I’m increasingly convinced that carbon sequestration on industrial scales is the only serious way to solve this problem.
This is akin to trying to prevent the dust bowl[0] with giant vacuum cleaners. The environment is a system. We are a function of it, not the masters of it. We need to address the feedback loops causing this crisis that we are creating.
Even if that would work - As others have pointed out, we don't have the luxury of time to deploy industrial scale carbon sequestration. And even if we did - this type of thinking still discounts nature's value. [1] Why do we think it is easier to develop and deploy industrial scale carbon sequestration equipment when we have plants that are pretty damned good at doing just that? [2]
We need a total perspective change here. Nature doesn't need saving, the concrete deserts that are cities need green roofs and trees. We need to stop useless commutes and start working from home where applicable. We need to realize that lawns are an ecological disaster. [3]
But above all else, We need to make environmental damage illegal and stop allowing companies to profit off of it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl
[1]https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/this-is-why-putting-a...
[2]https://www.thoughtco.com/which-trees-offset-global-warming-...
[3]https://earther.gizmodo.com/lawns-are-an-ecological-disaster...
Yes, we do. It's just that it costs money, and nobody wants to pay up. Same goes for all other realistic climate solutions that we have, unfortunately.
https://www.reddit.com/user/thisisbillgates/comments/auosel/...
I did an estimation once for Western Europe using FAO stats[1] and by switching to a vegan diet we could roughly double the size of the forests, that's a massive scale! It'll help fighting the climate crisis and it'll also help solving the species extinction crisis in Western Europe. And the cool thing is that we don't need to wait for all the human population to switch overnight to a vegan diet, reducing meat and dairy consumption is a perfectly valid first step that everyone can do! The more people switch diets and the more space will become available for rewilding.
We can already see plant based diets becoming more and more popular, and at the same time it seems that flexitarian diets are also getting quite mainstream. I think there's hope on that front at least.
[1] https://vinc.cc/essays/changing-our-diet-for-a-wilder-world/
If quitting meat sounds tough, consider that I’ve heard the only effective thing to do would be immediately cease all ICE production/use. But oddly feeding cows seaweed would cut their methane production something like 90%.
It’s good to keep all options on the table but seaweed is far from the silver bullet some people want it to be.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612452/how-seaweed-could-...
Which also explains why the flatulence of 60-100m buffalo before the industrial era didn’t warm the planet.
I imagine some locales might be worse for that problem than others, yeah?
Do you have any info you can share?
So it (at a high level, barely read place) sounds like standard fertilizer proves to have negative effects at scale when used where there might be the need for methane breakdown.
Do I have that about right? I’ll have to read that at length later, but it seems so simple that I feel I have it wrong. Because otherwise it seems like an easy fix—even if it means production has to decrease and price has to go up for cattle meats.
Hard problems always feel this way. <insert slavery reference>
1. No way to stop eating animals 2. No way to stop driving/flying 3. Don't ask me to change. YOU change.
=> no change in status quo
People can be vegan just fine, it's only a matter of habits.
Nutritional balance isn’t as well understood as many people think.
I’m all for reducing the scale of meat, but for someone like me—who’s been urged to eat more red meat as a result of my deficiencies on top of supplementation—ceasing to do so will put my health back at risk.
I don’t need to eat it every day, but it’s a near essential part of my diet.
Problems of nutrient uptake are the reason medical researchers and professionals aren’t just telling us to go ahead, subside on non-nutrient cellulose fibre cakes and just pop a pill containing all essential nutrients and calories every day.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/dietary-suppl...