Amerika

We have two easy, practical solutions to global warming but they share one tiny problem.

First, the solutions:

1. Biochar. Easily made, can be decentralized, with few negative consequences if any.
2. Reforestation:
   

   But new research has included tropical forests in Africa to give the most up-to-date picture of the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by trees. It found 4.8 billion tonnes of CO2 are sucked up every year.

   The study suggest trees are currently sucking up a significant amount of global pollution from factories and cars but if carbon emissions continue to increase forests will die or even burn out, causing a “feed back” effect that will accelerate climate change.

   Dr Simon Lewis, a Royal Society research fellow at the University of Leeds and author of the paper, said: “We are receiving a free subsidy from nature.

   “Tropical forest trees are absorbing about 18 per cent of the CO2 added to the atmosphere each year from burning fossil fuels, substantially buffering the rate of climate change.”

   The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has estimated that human activity emits 32 billion tonnes of CO2 each year, but only 15 billion tonnes actually stays in the atmosphere adding to climate change. The new research shows exactly where some of the ‘missing’ 17 billion tonnes per year is going.

   The Telegraph

   Thinking clearly about this, planting more open spaces with trees and/or fast-growing woody plants like hemp would deal effectively with global warming.

If the two were done together: an easy solution.

The tiny problem: it would require humanity to cut itself back, which involves telling individuals they are not gods but animals with the minds of gods (sometimes), and that as a result we can’t all do whatever we think we want to do.

What we need is not what we want. But to think of that, we have to think outside the individual, and that’s taboo in consumerist-democratic-liberal society.