture.
We should devise and support the establishment of systems of carbon taxes and incentives that systematically, destructively and positively discourage the marketing and sales of fossil carbon fuels and soil destroying agrochemicals. Otherwise global warming continues rapidly towards irreversibility.
Allan Yeomans |
