Do not fall into the narrative trap where you imagine owning an electric car or a new boiler is going to save us from climate change.
We as a planet emit 130 billion tonnes of carbon a year. We draw down 120 billion tonnes through existing biological systems such as trees, plants, and microbes. This means we have a 10 billion tonne deficit each year.
Out of 130 billion tonnes of C, the burning of fossil fuel amounts to 8 billion tonnes of carbon, so we have 122 billion tonnes that aren’t related to our driving or heating our homes. So where is this 122 billion tons of carbon coming from? How might we solve our warming planet if we focus on the 8?
Currently, grassland fires cover around 2 billion hectares a year at a carbon cost of 3 tonnes per hectare. Forest fires cover around 350 million hectares, at between 20-200 tonnes of C per hectare.
Many of you will have heard me moaning about the fires burning here in Spain. Now you might understand why. It’s all about the land stripped of plants that might otherwise draw down CO2 and remove it from the global heat dynamic.
Plants not only draw down CO2 but they literally make rain. This rain cools the planet.
The only way to save our planet is to plant it green and learn how to work with plants to best mine the minerals in our soil that make life possible, and create the excesses life on earth frequently produces.
If you want to buy a Tesla, please do, but don’t think you are standing on safe ground because you have. If you really want to have personal impact, save the money and use it to plant trees.
Did you know that there have been 23+ civilisations in human history?
All before us have collapsed with the average civilisation lasting between 300-400years.
All have collapsed because they have degraded the soil’s capacity to hold and release water through the mismanagement of carbon.
Today we have the power to defy this norm because we now understand what it takes to fix the broken hydrological system, push back on desertification and thus we can repair the planet’s natural cooling system before we repeat human history.
COP26…pfft
The reality is that those people are designing the 2 degree future. They are not therefore, trying to avoid it. You can’t be a gamekeeper and a poacher at the same time.