12.16.2015

Soil Carbon Sequestration By Organic Farming and Perennial Plants is the Solution to Pollution


All of COP21's solutions to our excessive greenhouse gas buildup centered on techno fixes -solar, wind, CCS scrubbers, geothermal generation, hydro-power, etc - because all of them are money makers for the Bankers and Billionaires' Club in one way or another. All of them have huge amounts of fossil fuels embodied in every phase of their production, shipping, construction and maintenance. All of those stages are financed by backers and generate interest payments and shareholder 'investment' potential.

The one solution overlooked at COP21 surprise, surprise, was the only one that doesn't require huge investments of money or energy inputs - soil carbon sequestration through organic agriculture and perennial plants. The experts in soil conservation, organic farming and perennial grass restoration agree biodiversity and soils rich in organic matter are the best strategy for re-sequesting GHGs...and that these long used and proven approaches can mitigate current environmental damages while creating a cleaner and safer world for future generations.

The problem with this low impact set of solutions is that they create very little opportunity for the rich to get richer. Science says "The only safe, proven, low-tech and large-scale way to remove of GHGs from the atmosphere is through plant photosynthesis and carbon sequestration." But instead the merchants of industrial agriculture's fossil fuel based fertilizers, the chemical industries pesticide, fungicide and GMOs and the various vultures who finance them and capture the governments that are supposed to regulate in our best interests are the ones that have leverage at all the climate negotiations.

"Healthy soils are critical for global food production. Healthy soils not only are the foundation for food, fuel, fibre and medical products, but also are essential to our ecosystems,  playing a key role in the carbon cycle, storing and filtering water, and improving resilience to floods and droughts." says FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva [Food and Ahgriculture Org. of the UN]

For starters, a spoonful of healthy soil can contain more living organisms than there are people on the planet. In total, these organisms contain more carbon than the atmosphere and all the world’s forests combined. Soil is a living organism, dirt is what corporate ag, turns it into. As Vandana Shiva explains: "Biodiverse organic farms produce more food and higher incomes than industrial monocultures. Mitigating climate change, conserving biodiversity and increasing food security can thus go hand in hand."

The wide variety of perennial plants that evolved in their varied environments over 100s of millions of years can be short-lived (only a few years) or they can be long-lived like trees. They include a wide assortment of plant groups from ferns and liverworts to the highly diverse flowering plants like orchids and grasses.


The roots of perennial grasses, like the Switchgrass above, often account for up to 80 percent of total plant weight. These thrifty perennials, with their long roots hold on to soil, water, and fertilizer which means less of all types of pollution including carbon pollution of the atmosphere. Every year, healthy soil absorbs and converts billions of tons of atmospheric carbon into biomass sequestered in the soil through the process of photosynthesis.

or short term wealth for a few that soon destroys the interconnected biosphere that supports all life.
COP21 and capitalism's captured governments and media lapdogs always choose the latter...
how about you?