The Carbon Ranch: Fighting Climate Change One Acre at a Time

If you are concerned about climate change - and you should be - then these are not the best of times. The decision by the U.S. Senate to postpone climate legislation, perhaps indefinitely, coupled with the failure of the United Nations summit in Copenhagen last winter to produce an international treaty limiting greenhouse gases means Business-as-Usual continues to rule.

Meanwhile, the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has risen to 391 parts-per-million (ppm) - 40 ppm above what many scientists consider a level necessary to keep the planet from becoming ice-free. And it's rising at a rate of 2 ppm per year, far faster than at any time in the Earth's paleoclimate record.

What to do? Some see salvation in high technology, including the 'capture' of CO2 at its source, to be stored underground, or the 'scrubbing' of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere by hundred of thousands of boxcar-sized filtering machines. The trouble is, these technologies, even if practical, are years away from deployment. And the climate crisis, as evidenced by recent headlines, is happening now.

Which leads to an idea: what about low technology? As I see it, the only possibility of large-scale removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere is through plant photosynthesis and related land-based carbon sequestration activities.

There are only four natural sinks for CO2: the atmosphere, the oceans, forests and other perennial vegetation, and the soil. The atmospheric sink is overflowing with CO2, as we well know, and the oceans are fast filling up (and becoming alarmingly acidic as a result). Forests have a habit of being cut down, burned up, or die and decompose over time, all of which release stored CO2 back into the atmosphere. That leaves soils.

The potential for CO2 storage in soils is three times greater than the atmosphere. And since two-thirds of the Earth's landmass is covered with grass, the potential impact on the climate could be gigantic. In fact, NASA's Dr. James Hansen, the nation's leading climatologist, postulates that 50 ppm of CO2 could be sequestered in soils over the next fifty years.

How? By employing the low technology of green plants, which pull CO2 out of the air and fix it into carbon compounds that are stored in the soil.

In my experience in the arid Southwest, there are six strategies that can increase or maintain the carbon content of grass-dominated ecosystems. They include: (1) planned grazing systems using livestock, especially on degraded soils; (2) active restoration of degraded riparian and wetland zones; and (3) removal of woody vegetation, where appropriate, so grass may grow in its stead. Maintenance strategies include: (4) the conservation of open space, so there is no further loss of carbon-storing soils; (5) the implementation of organic no-till farming practices; and (6) management of land for long-term ecological and economic resilience.

Fortunately, a great deal of the land management 'toolbox' required to implement these strategies has largely been tried-and-tested by practitioners and landowners. Over the past decade, these strategies have been demonstrated individually to be both practical and profitable.


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