How the Soil Can Save Us from Many of the Threats of Climate Change
Article Review: “How to Halt Global Warming”
by James Sanner
How to Halt Global Warming for $300 Billion by Adam Majendi and Pratik Parija, Bloomberg Finance, L.P., October 23, 2019.
Soil a Key Player in the Solution around Climate Change
The beauty of the Bloomberg article (1) is that it points to how soil has such a large role to play as part of the solution for addressing carbon sequestration and ultimately many of the negative impacts of climate change. When we say there is too much CO2 in the atmosphere, it is usually coupled with placing blame on the excessive burning of fossil fuels. The fossil piece of all fossil fuel came from some biological origin. Essentially all life on Earth is carbon based.
The Flowing Carbon Cycle
Every day plants take in tons of carbon dioxide and emit tons of oxygen, while animals take in oxygen and emit carbon dioxide. Looking at this back and forth flow of atmospheric gas with living bodies could be considered as part of a larger biochemical cycle. If we were to step back even further and expand our perspective over much longer times, we can see how these processes impact the planet itself. The Earth has been around for over 4.5 billion years, and as geologic ages have come and gone life has been present on the planet for around the last 3.5 billion years.
Resiliency of Life is Built with Organization
Natural processes are subject to the second law of thermodynamics which indicates that areas with high concentrations of energy will spread out or disperse that energy, into areas which have less concentrated energy. This process explains why the delicious smells of food cooking in the kitchen (high concentration) flows out into other rooms (lower concentration).
We also see this all around us in nature in the form of weathering and erosion. The forces of weathering and erosion can be understood alternatively as being changes in the energy concentration of an area, or put another way, with the order or organization of the elements of the area. What this means is that an orderly forest, river or sea shore may be in relative harmony before a storm, but afterwards it is going to be in a state of greater disorder. Storms don’t blow through and fix problems and better organize things.
Where the laws of physics point to energy dissipating, and things becoming more disorderly, when we look around we don’t see complete chaos. This is because biological systems can concentrate energy and increase order. One of the defining characteristics of life is that it works to increase organization.
Plants Deposit Carbon into the Forest Floor
Life on this planet is carbon based, and carbon in the form of parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is able to be concentrated through the biological processes of plants to the point where the bulk of their bodies are made up of carbon. This organized carbon, in the form of living beings, gets deposited in forest floors, at the end of root tips and on sea beds, and those deposits over time become part of the geology.
Coal Stores High Concentrations of Carbon
The coal which is dug out of the ground, is the fossil remnant of tons and tons of ancient swamp plants which have been smashed together and heated in the Earth. That coal, just like the plants before it, is largely made up of carbon. Where a tree might be 10-15% carbon, in the case of coal, depending on the type being used it can range from around 60% up to 90% carbon. Because it takes millions of years to increase that concentration of carbon within the Earth, this is considered part of the geological cycle.
Burning Coal Releases High Concentrations of Carbon into the Atmosphere
Looked at more broadly, this journey can be seen as being part of the biogeochemical cycle. The way this cycle can be understood as looping around is that the unconcentrated carbon in the atmosphere is taken in by plants in the form of carbon dioxide. That .04% atmospheric carbon is taken up by plants and concentrated in their bodies up to around 10%. Then, over the course of millions of years, that plant carbon deposited into the soil becomes concentrated up to say 75% in the form of coal. When heat and oxygen are added to that coal it catches fire and releases that carbon back into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide, and so the cycle continues.
Carbon’s Connection to the Ground
Nearly all of that released CO2 has a connection to the ground, and through supporting the biology of healthy soils, the CO2 can again move back through biological processes into the earth. Understanding that this is all contained within the large biogeochemical cycle, the goal is to help move the carbon from its present chemical cycle (in the air), through the biological cycle (in plants), and again back into the geological cycle (in the ground).
2 Billion People Directly Affected
The Bloomberg article (1), mentions that degraded land directly affects 2 billion people. This degraded land produces the very undesirable conditions of reduced food production, reduced water quality, and decreased air quality. Where these are difficult conditions for any organism to live with, it has been projected in a recent publication of the journal Nature Communications (2) that in just a few decades over 150 million people will be displaced because they currently live in areas which by that time will be below the high tide mark.(3) So there is an urgent need to do something as quickly as possible.
Tech Solutions
To the point where they can be scaled out, the Bloomberg article (1) suggests that technological solutions have yet to develop. There have been ideas put forth for pulling CO2 out of the air with catalysts, polymeres or even through concrete which, as it cures takes in CO2. Some individuals are looking at more disruptive technological solutions which adjust nature itself, for instance environmental engineers like Harvard’s David Keith are going around the planet trying to convince world leaders that what we need are solutions like geo-engineering. Some of these approaches would release vast amounts of sulfuric acid into the stratosphere with the limited hope that it would just work to slow the worst of the coming impact.
Tech Intervention Caution
Many inventions and interventions, such as medications, have unintended side effects. Looking at the Earth we live on as a biological system it would be safe to argue that the soil is sick, and that that dis-ease is leading to reduced wellbeing of huge populations of people, plants and animals. The pedosphere (soil sphere) is the living skin on the outermost layer of the Earth. This skin is proportionally thinner than the skin on an apple and supports all terrestrial plants, and in turn animal. The soil is itself a dynamic ecosystem containing tens of thousands of unique species, and through modern development, chemical poisoning and agricultural misuse countless species of soil microorganisms have gone and continue to go extinct.
Seeing Extinction Before it is too Late
There are current surveys showing that the present rate of global species extinction is 1,000 times greater than natural rates of background species loss. Species are dying off all the time, that is just a part of living and evolution. The normal or average rate that species are dying off, is what is recognized as the rate of natural background species loss. The extinction rates which are currently being observed however, are so high that it noted that we are currently living in the sixth mass extinction event.
Unraveling of Stability
These lost species precipitate an unraveling of the stability and resiliency of the entire environment. The past notion of a food chain was shown as being lacking with Elaine Ingham’s publishing on the food web. She shows how the interrelated nature of the microbiology in soil really interacts like a connected web. This is a micro reflection for the rest of the higher order food web, and with any web, it may withstand the removal of a few strands, but at a certain point the whole connected web falls apart.
Key Approaches to Achieving Soil Health
The key for both getting the carbon back into the soil and increasing biodiversity has been spelled out in the research repeatedly displayed and successfully demonstrated through regenerative agriculture, agroecology, permaculture, and holistic range management.
Fertilizer is not a Sustainable Answer
The one area of Bloomberg article (1), which I am reserved in fully endorsing is around the insistence for the need of fertilizer. Specifically, the notion that inadequate fertilizer results in the soil losing its nutrients. Land disturbances, like those created by mismanagement or natural disasters, cause the soil to lose its integrity. This loss of resiliency allows the soil to be weathered to the point where those eroding forces result in the soil losing its nutrients.
Regenerative Practices Promote Succession
Having spent a lot of enjoyable days in many old growth forests I can attest to their health and vitality; so one has to ask, who fertilizes those forests? I fully appreciate that forests and croplands are different in a lot of ways, but they come from the same parent mineral materials, and are supported by the same biological processes. Those old growth systems are so diverse in part because they have grown for so long without the negative influence of significant disturbances. Regenerative practices, like those mentioned above, work directly to minimize or at least intentionally utilize disturbance as part of their approach. This prolonged stability allows for the area’s successional processes to speed up the evolution of the habitat.
Healthy Soil Life Equals Healthy Plants
It is the abundance of soil biology which enables the nutrients to be available to the plants in old growth systems, and when that biology is lost through agricultural abuse or in deforested lands, a surrogate nutrient delivery system may be needed. Fertilizers are needed to the degree that the biology has become so degraded or deficient that it is unable to effectively work as a symbolic partner with the plants and the living soil. That biology working in harmony with the plant roots can effectively increase the surface area of the roots by a hundred times. This means that with healthy soil biology a plant can have access to a hundred times more water and nutrients.
Who’s Really Benefiting from the Use of Fertilizers?
The irony about saying that fertilizer is needed is that unless it is in the form of fresh or composted animal manure most fertilizers are salt based, and to a microorganism in the soil, that salt can create deadly conditions in the soil. So putting down fertilizer because there is weak biology in the soil can perpetuate the condition of having weak soil biology, resulting in a lack of soil resiliency, and a lack of root mass. Sadly, those gaining the most from the use of fertilizers are those selling those fertilizers, as the use of that tool can create a condition of dependence as opposed to sustainable independence.
Photosynthesis a Carbon Sequestration Process
The health of the plant’s roots are so critically important because they are one of the main channels through which carbon is able to be deposited into the soil, as that carbon is given off in the form of a root exudates. These root exudates are literally carbon deposits made by the plant in the form of carbohydrates and sugars, sometimes referred to as the cakes and cookies. The plants sets out these treats into the soil to attract beneficial biology to live on and around its roots.
The plant directly takes chemical carbon from the air, organizing it through the biological process of photosynthesis, and often pumps over half of that carbon back into the ground in the roots and soil. The health of the plant’s roots are so critically important because they are one of the main channels through which carbon is able to be deposited into the soil, as that carbon is given off in the form of a root exudates. the more healthy the roots are in the ground, the more carbon there is that is being sequestered out of the atmosphere.
$300 Billion in Cost Savings
So is there a tough road ahead of us, yes. Are there solutions, yes. Is it going to be expensive, that is a relative answer. The approach outlined in the Bloomberg article 1 suggests the cost at $300B, but the property expected to be affected in the next few decades by rising sea level in the US state of Florida alone is valued at $350B. So really, the regenerative approach can be considered as a cost savings; saving property, livelihoods, crop lands, habitats and is able to be implemented through a strategy which nature has shown to be highly successful year after year, for the last few hundred million years.
Endnotes
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1 How to Halt Global Warming for $300 Billion by Adam Majendi and Pratik Parija, Bloomberg Finance, L.P., October 23, 2019.
2 "New elevation data triple estimates of global vulnerability to sea-level rise and coastal flooding". Scott Kulp and Benjamin Strauss. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12808-z. October 29, 2019
3 "Rising Seas Will Erase More Cities by 2050, New Research Shows". Denise Lu and Christopher Flavelle. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/29/climate/coastal-cities-underwater.html. October 29, 2019.