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Wednesday, March 25, 2009

THE PROMISE OF BIOCHAR

Exhausted or bored or confused by the previous debate? Want a simpler straight-forward presentation? You are in luck. Here are two fine videos.

2 comments:

PeaceFromTrees said...: My dear friend Lou, what has gotten into you? I guess this is the mental meander part of your site? And wow... you sure meander pretty well!

I mean WTF? I thought you were a forest defender Lou?

I mean look at the video... Advocating for the rainforest's most fertile soils to be wasted and barren as flat square mono-crop farmland for human over-use while excluding use by all other species?

Why not integrate our food needs into Biodiversity's recovery rather then further dismantle and destroy biodiversity to the exclusion of all beings except humans?

And if biochar is so sustainable what happened to culture who practiced this methodology and why are the still surviving indigenous cultures of the amazon predominately forest-based cultures who have fully-integrated their food needs into encouraging the fecundity of biodiversity?

Bio-char places no value, care, or concern on the restoration of ecologic diversity! It's yet another better mouse trap that makes mass killing of living beings more valued, and more "climate-friendly."

Bio-char places no value on locking up carbon as it already exists instead of unlocking the carbon to relock it up as yet another form of human over-exploitation of soil and the resultant overpopulation of humans, which in turn exterminates the diversity of life on earth as we know it...

Insanity and suicide perhaps?

Or maybe that's what human ambition really is? Or maybe those of us like Lou and I who block logging roads and stop logging because it's the right thing to know better than that?

Have you heard of the ten million malnourished children who live in garbage dumps in the Philippines for the sole purpose of finding wood scraps to create charcoal: http://bit.ly/QqvTp ?

Thank goddess for Monbiot crying foul on these delusional do-gooders who advocate turning the whole planet into charcoal, ash and greenhouse gas: http://bit.ly/Yp2R2

Long live the trees, Deane

Blog: http://forestpolicyresearch.org
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TreePoetry: http://bit.ly/2FbZnP; 3:25 PM
Lou Gold said...: Hi Dean,

Thanks for the rant. Let me respond to a few of your objections.

(1)What happened to me? As you know the environmentalists achieved something of a victory after 2 decades of struggle in the form of the "roadless area rule." I'm not sure of it's current status but basically it severely restricted the building of new roads into previously unroaded areas on public lands. This was an important victory but it came AFTER something like 450,000 miles of roads had been built and at a time when more than 90% of the old-growth forest had been cut. What happened to me is that I don't want to see the same kind of "environmental victory" in Amazônia.

(2)What happened to the terra preta dos indios populations in Amazônia is that they were apparently wiped out by the European diseases carried into the region by the conquistadors. Some of the present hunter-gather tribes may be remnants who survived through de-evolutionary process. Know one knows for sure. There are good speculative videos here and here
.

(3)What happened to Monbiot? Thank God for him. Yes, indeed! If you read the full exchange that followed his Guardian piece, you will see that he ends up saying that Pushker Kharecha's points "are reasonable." Pushker's important point is that they are talking about "waste derived char" and not new plantations. My understanding is that this is also the dominant view in the IBI.

At bottom line biochar is a way to make agricultural a bit more productive while improving soils and sequestering carbon.
It is NOT a way to reduce the rising levels of human consumption which are destroying ecosystems everywhere.; 4:27 PM