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  • From: Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Carbon farming as solution to climate change?
  • Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 15:11:33 -0700

Kudos to Darren for making a non-defensive and polite reply to Rain's insult
(intended or not) to his work. I can't imagine someone as sophisticated and
deeply experienced in permaculture as Darren ever suggesting that carbon
farming is the one "cure" to be "marketed," or that it excuses continuing
business as usual.

I'd like to see us speak from a place of respect for the other people
practicing permaculture here, instead of assuming that they are ignorant
about very basic principles. Darren posts have been consistently of high
quality here, so first hand observation ought to take precedence over
2nd-hand stories.​

And if Darren gives up air travel, there will be far fewer carbon farmers in
the world, thus less sequestration. I'll bet that Darren's net carbon
footprint, given all the countless thousands of trees planted through his
work, and the number of people he's reached, is very far in the negative.
I'll quote Larry Santoyo here: It's not your footprint that matters, it's
your handprint.

Let's keep the big picture in view.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com




On Apr 19, 2010, at 11:32 AM, jamesdavid Sneed wrote:

>
> Rain, I have a couple thoughts on carbon renewal in our soils. It is a
> valid idea, but I've adapted it to my own patterns as a result of decades
> of food-growing from Oregon to Alaska.
> First, I have grown cautious about using, on a global scale, any one "cure"
> for our long-term screw-ups. That's partially because a problem that is
> several thousand years in the making cannot be fixed in a decade or so of
> effort, and also because I have noticed that every time we use technology
> to fix what we've screwed up, we make it worse or create new problems.
> Also, there seems to be a tendency even in organic food production to want
> to do everything on a grand scale instead of as a garden.
> The second thought is that instead of using a complex system that can be
> sold in workshops or books as the "cure", I found ways to incorporate the
> carbon usage into simple gardening. I use a woodstove, and instead of
> burning everything to fine ash, I clean out the stove when there is still a
> lot of charcoal present, and put it into the compost to feed the microbes.
> The potash with it doesn't seem to slow the microbes and worms a bit. The
> chunks of carbon are slowly consumed, a long-term supply of energy for
> microbes and the life forms that live upon them.
> Many pre-metal native groups around the world used limited burning to
> prepare temporary fields, and they didn't garden them for more than a year
> or two afterward, so they didn't wear out the soil's supply of the
> nutrients that were released by the fire. Often these plots were less than
> a quarter acre, were gardened intensively for one to two year, and then
> allowed to regrow while they still had enough nutrients left to get things
> started, growing soft hardwoods that deposited many leaves, and then rotted
> themselves into the soil.
> I spend a lot of time sitting in Nature and watching how Nature grows
> plants and animals. Our gardens should be a reflection of Nature, us in the
> garden and a garden within ourselves.
>> Date: Sat, 17 Apr 2010 11:52:04 -0700
>> From: raincascadia@yahoo.com
>> To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
>> Subject: [permaculture] Carbon farming as solution to climate change?
>>
>> I recently talked to a fellow permaculturist that attended a presentation
>> by Darren Dougherty on carbon farming as a solution to climate change. I
>> doubt his perspective was representative of everyone who was present, but
>> he was touting carbon farming as a cure-all, in the same vein as a
>> technological fix that absolves us of the need to make radical social and
>> personal lifestyle changes (like minimizing air travel). My understanding
>> is that carbon farming has the potential to be a big part of the solution,
>> but is limited mostly to temperate soils that are capable of storing
>> carbon (without the more intensive charcoal method) and is still in the
>> beginning stages of investigation. It would require the same level of
>> political will that the other solutions would require in order to get
>> landowners and farmers around the world to actually implement it, so
>> really has no strategic advantage over the other solutions. In my
>> opinion, almost all the changes
>> that are needed to stop climate change have side benefits and should be
>> pursued regardless of climate change, so carbon farming is not special in
>> this regard. Could somebody give me a realistic assessment of the
>> potential of carbon farming?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Rain
>>
>>
>>
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>> And: http://www.richsoil.com
>
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