Global Climate Solutions

By Ryan D. Hottle

“Great problems call for many small solutions.”  Wendell Berry

The intersection between food and energy in the 21st century inscribes one of the most critical crosshatches in American history.  It’s framed within the circumstance peaking world oil and gas supplies, and completely surrounded by the juggernaut of all global problems: irrefutable, worsening and potentially catastrophic global climate change. 

President Elect Barak Obama would do well to appoint secretaries and advisers who knew what the hell they were talking about when it came to agriculture.  The time for change is ripe.  It’s time to compost the usual corporate food conglomerate cronies who weasel their way into positions of power.  They’ve been creating a terrible stench now for quite some time–best we toss them out so they can decompose on the pile.  It’s time to appoint some real people.  It’s time to appoint some folks who give a damn about our communities and about the land and about our precious Earth.

If we did indeed elect Obama on the ticket of change and hope then let’s change this unsustainable food paradigm into one that can breathe hope and nourishment into our countryside.  There’s no better way to prepare for a declining economy or peak oil or climate change than by investing in a sustainable food system and that’s a fact.

To this end, may I formally recommend that Mr. Michael Pollan, Knight Professor of Journalism at University of California, Berkley, be appointed to Secretary of Agriculture.  And seeing that we’re on the right track with this formal recommendation, let me make one more: Mr. Wendell Berry for senior adviser.  Old Mr. Berry’s been around the block a few times and knows a thing or two about culture and agriculture in America.

Some might ask why I focus so heavily on agriculture on a climate blog.  As Michael Pollan says it, agriculture in the US has “transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food. Put another way, when we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases.”

Emissions associated with the present agricultural system are highlighted in green (this leaves out shipping and processing.) Notice in particular the nitrous oxide and methane emission associated with agriculture.

Unsustainable agriculture likely affects the Earth’s ecosystem and climate more than any other human activity.  It affects the climate through deforestation which contributes around 2.5 Gigatons carbon to the atmosphere each year, around 20% of anthropogenic sources.  Industrial agriculture is wholly dependent on the use of natural gas based anhydrous ammonia fertilizer which releases nitrous oxide (N2O) gases some 296 times more potent than CO2.  And livestock farming (ruminants in particular) and rice paddies make up the bulk of anthropogenic methane gases in the atmosphere.  Like nitrous oxide, methane is also a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, some 23 times more powerful per molecule.  

Hence agriculture and climate are inherently interconnected and require synergistic solutions.  

A funny thing happened as I was working on this article.  I received an email with an identical title as this blog posting: “Michael Pollan for Secretary of Agriculture.”  The email led to an online petition which I quickly signed up for.  Apparently some 540 signatories had the same thing in mind that I did.  I’d ask you, dear reader, to sign up to if you feel so compelled after reading this article.  Simply follow this link: http://new.petitiononline.com/MPoll4Ag/petition.html. 

In short, the situation is this: quality food and farming is tragically overlooked and under appreciated in our country; the entire contrivance of making food commodities from petro-chemical inputs and shipping it with petro-fuel transport and processing it and refrigerating it via petro-electric generation known as “industrial agriculture” is catastrophically unsustainable, unhealthy, and incapable of lasting more than a decade or two at best.  The era of declining oil and gas production, over-population, and economic instability will likely bring the industrial food system to its knees. The good thing is that there’s a lot of reason for hope as a burgeoning movement to produce healthful, local, sustainable foods in communities around the country has blossomed and continues to grow even brighter like a broccoli head gone to flower. 

Rapid Growth in Number of Farmers' Markets in the U.S.

Most recently, Pollan wrote a lengthy recommendation letter to the future president of the United States (prior the unprecedented and triumphal election of Barak Obama.)  In the article, “Farmer in Chief,” Pollan spelled out a close-to-comprehensive set of priorities for the new president to consider. 

(I say “close-to-comprehensive” because Pollan seems to have left out a pair of incredibly important new developments in the sustainable agriculture: the development of revolutionary organic no-till agricultural methods and the powerful soil amendment “biochar” which is created through a process that called pyrolysis that can also capture significant quantities of carbon while simultaneously producing clean energy from sustainably grown biomass feedstocks.  A combination of no-till and biochar carbon storage techniques could lead to the sequestration of thousands of tons of carbon per acre on an annual basis.)

Pollan got right to the point, imploring the future president to take action, “You will need not simply to address food prices but to make the reform of the entire food system one of the highest priorities of your administration: unless you do, you will not be able to make significant progress on the health care crisis, energy independence or climate change.”

MICHAEL POLLAN’S RECOMMENDATIONS TO OBAMA:

• Retool Farm Bill to reward farmers growing diverse crops and maintaining soil healthy with the use of green manures and cover crops year-roun
• Reconnect animals and crop production
• Metropolitan composting of food waste
• Perennialize grain crops (as Wes Jackson and The Land Institute have been promoting for the past several decades)
• Ban routine use of antibiotics in animal production operations
• Encourage greater numbers of people to pursue agriculture
• Require developers to provide “food-impact statements”
• Rebuild the infrastructure of the regional food economy by decentralizing food production and processing
• Provide grants for creation of four season farmers’ markets
• Rebuild local food distribution and transportation services
• Create local zoning, regulations, and policies that make sense for small growers within “Agriculture Enterprise Zones”
• Local-Meats Inspection Corps to inspect meat processing
• Fleet of local Meat Slaughtering
• Establish a Strategic Grain Reserve
• Regionalize Federal Food Procurement
• Redefine Food for Tax Policy and Food Stamps
• Setup Electronic Benefit Transfer Card readers at Farmers’ Markets such that people with Food Stamps can use their cards 
• Increase the WIC program that gives women with children  vouchers for food purchases at farmers’ markets
• Federal programs for elderly food assistance should purchase CSA memberships for program participants from local farms
• Make importance of growing and eating healthful food part of primary education curriculum
• The F.D.A. should mandate that a fossil fuel calorie count goes onto every food label
• A second barcode on label of food should allow consumers access to history of how food was produced with pictures and descriptions of processes and locations where food was grown, processed etc.
• Grow a victory garden on the White House lawn to support local food banks and let the president and his family pull some weeds
• Support hunting as a local foods initiative

See Michael Pollan on “Serious Sustainability” (approximately 24 minutes):

“We need better government, no doubt about it.  But we also need better minds, better friendships, better marriages, better communities.”

Wendell Berry

By Ryan D. Hottle

If you don’t know what an “Energy Audit” means, don’t worry—it has nothing to do with the IRS!  It does have to do with saving significant quantities of energy and money, though.  Many people are surprised when they realize that commercial buildings and homes make up the most energy-intensive sectors in the North America.

Essentially, an Energy Audit is a quantitative inspection of a building’s performance in terms of energy, health, safety, soundness, and comfort.  The goal of the audit is to identify critical areas and opportunities for energy savings while simultaneously ensuring that health and safety is maintained to the highest levels possible.  

This is the first of three blogs I will be posting on Energy Auditing.  In this blog let’s take a look at why an Energy Audit is a good idea, and what the general tools of the trade are in order to give an idea of what you might expect from an audit. 

IS A HOME HEATING CRISIS ON THE HORIZON?

The recent dip in prices of energy fuels commonly used in households, such as natural gas and home heating oil, are likely to only be a short-term trend that are a function of market instability rather than actual supply-and-demand economics.  Thus, the relief from lower fossil fuel prices is probably not going to last for long.  Home heating costs will invariably continue their upward cost trend as we reach inherent limits imposed by the peaking of world oil and gas reserves. 

Despite the recent downturn in oil prices, the evidence is overwhelming that rising oil prices will be a continuing trend as geological limits are reached.

Whether it’s this year or next or five years from now when declining oil and gas production coupled with declining real incomes translates into a serious home heating crisis for Americans, I would strongly encourage anyone who owns a home or small business to think seriously about investing in energy conservation and efficiency.  It’ll pay out a heck of a lot more than the stock market these days, I’ll guarantee it!  

Perhaps even more important is the fact that energy conservation and efficiency are the two most critical aspects of lowering CO2 emissions and therefore are critical to help mitigate the climate crisis.    

Energy Use Patterns in Average U.S. Household

GOAL OF AN ENERGY AUDIT

The goal of an energy audit is to identify and quantify opportunities for savings, which is really a fancy way of saying figuring out how to tighten up a house and make it as efficient as possible.  How much insulation does the home have?  Is it worth investing in adding more insulation?  What kind of electricity use is associated with lighting?  Would switching light bulbs or fixtures make sense?  How efficient is the furnace or boiler and is it a candidate for replacement?

These are the types of questions that an energy audit should be able to quantifiably answer.  The audit should give the home or business owner a list of energy efficiency improvement and conservation strategies ranging from the easiest and most cost-effective to the most expensive.  It is then up to the home or business owner to decide which of these to pursue as their overall strategy to reduce energy costs.  

You can perform your own energy audit on your home or business if you have a good overall understanding of building performance and efficiency.  While it’s not rocket science to determine insulation levels in your attic, a thorough energy audit is fairly involved process and most people would probably benefit from hiring a professional energy auditor.   Additionally, the professional auditor benefits from having certain diagnostic tools which allow for a more in-depth inspection than a homeowner could typically accomplish. 

The most critical aspects of home efficiency are:

1) Conductive Losses: How much insulation are in the walls and attic?  Are there any “holes” in the thermal boundary of the structure? What are the best methods by which we can improve insulation levels?

2) Convective Losses: How leaky is the house?  How much air can directly come in and out of the house and where are these leaks located? What are the best methods for reducing air infiltration?

3) Heating Efficiency:  How efficient is the heating unit and the domestic hot water unit?  Should they be replaced?  If replacement is not practical or cost-effective, what steps can be taken to improve efficiencies of existing systems? 

4) Appliance and Lighting Efficiency: How efficient are the appliances?  Are they necessary?  What kind of paybacks might we expect if we were to replace, say, the refrigerator or freezer or putting the exterior lighting on a timer, or replace the lighting?

INCREASING YOUR KNOWLEDGE

If you choose to hire a professional Energy Auditor to conduct an inspection on your home or building, I highly encourage you to be present and to take a very active role throughout the audit.  Pepper the auditor with as many questions as possible and take notes throughout the process.  Remember, sometimes even an experienced auditor can overlook critical problems or solutions.  Another reason to be on site is that often the buildingowner will know critical things about the building that may not be apparent at the time of the audit.  For instance, does basement flooding occur with heavy rains, or does the furnace tend to turn on and off very quickly (i.e. “short-cycle” which can lead to significant inefficiencies)?

You will have a much better idea of what the Energy Auditor is up to and how the process works if you have a basic understanding of the tools and techniques of building science and energy auditing. 

Two excellent information are Larry Kinney’s “Energy Auditing Techniques” and John Krigger’s “Residential Energy”.  (If you want to conduct an audit on your own home or business, I would make these “required reading.”)

TOOLS OF THE TRADE

A professional Energy Auditor should have a toolkit of diagnostic equipment used to quantify various aspects of efficiency in the home.   Generally, these will include the following items:

The Blower Door

The Blower Door used for determining the leakiness (convective losses) associated with the building.  This diagnostic tool is essential and should be included in any professional audit.  This will give an auditor the number of cubic feet per minute (cfm) existing a house at a given depressurization constant (typically -50 pascals.)  A pascal, is a measure of pressure equal to one Newton per square meter.  Roughly the equivalent of a “mouse fart” as Dr. Kinney would say;)

The do-it-yourselfer might think about contriving a blower door “effect” simply by turning all exhaust fans in the house (bathroom fans, stove fans, etc.) and possibly setting up a few box fans to further depressurize the house.  Note this will not give you a CFM measurement but will allow you to feel for infiltrating air currents.  Doing this during the cold-season will allow one to more readily feel infiltrating air. 

The Gas Detector

The Combustible Gas Detector is used for determining if there are leaks in natural gas or propane lines, this is another essential piece of equipment that the auditor should have to determine health and safety of the home.  The device makes a steady cadence of beeping sounds when there is no gas present.  If gas is present the noise level increases dramatically creating a more rapid cadence and higher pitch sound.  Most often gas leaks are discovered around poorly fitted natural gas pipes that simply need to be re-doped and tightened. 

The Flue Gas Analyzer

The Flue Gas Efficiency Analyzer is used for determining the efficiency of combustion appliances including furnaces, boilers, water heaters, and stoves.  Again, this is an essential piece of equipment in order to determine health, safety, and efficiency.  High CO (carbon monoxide levels) pose a significant threat to health and safety with more than 100 people dying from unintentional exposure each year in the US.

The Manometer

The Digital Manometer (aka pressure gauge) is used in a wide variety of applications to measure differences in pressure.  This is the device that the auditor will hook-up to the Blower Door in order to find out how leaky the home is at a given pressure.  By using this device with the Blower Door running, the auditor is also able to discover how much rooms or spaces such as garages are communicating with the outside.  The device is also used when analyzing combustion devices in order to ensure that proper draft levels are achieved when venting combustion gases to the outside of the building area. 

The Infrared Camera

An infrared camera is a powerful tool that allows the auditor to quickly pick up on temperature differences which allows for quick inspection of conductive and convective performance.  An infrared camera is incredibly useful but not absolutely necessary (a more simple and inexpensive infrared gun which costs $50 instead of $5,000 can be used.) 

The Water Weir 

A low cost water flow meter can be made with a couple bucks for a cheap plastic pitcher and an hour or two of fine tuning with a drill puncuturing holes up one of the sides of the pitcher.  When held under a constant stream of flowing water the weir will fill up to a height at which the outflow (the water flowing out of the holes where holes were drilled into the pitcher) is equal to the inflow (the amount of water flowing in) and thus stabalizes at a particular height.  If properly guaged, the weir will read the output coming from a shower or faucet.  This enables the auditor to know whether a replacement of shower heads or the addition of aerators to sinks may be in order.  

FINDING AN AUDITOR

A list of auditors can be found on through several organizations which require auditors to meet certain training and testing minimums.  The two most prominent of these are HERS/RESNET and the Building Performance Institute.  Generally, a home or business owern can expect to pay somewhere between for $200 and $400 for a comprehensive audit which should take at least 3 hours.  

Take into consideration whether the auditor conducting the inspection is independent or whether he or she is working for a company that also does weatherization work after the audit is complete.  The auditor who is working for the weatherization company obviously has an incentive to sell jobs, which can mean that the audit’s emphasis may be skewed to additional services that the company provides instead of the most cost-effecitve opportunities for the home or business owner.

As energy conservation and efficiency guru Larry Kinney says, “Opportunity follows waste.”  Which is to say that if your home or business is largely ineffecient, then there are likely to be significant opportunities for savings.  A quality energy audit followed up with quality retrofit work can lead to dramatic savings–often paying for themselves within 3 to 10 years.  

The most important opportunity is not saving money or energy, however.  The most important opportunity is reducing CO2 emissions as we face the most critical threat that has ever faced humanity: global climate change.  

In upcoming blogs, I will be exploring I will be exploring the most cost-effective strategies homeowners and small-business owners can take to reduce energy consumption, as well as strategies of heating and powering homes that could lead to a net reduction of CO2 emissions.  Stayed tuned.

We have but one beautiful world to protect and precious little time to do it in.  What we choose to do–or not to do–in the next five to ten years will make all the difference.  Be prepared to work hard and to work together–that’s the only way we’re going to win!

Biochar has been promoted as a solution for energy, agriculture, and climate for some time now.  Get ready to add yet another critical solution to the mix of benefits from biochar. 

By Josh Kearns

The US-based NGO Aqueous Solutions has partnered with the Belgian NGO Biochar Fund  to explore the applicability of robust, low-cost drinking water filter systems using biochar for rural communities in Cameroon.

Biochar Fund works with Key Farmers Cameroon, an NGO promoting sustainable agriculture among villagers and in cooperation with autonomous farmers’ groups throughout the region to address issues of food insecurity, soil depletion, and small-scale energy generation.

The communities served by the collaboration between Aqueous, Biochar Fund and Key Farmers are among the poorest in the world: community members often experience periods of hunger and insufficient nutrition, their livelihoods depend on less than $0.75 per day, and they have no access to safe drinking water sources or adequate sanitation facilities.

In this collaboration, Biochar Fund will introduce simple and efficient techniques for converting waste agricultural and forestry biomass to charcoal or “biochar.” Farmers will be instructed in the use of this material as a soil amendment.

Adding biochar to agricultural soils enhances fertilizer and nutrient retention within the soil, increases water-holding capacity, promotes the growth of beneficial microorganisms, and greatly enhances accumulation of organic matter and humic substances in the soil – and thereby improves crop yields while obviating the need for heavy (and expensive) chemical inputs to maintain soil fertility.

The char itself is relatively stable in the soil – it has a residence time of hundreds- to a few thousand- years. Thus creating biochar from waste biomass and using it as a soil amendment has the net effect of removing atmospheric CO2 and sequestering it soils and thereby mitigating the effects of CO2-induced climate change and global warming.

Projected Water Scarcity in 2025

Aqueous Solutions’ role in the collaboration with Biochar Fund will be to develop simple household water purification units utilizing the biochar as a filtration medium to remove pesticides and other harmful organic contaminants. The locals will create their own biochar from agricultural waste materials, incorporate it into home-built water filter systems, then utilize the spent filter material as a soil amendment.

There is much excitement building now over the manifold benefits of biochar materials as potential energy sources, agricultural soil amendments, refractory atmospheric carbon sinks, etc. This collaboration aims to add to the list of potential benefits of biochar, “low-cost water purification medium.” Of course, using biochar as a water filter medium does not preclude its benefits in other areas - it simply means adding a step in the process between char production and burial in soils, namely some residence time in a home-built water treatment unit.

This exciting, one-of-its-kind collaboration between Aqueous Solutions and Biochar fund will promote sustainability and local self-reliance for agrarian communities in Cameroon, and will help to provide the locals with food security, better nutrition, and safe drinking water, while benefiting agricultural soil quality and exhibiting a net-positive effect on climate change.

More information can be found at aqsolutions.org, biocharfund.com and biocharcameroon.org.

(EDITOR’S COMMENTS: In addition to purification of drinking water, I can see further benefits biochar could deliver to the growing water scarcity challenge.  For instance, biochar could become an integral part of humanure composting systems and municipality waste water treatment facilities.  This biochar-manure mix could fertilize energy crops such as switchgrass polycultures and fast-rotation coppices. -RDH)

By Ryan D. Hottle

Dr. R. K. Pachauri graced the Columbia University campus this morning for an unveiling of a Masters Program in Sustainable Development sponsored by the MacAurthur Foundation.  Led by the initiative of Jeffery Sachs and John MacAuthur, the educational program seeks to develop an international cooperative learning structure using advancements in information and communications technologies to train the next generation of environmental and social leaders.

Often times when I hear professors and/or famous-people-in-suits speak at conferences or panels,  I walk away thinking, “if they only understood the real threats of climate change, peak oil and myriad of other environmental and economic challenges that are facing us.”  That wasn’t quite the case with Pachauri, however.  As Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), he’s got a pretty good inkling as to what’s coming for us if we stay on the business-as-usual track: complete, devastating, and irreversible climatic destablization.  

I had the opportunity at the end of the panel discussion to ask him on his take on the climate.  He said he remained “optimistic.”  I then proceeded to ask him what he thought about Dr. James Hansen’s research which suggests 350 ppm (NOT 450 or 550 ppm) was the safe upper limit of CO2 in the atmosphere.  He said that he was very sympathetic to Hansen’s research and likewise believed that we need to drastically reduce emissions.

I then asked the question I’ve been posing to a great deal of my professors here at Columbia: Do you know about “Biochar”?

Biochar is quite well be the most promising technology of the 21st century to help solve global climate change, global hunger, and produce energy.  In a single process called “pyrolysis,” we have the ability to generate clean energy, sequester significant quantities of CO2 and produce a powerful soil ammendment to boot.

Pachauri’s response: No.  Never heard of it, at which time I had ready a business card on the back of which the printed clearly the words:

“Dr. Johannes Lehmann, Cornell University,“

I briefly explained the concept of carbon negative energy production.  The IPCC Chairman said he thought that this sort of bioenergy technology sounded very promising and said he would look more into it but that he was late for lunch.

Let’s hope he does.

By Ryan D. Hottle

The state of the economy seems to have gone from bad to worse as the collapse of Lehman Brothers has precipitated into a potentially catastrophic tailspin.  The Wall Street hucksters are panicking like rats jumping ship.  The money market no longer has any liquidity to grease the skids of capitalism.  The Fed is scrambling like a gimped quarter back with 5 or 6 helmeted 400-pound gorillas hurdling toward him like the dark angels of death.  He just threw a 700 billion dollar ball out-of-bounds in hopes of not getting creamed, but the jury’s still out.   

And the average working family is being squeezed from all sides by rising food and energy costs, small mountains of paper envelopes from credit card companies pilling up outside their door each with a “please pay by” date eyeing them menacingly through their cellophane wrapping. And the one thing of value they have and that they were told was the prudent investment in which they should dump the greatest portion of their wealth—their homes—have declined in value by 30 percent within the past year. 

So, I’ll keep repeating the mantra that has been echoing through the peak oil and Relocalization crowd for some time now: it’s time to start preparing ourselves, our families, and our communities for hard times to come.  As John Michael Greer has suggested (in spite of the name of this blog) it may be too late for global solutions, at least for large institutions, mega-corporations and bureaucratic nation-states.  But nothing stops us from acting at the individual, family, and community level.  In his newest book, “The Long Descent,” Greer offers a sobering and yet compassionate assessment of the collapse of the industrial world, writing that,

“At this point it’s almost entirely too late to manage a transition to sustainability on a global or national scale, even if the political will to attempt it existed—which it clearly does not.  It’s not too late, though, for individuals, groups, and communities to make that transition themselves, and to do what they can to preserve essential cultural and practical knowledge for future generations.”

The vicious irony is that I am writing this from the heart of the industrial world—the epicenter of unsustainability and the locus for a very very uncertain future.  I’m sitting in a state-of-the-art auditorium replete with timed lighting, drop down large-screen projector, and extensive audio-video recording system.  It’s morning.  I’m on Columbia University’s Morningside campus surrounded by the collapsing concrete jungle that is New York City. 

I’m listening to Dr. Jeffery Sachs, a well known, respected, and sometimes despised economist who heads up the ambitious U.N.’s Millennium Economic Goals.  He is earnestly warning the half-awake college students—a good portion of them still in their pajamas and probably more who are still hung-over from the weekend—about the precarious nature of the economy.  They start to arouse a bit about as Sachs has interrupted his regularly scheduled program of neat and easy supply-demand economics with straight lines and clean projections to give a brief description of the incredibly ugly group-think dysfunction that is now gripping U.S. economy like Charlton Heston’s cold dead hand.

When he finishes his fairly downbeat prognosis (this from a guy who is routinely criticized for being widely over optimistic), a girl in the class asks how this might affect her career possibilities upon graduation.  I zone out on Sachs’ response.  All I can think about is how utterly unprepared most people are here in the U.S. to cope with the coming challenges swirling around the Venn-diagram intersection of global economic collapse, peak oil, and global climate change. 

For any problem, I find it’s always helpful (for me at least) to formulate a “to do list”:

1) Grow a garden and raise small livestock (and buy as many seeds as possible, potatoes are a particularly good survival food www.Seedway.com, www.Fedcoseeds.com)

2) Get an energy audit and weatherize your home (and purchase a high efficiency wood burning stove www.vermontcastings.com)

3) Join or start a relocalization group (www.Relocalize.net)

4) Preserve and store food (can never have to much to share with your neighbors)

5) Make and eat local meals with your family and neighbors

6) Get healthy and quit bad habits

7) Learn a self-reliant skill (growing food, spinning and knitting, brewing beer, primitive living skills, etc.)

8. Volunteer in your community

9) If you don’t know about “Permaculture” or “biochar” find out what they are

10) Support local farmers (www.localharvest.org)

11) Reduce your fossil fuel and consumer culture addictions as quickly as possible

12) Purchase quality tools (such as crosscut saws and quality gardening tools www.crosscutsawcompany.com, www.earthtoolsbcs.com)

13) Find a constructive project to engage in (like building a solar dehydrator or starting a really beautiful compost heap)

14) Start local currencies in your community (www.FEASTA.org)

15) Start campaigns to get good folks who understand the issues at hand (peak oil and climate change) and the solutions (local self-reliance, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, “biochar,” and Permaculture) into office (see, for instance, the state senate campaign of Don Barber www.barberforsenate.com)

16) Re-envision your hopes, dreams, and expectations for the future we may have not expected but which seems all the more likely

Sure, the list isn’t all that great. There’s no cookbook instructions for the decline of industrial civilization.  But it’s probably not a bad starting place for most people.  (One of the least effective things you can do, by the way, might be blogging.)

Unfortunately, the default strategy for most Americans may be to sit around and wait until the Big-Macs run out (or perhaps until an easily-targeted scapegoat is identified by a rising demagogue.)  The possibilities of post-post-modern American society—with all its addictions to fossil fuel derived comfort, guns, clashing ideologies, and other shortcomings—could have the makings for a turbulent future.

And that is exactly why we have to get the word out that now is the time to prepare, to help those most in need (the poor and elderly), and to learn the skills we will need in a post-petroleum, post-Wall Street world. 

The most critical things are not material, of course, but are the relationships we have cultivated over the years—our relationships to our neighbors, to our loved ones, and to our bioregions.  As the faith in the dollar runs out, it’s time to invest in what really matters in life: friends, forest gardens, family, sustainable skills, soil, waterways, seeds, love, and community. 

By Ryan Hottle

When I hear the stock market has fallen,
I say, “Long live gravity! Long live
Stupidity, error, and greed in the palaces
Of fantasy capitalism!” I think
An economy should be based on thrift,
On taking care of things, not on theft,
Usury, seduction, waste, and ruin.

From “Some Further Words”
Wendell Berry

The bailout plan that went before Congress failed yesterday, but congressional leaders are scrambling to draft backup plans to rescue the ailing American economy. The most egregious aspect of the 700 billion dollar “bipartisan” plan—and the reason I was glad to see it fail—was that it focused almost entirely on bailing out the corporate miscreants who have been looting money from the American people, instead of focusing on the root causes of the problem or on helping the general public at large. (See the list of economists against the bailout plan.)

I draw four important conclusions from the current economic situation. First, a system based on endless greed was always bound to fail. It shouldn’t be so surprising. A worthy anology might be the fact that selfish people who act only out of self-interest usually end up unhappy and self-defeated.

Second, a system based on extraction of resources from far-away lands (whether oil from the Middle East or borrowed money from China) is an inherently unwise and vulnerable economic pollicy.  And we need only to look at history to tell us the fate of civilizations that became dependent on expansion and imperialism as a modus operandi for continued growth.

Third, a system based on exploitation of the environment and of people is necessarily unsustainable. In the long term, you simply can’t keep people down forever and you can’t go on destroying your land-base forever. Eventually the people rise up and eventually your land-base will no longer support you.

Fourth, a system of exponential growth simply doesn’t work on a finite planet.

The single question going through my mind is, “To what extent should we try to salvage this economic system when we can easily see that it is inherently unsustainable and unjust?”

I think the US economy is worth salvaging if for only two reasons: to prevent widespread chaos and violence, and to help solve the grave and growing threat of climate change.

If it is able to be salvaged, the abovementioned problems must be addressed: radical reform is needed. Internalize the externalities. Value communities, health, ecosystems, and happiness over greed for monetary wealth and material possession. Create an economic system that is based on equilibrium and balance instead of infinite growth.

The following is my idea of a bailout plan that would actually start addressing some of the core issues affecting the economy, that would simultaneously help the country prepare for the coming challenges of global climate change and peak oil, and that would focus on helping the American public at large instead of solely focusing on bailing out the corporations.

1) Stabilize the Economy but Not at the Taxpayers Expense
Some sort of government intervention in the form of spending taxpayer dollars to stabilize the economy seems almost inevitable at this point. However, we should be as prudent as possible in the ways that we spend this money. Investors who took risk to make profits should not be bailed out at the public’s expense.

Mechanisms to recoup every single penny spent by taxpayers to bailout companies in a certain period of time should be included in the legislation. CEO salaries of companies participating in the bailout should be limited to the average U.S. per capita income: $44,000. Equity shares should be distributed to every America taxpayer who helps these companies get bailed out. The Fed should explore options of insuring bonds and assets instead of simply buying without knowing their true value.  

Let’s find out what these companies owe, how much bad debt they have, and if private companies will buy them out before we step in to bail them out with taxpayer’s dollars. If we are much more cautious and deliberate about how we go about this, we may be able to limit the amount spent to somewhere around $100 to $200 billion dollars.

2) Make an Investment in Something that Pays Back Big Time: Conservation and Efficiency
If we truly want to make an investment in the future that will stimulate the economy and protect the American public we should start developing programs to increasing household energy conservation and efficiency. It would put a yearly paycheck in the hands of every American homeowner for the next thirty years (with increasing payouts every year due to rising energy costs) with a single one-time investment that would conservatively payback in roughly 5 to 10 year–at current rates. 

Spend $200 billion on a program to increase efficiency and conservation in U.S. homes by providing matching funds for up to $5,000 in total money paid-out for Energy Audits and Weatherization work for U.S. households. The money could be recouped by charging citizens who took advantage of the program $250 dollars per year (which would likely be half the amount saved each year) until the household paid back the original amount borrowed. This revolving borrowing program would allow the program to generate significant savings with no taxpayer money being spent in the long run.

US households, on the other hand, would be saving significantly. There are 130 million homes in the US with an average use of 10,700 kWh per year (or roughly $1300 spent on electric per year per household) and, roughly, $1000 on heating costs per year per household. The average household could likely save 20 to 30 percent of this money after having an Energy Audit and Weatherization and Efficiency work completed on their home.

At a 20 percent savings on electricity and heating fuel, we could expect to see US households save $450 per year. At 30 percent savings this number jumps to $680 per year. The total savings generated from 130 million US households saving 20 percent on heat and electric over a 10-year period would come out to $592 billion dollars!

3) End Giveaways of Public Money to Private Companies
Ending all subsidies to Oil, Gas, Coal and Ethanol Industries could save us somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 billion dollars plus per year. The Corn Ethanol Industry alone is subsidized at the tune of $11-12 billion dollars per year. After we do this, we can look into enacting serious windfall profit taxes.

4) Cleanup Wasteful Government Spending
The Bush Administration has presided over the greatest expansion of government spending since WWII. In the coming years of economic tightening, we simply cannot afford the costs of big, inefficient government with its high paid bureaucrats, consultants, and corporate welfare recipients. As a country, we’re going to have to find ways of growing strong on less. Highway expansion is a good place to start cutting money. We don’t need more roads. We can get people off of social services by providing good, meaningful jobs that grow the economy.

5) Start a Green New Deal
Cleaning up government waste is not in opposition to sound public investment. I truly believe we are going to need a new FDR and a new Green New Deal to pull us out of this economic chaos we find ourselves in. Imagine a new an improved Civilian Conservation Corp (we could call it the “Civilian Sustainability Corp”) providing jobs to the millions of unemployed (and soon to be unemployed) weatherizing homes, building community gardens, erecting wind turbines, planting groves of fruit and nut trees in every community, and mounting solar panels on rooftops by the millions.

We need to build and rebuild the US infrastructure including light-rail, a new Smart High Efficiency Smart Grid, and Carbon Negative Heat and Power Stations (i.e. Biochar Production) across the country.

6) Lower Taxes on the Working and Middle Class
It’s time to get rid of the income tax. Why should we be taxing people for working? It makes no sense. We should be placing taxes on things which we are trying to dissuade. We could shift our tax base from an income-based system to a Carbon-based Tax system so that we start putting a real cost on the most dangerous thing that has ever confronted humanity: global climate change as a result of anthropogenic Greenhouse Gases of which CO2 is the most important.  For more information on this see the work being done by the Carbon Tax Center.  

7) End the Foreign Policy of Invading Sovereign Countries
We’ve spent $558,000,000,000 plus on the war in Iraq (not including Afghanistan). That’s over $100 billion dollars per year. Whatever your politics, history teaches a clear lesson about military expansion, imperialism, and empire: it doesn’t work and it eventually leads to civilization collapse. Extracting ourselves from Iraq will not be easy because it’s a problem the Bush Administration created from which there is no good solution.  But, when it comes to the bottom line, it is clear that we need to figure a way to get out of there–the sooner the better.

8. Support Local Sustainable Agriculture through Sound Economic Policy
Local and sustainable agriculture is soon to become the most critical social, economic, and political activity as access to cheap fertilizers, cheap oil, and massive farm subsidies dry up and as the world’s climatic cycles begin to unpredictably change.  (Read Richard Heinberg’s essential discussion about the importance local, sustainable food production.) The sooner we invest in local sustainable agriculture, the safer, more self-reliant we will be. Require all public institutions (public schools, colleges, hospitals, jails, etc.) to source food locally from sustainable family farms. Create incentives to encourage young people to become farmers and to help them purchase land by taking money away from massive farm subsidies to enormous corporate conglomeration operations and wealthy people who get paid not to farm and who have never even farmed their land to begin with.

9) Universal Healthcare for All
Pass sweeping Universal Healthcare measures to alleviate businesses from the burden of providing healthcare to workers, while providing healthcare to the 50 million people who don’t have basic health insurance and the other 20 million who are under-insured. Combine this with aggressive programs of holistic and preventative care and treatment and we could lower health care costs astronomically in this country.

To most Washington politicians and to the average Wall Street Journal-subscribing reader, the above proposed bailout plan would seem like an odd assortment of radical and strange proposals contrived by some sort of hippy-enviro freak.

To those knowledgeable about the most significant underling forces driving the economy (energy, food, health and climate) this plan would seem the most rational course of action.  Passing a piece of legislation that would seek to reduce energy use, limit military expansionism, reduce atmospheric CO2, and focus on helping those out at the bottom rather than bailing those out on top–would merely represent the first step in addressing the long road of challenges that await us in the 21st century.

It’s unlikely Washington is going to adopt these sort of vital policies anytime soon.  It’s going to take a number of crises before the politicians, corporations, and the consumer culture realize that the utter mess they have created extends far past the so called “mortgage crisis.”   But that doesn’t stop caring, compassionate, and determined citizens from implementing these measures at the community and regional scale. Soon enough, when the realization hits them, the politicians will be asking us to explain these solutions to them.

We have but one beautiful planet to protect and but precious little time to do it in. What we choose to do—or not to do—in the next five to ten years will make all the difference. Be prepared to work hard and work together—that’s the only way we’re going to win!

Compiled by Ryan D. Hottle

“Biochar has enormous potential.  When scaled up, it can take out gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere.”

Dr. John Mathews, Macquarie University
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2007/aug/tech/rr_biochar.html

“Foster pyrolysis based technologies in Australia. These technologies convert crop waste into fuel and charcoal (which can be used to enhance soil fertility and store carbon long term). Using this technology and natural gas, we should be independent of foreign oil imports by 2025. This will involve the development of much infrastructure in rural Australia.”

Dr. Tim Flannery, Macquarie University, Australian of the Year 2007, Author of “The Weathermakers”
http://www.theweathermakers.org/

“In other words, producing and applying bio-char to soil would not only dramatically improve soil and increase crop production, but also could provide a novel approach to establishing a significant, long-term sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide.”

Dr. Johannes Lehmann, Cornell University, Chairman of The International Biochar Initiative Board of Directors
http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/cvjohannes.htm

“Carbon sequestration in soil also has significant potential. Biochar, produced in pyrolysis of residues from crops, forestry, and animal wastes, can be used to restore soil fertility while storing carbon for centuries to millennia. Biochar helps soil retain nutrients and fertilizers, reducing emissions of GHGs such as N2O. Replacing slash-and-burn agriculture with slash-and-char and use of agricultural and forestry wastes for biochar production could provide a CO2 drawdown of ~8 ppm or more in half a century.”

Dr. James Hansen, Columbia University, Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/

“The potential to generate large quantities of carbon negative energy in a form that can replace petroleum-based liquid transportation fuels is a major advantage of [biochar production]. Extrapolating this strategy to a global scale coupled with substantial increases in energy use efficiency and greater use of nuclear and other non-CO2 generating energy sources, humanity could actually start decreasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.” 

Dr. David Laird, USDA National Soil Tilth Laboratory
http://agron.scijournals.org/cgi/reprint/100/1/178

“Much as the green revolution dramatically improved the developing world’s crops, terra preta could unleash what the scientific journal Nature has called a ‘black revolution’ across the broad arc of impoverished soil from Southeast Asia to Africa. Key to terra preta is charcoal, made by burning plants and refuse at low temperatures. In March a research team led by Christoph Steiner, then of the University of Bayreuth, reported that simply adding crumbled charcoal and condensed smoke to typically bad tropical soils caused an ‘exponential increase’ in the microbial population—kick-starting the underground ecosystem that is critical to fertility.”

 National Geographic Magazine
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/09/soil/mann-text

“Researchers trying to replicate the fertility of terra preta have concluded that its secret is in the charcoal. Work by soil scientists like Laird, Johannes Lehmann of Cornell, and Mingxin Guo of Delaware State University suggests that the benefits of supplementing soil with charcoal - which they call ‘biochar’ to distinguish it from the fuel of backyard barbecues - could be dramatic, widespread, and durable.” 

The Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/04/27/the_future_of_dirt/

“The knowledge that we can gain from studying the Amazonian dark earths, found throughout the Amazon River region, not only teaches us how to restore degraded soils, triple crop yields and support a wide array of crops in regions with agriculturally poor soils, but also can lead to technologies to sequester carbon in soil and prevent critical changes in world climate.”

Dr. Johannes Lehmann, Cornell University, Chairman of The International Biochar Initiative Board of Directors
http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/cvjohannes.htm

“Well these Terra Preta solutions are in some ways or certainly for some purposes are a better solution, a superior solution to anything that’s been brought up so far. What the process basically involves is taking any biological material, that could be crop waste or corn stalks or whatever, forestry waste, even human sewage, and partially burning it in the absence of oxygen so that you get a synthetic gas at one end of the process that you can then burn which is hydrogen rich, not so much carbon in it, but hydrogen rich, you can burn that for transport purposes or to generate electricity and at the other end of the process you get charcoal. And the great thing about charcoal is that it is a very stable form of carbon.”

Dr. Tim Flannery, Macquarie University, Australian of the Year 2007, Author of “The Weathermakers”
http://www.theweathermakers.org/

“It has been found that, with some soils and crops, productivity can be increased eight-fold. For the atmosphere that’s a treble whammy – fossil fuel left in the ground, stable biochar carbon in the soil, plus increased labile carbon bound up in the life-cycle of the greater weight of crops and their in-soil roots.  Devoted researchers are working in developing countries to realize these benefits for indigenous communities, passing the treble whammy on to farmers on the ground…”

Dr. Peter Read, Massey University, International Biochar Initiative Board Member
http://globalclimatesolutions.org/2008/09/10/biochar-defended/

“[F]inite reserves and rapidly increasing demand for oil will inevitably force world economies to abandon oil as the primary source of energy. No single solution to these challenges will likely ever be found; however, [biochar production offers a] vision for an integrated agricultural biomass–bioenergy system that could make a significant contribution to the solution to both [climate change and peak oil] and have the added benefits of enhancing soil and water quality.”

Dr. David Laird, USDA National Soil Tilth Laboratory
http://agron.scijournals.org/cgi/reprint/100/1/178

 “With a one-off addition [of biochar], the soil quality appears to be permanently improved.”

Dr. Mingxin Guo, Delware State University
http://www.desu.edu/advancement/pr/press_release.php?article_id=381

“Biochar can be used to address some of the most urgent environmental problems of our time—soil degradation, food insecurity, water pollution from agrichemicals, and climate change.”

Dr. Johannes Lehmann, Cornell University, Chairman of The International Biochar Initiative Board of Directors
http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/cvjohannes.htm

“Not only has biochar the potential to raise high yield rates of corn another 20%, but we believe there is a real possibility the char trial could also result in evidence that could point the way to dramatic improvements in water quality, which could have far-reaching beneficial consequences.”

Dr. Lon Crosby, Farmer and Agricultural Consultant with Heartland BioEnergy
http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/taxonomy/term/611

“Terra preta [biochar] moves us from dependency to empowerment, from depletion to abundance, and from destruction to renewal.”

Lou Gold
http://lougold.blogspot.com/

By Ryan D. Hottle

It’s an absolutely inspiring concept to realize that with a bit of ecological ingenuity, appropriate technology, and hard work, we can actual reverse desertification and produce healthful, sustainable foods, fibers for clothing, and fuel for heating, cooking, and electrification—as Geoff Lawson describes it, “Greening the Desert.”  

Now image we take this “Permaculture” approach to reversing desertification and we add to it Carbon Negative Energy production that supplies us with Biochar, a powerful charcoal-based soil amendment that improves nutrient and water retention in soils.

Water scarcity, drought, and desertification are only going to intensify as the global average temperature continues to rise, and global weather patterns shift. Though some areas may actually benefit from changes in the climate (such as Northern Canada and Russia) most will suffer from unpredictable, heavier, and less frequent rainfall patterns. Dry areas will undoubtedly be hit the worst.

In “Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet,” Mark Lynas describes the threat to the western United States (which is dependent on the pumping of fossil water reserves from the Olagalla reservoir that only has a 20-30 supply left for irrigation) as such:

“In a world that is less than a degree warmer overall, the western United States could once again be plagued by perennial droughts—devastating agriculture and driving out human inhabitants on a scale far larger than the 1930’s calamity.”

For Africa and other third-world countries the situation is even more dire:

“As always, drought will play a key role. Agriculture in Africa’s semiarid tropics is largely rain fed rather than based on irrigation, so is highly vulnerable to climatic shifts. North Africa could lose up to 20 percent of its rainfall, whereas in southern areas decreases of 5 to 15 percent will come right in the middle of the growing season. Agricultural modeling studies for the tropics as a whole project crippling declines in wheat, corn, and rice production.”

Without the economic or infrastructural means to respond to such a crisis, the sheer number of people affected could be absolutely massive.  Thus, climate change is at as much a moral-ethical crisis as it is an environmental one.  It is incumbent upon us-especially us in the priviledged countries-to do all we can to help those in need.  

As always, the solutions are out there. Rainwater catchment and storage, drip-irrigation technology, improved seed varieties, Permaculture-based planning including swales, ponds, and on-contour design, and Biochar production from Carbon Negative Energy offer an incredibly well-outfitted sustainable toolbox.

We have but one beautiful planet to protect and but precious little time to do it in. What we choose to do—or not to do—in the next five to ten years will make all the difference. Be prepared to work hard and work together—that’s the only way we’re going to win!

By Peter Read

Peter Read is a member of the Advisory Board of the International Biochar Initiative and an Hon Research Fellow with Massey University’s Centre for Energy Research. 

The International Biochar Initiative met this week in Newcastle (on Tyne) to advance the scientific understanding and policy role of this new boy on the block. And it’s under attack, even though it has a key role to play in addressing the threat of abrupt climatic change, such as a sudden, possibly several meter, rise in sea levels sometime this century.

But first, what’s biochar? It’s finely divided pyrolyzed biomass prepared for soil improvement – any sort of biomass such as wood chips, lawn mowings, sewage sludge, kitchen waste, animal husbandry effluents, corn stover and other crop wastes, etc. – that is heated with little or no oxygen (pyrolyzed) till volatile components are driven off (and available for processing to sustainable biofuels) with the remaining porous and carbon-rich material subsequently loaded with nutrients e.g. through exposure to compost or nutrient-rich boiler flue gases.

It is to be distinguished from charcoal, which is coarsely divided pyrolyzed wood, prepared for barbeque or other cooking fuel or for artist’s material (though otherwise useless charcoal dust from the charcoal making can be processed to biochar like any other finely divided pyrolyzed biomass).

So what’s it got to do with abrupt climate change? Distinguished Australian climate scientist Will Steffan, speaking to the Wellington Climate Conference last year said “One thing that really does worry a lot of us is the idea of a single aggregate tipping point for the earth as a whole – a shift to a state that may be much less amenable for human life”. Since then both theoretical climate modeling and climatic observation suggest that a tipping point may be near, with a point of no return, beyond which there is nothing we can do to get tipped back again, possibly following not long after.

The possibility of such a disaster is evident from studies of climate change over the last half million years which show many sudden temperature increases of several degrees within a few decades, linked to sea level changes of several meters. This link is thought to be due to the collapse of large land-based ice masses, such as, on a relatively small scale, the loss of the Larsen Ice Shelf a few years back, creating a vast ice island in the Southern Ocean.

So what are the policy implications of that? Like Noah, when he learned on high authority of a possible flood, we could get to be prepared, we could build an Ark. With the warning from Will Steffan, what form should our Ark take? An expert workshop I convened in Paris a few years back concluded that we need to be prepared to do better than reduce emissions, as is aimed for by the Kyoto Protocol. We need to be ready to actively take carbon out of the atmosphere and then put it somewhere safer.

Taking it out of the atmosphere means grow a lot of stuff, say trees – every ton of tree results from taking nearly two tons of carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere. Putting it somewhere safer means using the biomass of trees in ways that both keeps fossil fuel in the ground (Kyoto-fashion emissions reductions) and also prevents the Carbon that had been taken from the atmosphere getting back there – what can be called carbon removals.

Biochar does just that, providing it is based on sustainable commercial plantations, where harvested trees are replaced with new plantings that grow to maturity over the following years, or on biomass wastes co-produced with commercial food crops, resulting in synergy with food production, not competition. Done globally, and on a sufficiently large scale, carbon removals could restore carbon dioxide to pre-industrial levels by mid-century – far ahead of anything possible from Kyoto-style emissions reductions.

Interest in biochar sprang from archaeological studies of pre-Columbian civilizations in the Amazon basin. There it was found that large populations had been able to thrive, supporting themselves on the infertile yellow clay jungle soils by creating black earth (what is nowadays called terra preta in Brazil) through the accumulation of biochar residues from cooking fires.

Soil scientists involved in the Newcastle conference are investigating this fertility. It has been found that, with some soils and crops, productivity can be increased eight-fold. For the atmosphere that’s a treble whammy – fossil fuel left in the ground, stable biochar carbon in the soil, plus increased labile carbon bound up in the life-cycle of the greater weight of crops and their in-soil roots.

Devoted researchers are working in developing countries to realize these benefits for indigenous communities, passing the treble whammy on to farmers on the ground – providing the policy settings post 2012 deliver a value stream for the carbon benefit, one of the concerns at the IBI meeting. That can then be added to the value stream from the bio-oil by-product of the pyrolysis process, and the value stream from increased crop production. But not always: in some soils there’s no gain in crop productivity and in some there is even a reduction. So there is urgent need for research to find out where is best, which is what the IBI meeting is also about.

So why is this multi-win approach to the imminent threat to the survival of planet earth as we know it under attack?

Published by “eGov” it proclaims “International Biochar Conference uses False Claims to Promote Dangerous Technology”, not waiting for the meeting to take place or to proclaim anything. ‘Campaigners’ warn the IBI will be misleading governments with claims that biochar can curb climate change and improve soil fertility. This from one lady who is world renowned for swimming with dolphins off Northwest Australia and another deeply involved with the Pacific Indigenous People’s Environment Coalition – a group that will doubtless thank her sincerely if her actions see their homelands sink below the ocean waves.

Neither seems particularly well versed in soil science or knowledgeable about the carbon cycle. Almuth Ernsting adds that the IBI board members are well aware that science does not back their claims, citing Professor Lehmann’s confirmation that there are no long term experiments to support them. Now Lehmann is a good and honest scientist and would not shrink from the reality that interest in this new boy on the block is, unsurprisingly, recent. So it is to be expected that no long term human experimentation has yet yielded results regarding long term carbon sequestration. But Mr Ernsting cleverly twists his words by implying there is no evidence of improved fertility – in fact there is plenty, as he well knows and would report if he were honest. And there is more than one way to scientific knowledge – observing natures’ experiment with biochar left in the soil by pre-historic civilizations provides plenty of evidence that biochar yields very long term sequestration indeed.

Whatever can possess these presumably well meaning people? It seems they are driven by hard cases, and it is well known that hard cases make bad law. There is much to be learned from bad experience with early biofuel projects – early biochar projects don’t exist, since biochar work is all recent. This can ensure that land usurpation and tropical forest destruction have no place in the future pattern of land use improvements, based on investing in and caring for the soil so that it can deliver the food fibre and fuel that will be needed by 9 billion people a very few decades ahead. These people want to throw out the baby with the bathwater, bad law indeed when this baby can not only deliver the needed food fibre and fuel, but also grow up big, to save us from climatic catastrophe.

By Ryan Hottle

Biochar may be the single greatest solution humanity has to mitigate and adapt to the threat of global climate change.  Through the process of creating biochar (called pyrolysis) it is possible to simultaneously produce clean energy, vastly improve soils, and capture significant quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The source of the material used for making biochar can be a wide variety of feedstocks including waste agricultural products (e.g. nut shells and rice hulls), urban lawn waste (e.g. leaves and tree trimmings), poultry manure, fast growing trees (e.g. poplars and willows), sewage sludge, saw dust, and grass-based biomass (e.g. switchgrass.)

Biochar is also widely recognized as providing a means of reducing deforestation by offering alternatives to slash-and-burn agriculture. Many proponents of biochar hope it will increase economic well-being and sustainability of local indigenous communities. The appropriate use of the technology could benefit third-world countries as a highly efficient method of cooking and using local biomass resources.

An example of how pyrolysis applications could be used to benefit third-world communities using appropriate scale for home cooking and heating. Image of Robert Flanagan's biochar cookstove.

Community-scale biochar power generation facilities could work in tandem with solar and wind based renewable energy systems to produce energy while the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing. Using Combined Heat and Power (CHP) systems for biochar production may be among the most sustainable methods by which we can heat and power our homes in the future.

Clearly the potential benefits of biochar are significant.

A somewhat strange attack-piece circulated by a few small organizations, however, would make you think otherwise. An article entitled “International Biochar Conference Uses False Claims to Promote Dangerous Technology in the name of Climate Change Mitigation,” has recently begun circulating the internet in response to the International Biochar Initiative’s second annual meeting in Newcastle, United Kingdom.

In the article they claim that Biochar is a “scheme for profiteering off of the crisis of climate change,” and that “vast areas of land would have to be turned over to monoculture plantations to produce enough biomass.” They claim that biochar production “will accelerate global warming,” and that “the IBI board members are well aware that science does not back their claims.”

Unfortunately, this belligerent attack on the International Biochar Initiative and on biochar, in general, is unfortunate, unhelpful, and extremely dishonest.

Myth 1: Biochar requires that we plant monoculture plantations

As described at the beginning of this article, biochar can be derived from a large variety of feedstocks and need not require monoculture plantations. Indeed, biochar’s powerful soil improvement characteristics may be a critical component to reforestation efforts as well as a significant element of sustainable agricultural practices, particularly in the tropics.

Myth 2: Biochar will accelerate global climate change

Dr. James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, has recently pointed to biochar (and the work of Dr. Johannes Lehmann) as being potentially the most critical component to carbon sequestration and climate mitigation in his most recent paper “Where Should Humanity Aim?”

Myth 3: There is no scientific basis for biochar

A significant amount of research has been conducted on biochar by universities, institutions, and private companies across the world and on practically every continent. More research remains to be done, as biochar is a novel suggestion in light of the unprecedented threats of global climate change and energy scarcity. The data suggest a clear link between biochar and improved soil fertility, clean energy production, and significant carbon sequestration.

I think it unfortunate that this campaign has been launched by a group of “environmental organizations.” While their concerns over continued deforestation and indigenous communities are legitimate, their unsubstantiated hack job is not.

Many of the people working behind the scenes to promote biochar as a sustainable solution to climate change are concerned about the very same issues. I invite those who are responsible for writing and circulating the article to open a dialog with the biochar community instead of releasing dubious press releases. A good place to start would be on the Biochar Listserve available at: http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org.