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David Walters writes: > Hans in a previous response argues that the carbon is still put into the > environment. I argue "yes, but it's returned". Thus cattle raising this way > is what is called carbon-neutral. and David Riley writes: > our agricultural systems ... are potentially one of the best tools we have > on hand to CONSCIOUSLY reverse some of the climate consequences that > have already registered This reversal allegedly happens by taking carbon out of the atmosphere. But empirically there is no reversal of prior damage. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is accelerating. The Mauna Loa CO2 concentration rose by 2.27 ppm from July 2014 to July 2015, and by 3.08 ppm from July 2015 to July 2016. See https://www.co2.earth/keeling-curve-monthly This email is an attempt to explain why I don't think this so-called "return" of the carbon into the top soil is satisfactory. It cannot be considered a reversal of the damage done by digging up fossil fuels. I am going to start with Adam and Eve. The most important step necessary to prevent dangerous climate change is the de-carbonization of the world economy. This means the extraction of additional fossil fuels out of the ground must be stopped as quickly as possible. The right way to do this is to do the research which tells us the upper limit of fossil fuels that can still be burned, establish a schedule when to phase out which power plants and refineries, replace the phased out fossil power plants as quickly as possible with renewable power generation, and re-build the transportation system so that it can run on electricity or renewable fuels. Since renewables cannot be scaled up quickly enough to replace the fossil fueled power plants, and since also the re-building of the transportation system takes time, this requires that people in the rich countries must use much less energy and travel less. The poor countries must leapfrog fossil fuels and give their populations access to renewable energy and sustainable transportation and communication systems from the start. This is the simple remedy to climate change which ecosocialists should promote. It is a prudent retreat from the overconsumption in the rich countries. I deliberately left out two things: (1) Nuclear Energy should not be used but should also phased out despite its low carbon footprint. (2) Extraction of carbon out of the air and putting it deep underground as well as other geo-engineering methods should also not be relied on. Why should they be left out? Because our goal must be to live more in harmony in nature instead of trying to subjugate nature even more. The Kyoto Protocol negotiated the first phase of this world wide de-carbonization. They did not pursue the simple and "right" way which I just described, but diluted it by several "flexible mechanisms" as sweeteners in order to get buy-in from profit-seeking capitalists. One of these flexible mechanisms, which certain countries insisted on, was that extraction of fossil fuels could be balanced by afforestation and other land use changes. This was a diplomatic concession which has no basis in science. Carbon in the top soil is part of the fast carbon cycle, while fossil fuels are part of the slow carbon cycle. Changes in the fast cycle cannot undo the damage caused by the man-made injection of carbon from the slow cycle into the atmosphere. Other flexible mechanisms are cap and trade, Clean Development Mechanisms, and Joint Implementation. All of them are different ways to avoid phasing out fossil fuels under different pretexts. My advice to ecosocialists is to reject all these flexible mechanisms, because they try to conserve capitalism at the expense of the ecological basis of human life. Ecosocialists are materialists. Our goal is to get enough control of our social relations that we can do certain things which capitalists don't like. We are not going to to follow the growth imperative until the basis for human civilization is destroyed, and we also have to replace a very dysfunctional industrial agricultural system. Etc. And we do not use land use improvements as an excuse for not phasing out fossil fuels. P.S. I am not opposed to afforestation and agricultural practices which keep as much carbon as possible in the top soil. This is called REDD++ or REALU or AFOLU, and something along these lines certainly must be done. But it should not be tied to the phasing out of fossil fuels. These are two different things which should not be thrown into the same pot. Both of them must be done. Dave Riley tries to trade them off against each other. This is a category error, it is a comparison of apples and oranges, namely, fast and slow carbon. The UN knows that; ecosocialists should not fall behind that. The article http://www.carbontradewatch.org/articles/two-pluses-dont-make-a-positive-redd-and-agriculture.html points out some of the subtleties and pitfalls in this debate. My email here is only a crude simplification. Despite my didactic style I welcome discussion. Things are difficult enough that we must pool our brains instead of competing with each other. Hans G Ehrbar _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
