CARBON ON THE TABLE

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091210173613.htm

The USGS rapid assessment report (the link above is to the Science Daily article summarizing the USGS report) shows that most of the estimated additional forest biomass carbon sequestration capacity is accrued in areas currently occupied by agriculture and development. Beyond the scope of the report is the question of what kind of economic pressure would force a reduction in agriculture acreage to free it for replacement in forests.

There's only one change I can think of and that is change in the American diet to one consuming less animal products. Food-animal production consumes the greatest total amounts of land, fertilizer, pesticides, and water and is not only environmentally unsustainable but also irrational in terms of energy use.

Even algae-farm protein and fertilizer production, if the bulk goes into cattle production, would still be highly inefficient and unsustainable due to the extensive land needed for forage production. Forage production requires huge amounts of land, fertilizer, and water.

There is no foreseeable government action that would require Americans and others to modify diets away from a meat-centered one. Diet and transportation constitute a huge portion of an individual's environmental footprint. Eating less meat would free up land for forests, thus enabling greater carbon sequestration.

The USGS has laid the groundwork to show us it is possible that greater carbon sequestration can occur all around us. But, only you and I can elevate the maps and calculations to reality. It all begins at the dinner table (or fast-food drive-in lane).

WHERE WE GOING, CAPTAIN?

Those of us who became part of the wave of vegetarian life-style change, ca. 1970, understood that a meat-centered diet was unsustainable and that eventually many millions more would have a non-meat-centered diet thrust upon them by circumstances beyond their control. Those circumstances are coming to fruition today. Witness the upsurge in interactive prices of food and fuel. It is now clear to everyone that the two are intertwined and have planetary ramifications.

With huge increases in population--both here in the U.S. (the Pew Research Center projects that the U.S. will reach 438 million by 2050) and world-around (the U.N. projects 9.1 billion by 2050)--the food-and-energy nexus is now a life-and-death issue for several billion people and for the health of the Planet.

Also, with rapid and continuing globalization (the world acting as a single place), it seems to me that the world is increasingly OVER-DETERMINED (resulting from multiple and reinforcing causes) to the utmost degree. Our dietary and energy-use habits now have planetary impact. Buckminster Fuller, in his Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, convinced many of us 38 years ago.

The concept of over-determinancy should persuade that each of us is sitting in the captain's chair. With our hands firmly on the controls, where will each of us guide the Ship?