September, 2020
Washington – Just when things look increasingly bleak for the future of the human condition and the planet itself, along come reasons for hope.
A climate change fix, based on current technology, now seems possible. It's not based on sketchy ideas like blocking the sun or fertilizing the oceans with iron. It does not rely excessively on conversion to renewable energy sources, or on conservation of energy, which must be undertaken but not as the sole solutions. The proposal is to create marine permaculture arrays (MPAs):
Marine permaculture arrays (MPAs) are man-made irrigation grids for growing kelp forests, equipped with wave-powered pumps and pipes that can restore overturning circulation — the process that moves warm and cold water and nutrients around the depths and surface waters of the Atlantic — lost due to climate disruption. They can be towed out to sea, establishing new kelp forests and restoring fisheries in what are increasingly becoming ocean deserts. MPAs are relatively inexpensive to build, and the resulting kelp and fish can be sold commercially. MPA inventor Brian von Herzen estimates that the arrays can remove CO2 at a cost of about $80 per ton, while producing kelp products that could dramatically offset the production cost and boost fisheries. ... According to von Herzen, growing new kelp forests in just 1 to 2 percent of the oceans would sequester enough carbon to restore the climate, provided we do our part to reduce the carbon intensity of our civilization.While this would require a huge investment, it would not necessarily be larger than our current effort to combat the coronavirus pandemic. This is a lesson to learn from pandemic macroeconomics. The payoff would be enormous in savings from not having to fight the ravages of forest fires and rising sea levels. The food produced in the MPAs would feed billions.
Which raises a question of food production in the U.S. farm belt, which badly needs new approaches. Some of those are outlined by Art Cullen of Storm Lake, Iowa, who writes:
Rural fortunes can be salvaged, along with the planet, if we pay farmers to sequester carbon by planting grass instead of corn, put their livestock back on pasture and out of unsustainable feedlots, and rotate crops with minimal tillage. Regenerative agriculture, as it is called, using old-fashioned crop-livestock rotations, can eliminate agriculture’s greenhouse-gas footprint and actually start drawing down carbon and planting it in the soil.Those suggestions have been expressed in this blog for years, but now there seems to be more widespread acknowledgement of the need to change farming practices, which is cause for optimism. Too bad such changes were not incorporated into the last Farm Bill, but it's not too late if Congress will only act decisively in 2021.
But what of the coming U.S. elections, which might result in re-election a president who discounts science and technology, even in the face of avoidable disasters like pandemics and climate change? Who can be optimistic if he is re-elected?
While such an election outcome would doubtless be a grave threat to the planet, other key countries are still in the hands of responsible, democratically-elected officials. Foremost among them are Germany and Japan, which ironically are the major countries America defeated in WWII, but then re-created as viable democratic governments. They are now proving themselves up to formidable challenges, meeting crises with scientific and governmental competence. A legacy of American wisdom back then, we can hope, may yet prevail over American foolishness now.
MPAs, regenerative agriculture, leadership from abroad: they're causes for optimism.
