[PAA-Discuss] Pyrolising the Planet

[Ron and Kris Graham]

I don't know, Lee. I need to do more research on biochar before I can answer
you correctly.

 

Kris

 

  _____  

From: Lee Loe [mailto:leeloe at igc.org] 
Sent: Sunday, March 29, 2009 3:23 PM
To: graham2639 at mindspring.com; discuss at paa-tx.org
Subject: RE: [PAA-Discuss] Pyrolising the Planet

 

What I had read was that by turning under the vegetable waste and letting it
rot IN THE SOIL the soil is built up. It was in an article about organic
gardening as compared to the use of chemical fertilizers. Nothing about the
control of CO2. What is in the smoke, or is there any, when you burn this
stuff? I think making charcoal means no smoke??? Lee

 

  _____  

From: discuss-bounces at paa-tx.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at paa-tx.org] On
Behalf Of Ron and Kris Graham
Sent: Sunday, March 29, 2009 12:20 PM
To: discuss at paa-tx.org
Subject: [PAA-Discuss] Pyrolising the Planet

I went to Monbiot's website and found a later post regarding charcoal and
the burial of same in the soil. It seems he has had responses from the
people he mentioned in my prior post.

 

Kris

 

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/03/27/pyrolising-the-planet/

 


 <http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/03/27/pyrolising-the-planet/>
Pyrolising the Planet 


Posted March 27, 2009 

The debate over biochar hots up.

By George Monbiot. Published on my Guardian blog, 27th March 2009

Well that got 'em going. So far James
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/24/biochar-earth-c02>
Lovelock, Jim
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/25/hansen-biochar-monbiot-re
sponse>  Hansen and Pushker Kharecha, Chris
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2009/mar/24/response-biocha
r-chris-goodall>  Goodall and Peter Read
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/27/biochar>  have all
responded in the Guardian to my column on biochar. 

Reading their responses, I realise that it was unfair of me to include James
Lovelock and Jim Hansen on the list of those who have been suckered by the
charleaders. Their position is more nuanced than I made out. Chris Goodall,
to his credit, has accepted that he was too bullish about the technology.
The points he makes in its defence seem fair and well-reasoned. 

On the other hand, I wasn't harsh enough about Peter Read. In his response
column today he uses the kind of development rhetoric that I thought had
died out with the Indonesian transmigration programme. 

To him, people and land appear to be as fungible as counters in a board
game. He makes the extraordinary assertion that "degraded land" - which he
wants to cover with plantations - is uninhabited by subsistence farmers,
pastoralists or hunters and gatherers. That must be news to all the
subsistence farmers, pastoralists and hunters and gatherers I've met in such
places. Then he repeats the ancient canard that, by denying such people the
opportunity to have their land turned into a eucalyptus
plantation/hydroelectric dam/opencast mine/nuclear test site/re-education
camp or whatever project the latest swivel-eyed ideologue is trying to
promote, we are keeping them in poverty. 

Has he learnt nothing from the past 40 years of development studies? Does he
not understand that development is something that people must choose, not
something that can be imposed on them from on high by megalomaniacs? 

As for the "unused potential arable land" he wants to use, that could apply
to most of the surface of the planet that possesses a soil layer:
rainforest, wetland, savannah - you name it. From my office window I can see
a perfect candidate for his attentions: the brakes and thickets of the
Cambrian Mountains. I can also see the kind of crop with which Read would
cover them: the sitka spruce plantations that blight the lives of everyone
who loves the countryside here. Yes this land is degraded, overgrazed and
poorly managed. But is there anyone who would prefer that it was all
converted to plantations? 

But at least a debate is taking place. For far too long this technology has
gone largely unchallenged by environmentalists, fooled perhaps by Read's
cunning rebranding of charcoal as biochar, on the grounds - wait for it -
that this stuff is "finely divided". By all means, as Hansen and Kharecha
recommend, let's use genuine waste - whether from crops, forestry, sewage or
food - to make charcoal. But let's stop the charleaders from pyrolising the
planet in the name of saving it. 

www.monbiot.com

 

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