All year, Albert Bates has been writing body-cam-style dispatches from the front lines of the highest-stakes game on Earth, which was touch-and-go right down to the last 24 hours. He gives us analysis and insight, color commentary on the players, striking and poetic vignettes, important quotes, references to new research and data, personal memoir and insight from 35 years of rolling the climate rock up the mountain, an assessment of where we stand and what we do from here, AND some hope, because the Paris Agreement is an unprecedented breakthrough.
Also, he describes how he and his permaculture colleagues showed audiences and individuals at the Paris conference a very large suite of proven and sophisticated agricultural, forestry, and people-empowerment strategies for removing CO2 from the atmosphere and sequestering it longterm in our soils. Many strategies pay back so fast they’re nearly free, and then keep paying forever, in financially valuable food, fiber, and energy, in satisfying employment, in community health and solidarity, and in removing carbon from the atmosphere.
The biggest news is that these proven forestry and permaculture strategies scale so fast that biological sequestering can begin significantly cooling the Earth within a short time, and none too soon. He quotes a new paper from NASA scientist James Hansen and 17 colleagues on the extreme risks of even a two degree rise (we’re at one-degree-plus right now). They cite the Permian Extinction of 95% of the Earth’s species 250 million years ago that was triggered by a lava flow in Siberia melting enough frozen methane to quickly spike temperature 6 degrees, and they say another degree of warming in the 21st century could trigger a sudden methane burp from melting permafrost and shallow seas that might even have greater impact than the Permian release.
We humans reduce this risk by acting NOW both to immediately replace fossil fuels with cheaper non-polluting alternatives and to quickly plant and grow tropical forests and global biochar-based permaculture that ratchets atmospheric carbon to pre-industrial levels—Albert Bates and his permaculture colleagues show: WE KNOW HOW TO DO IT, IT PAYS BIG, and IT EMPOWERS COMMUNITIES.
Albert’s Climate in Crisis: The Greenhouse Effect and What We Can Do 25 years ago was one of the first clear and simple explanations of the climate crisis, his The Biochar Solution: Carbon Farming and Climate Change 5 years ago was the first clear and readable explanation of how forests and agriculture can (and historically have) quickly and powerfully shifted our climate, and more research conducted around the world over the past five years has confirmed the biochar potential and spawned a new global industry. These beautifully written dispatches from the year-long COP21 marathon that just concluded with the Paris breakthrough finale are packed with insight, information, and good stories. I am deeply grateful for access to the newest information and research on real solutions that can work if we decide to work them. Thank you, Albert.
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