The Biochar Debate: Charcoal's Potential to Reverse Climate Change and Build Soil Fertiility (The Schumacher Briefings) - Softcover

Bruges, James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 160358255X ISBN 13: 9781603582551

Publisher: Chelsea Green Pub Co, 2010

Synopsis

The Biochar Debate is the first book to introduce both the promise and concerns surrounding biochar (fine-grained charcoal used as a soil supplement) to nonspecialists. Charcoal making is an ancient technology. Recent discoveries suggest it may have a surprising role to play in combating global warming. This is because creating and burying biochar removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Furthermore, adding biochar to soil can increase the yield of food crops and the ability of soil to retain moisture, reducing need for synthetic fertilizers and demands on scarce fresh-water supplies.

While explaining the excitement of biochar proponents, Bruges also gives voice to critics who argue that opening biochar production and use to global carbon-credit trading schemes could have disastrous outcomes, especially for the world's poorest people. The solution, Bruges explains, is to promote biochar through an alternative approach called the Carbon Maintenance Fee that avoids the dangers. This would establish positive incentives for businesses, farmers, and individuals to responsibly adopt biochar without threatening poor communities with displacement by foreign investors seeking to profit through seizure of cheap land.

The Biochar Debate covers the essential issues from experimental and scientific aspects of biochar in the context of global warming to fairness and efficiency in the global economy to negotiations for the future of the Kyoto Protocol.

About this title

Review

Biochar is a relatively new word in the green lexicon, but one you ll hear more about going forward. It isn t a silver bullet, but it may be a useful help in the climate challenge this slim book will let you think knowledgeably about it, and start to act in your own backyard. --Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

A brilliant, readable review on the critical need to restore our degraded lands back to fertility be it to sequester greenhouse gases naturally, support forests, improve soil moisture or increase crop yields. Bruges outlines how supporting natural terrestrial sequestration is the cost-effective, proven practice to extract carbon from the atmosphere, and that this can be augmented via the use of soil amendments such as biochar. He concludes with examples that elucidate why tying biochar-based land-management solutions to one-size-fits-all market incentives risks time, money and public health. Our students say, It s a 101 must read a strong recommendation, indeed. --Alison Burchell, Geologist, Natural Terrestrial Solutions Group

The buzz of interest and activity around biochar in recent years is accelerating. In this concise but engaging book, James Bruges gets us up to speed with the ecology, economics and politics of biochar. Over three decades of speaking about and teaching permaculture, I have come across very few sustainable technologies that appear to change the rules about how to work with nature. Biochar is one of those few. Could biochar be the simple solution by which we can save civilisation from the twin crises of resource depletion and climate catastrophe? This sounds like an absurd claim, but not one that can be easily dismissed. James Bruges steers a course between the hope and the hype. --David Holmgren, co-originator of the Permaculture concept and author of Future Scenarios

From the Back Cover

Charcoal-making is one of the oldest industrial technologies, and in the last decade there has been a growing wave of excitement about its potential for combating climate change. This is because burying biochar (fine-grained charcoal) is a highly effective way to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In addition it can increase the yield of food crops and the ability of soil to retain moisture. Some people are concerned that awarding carbon credits for biochar could have seriously damaging outcomes. The Biochar Debate agrees, but describes an alternative approach, called the Carbon Maintenance Fund (CMF), that avoids the dangers. This would give every government the incentive to enable businesses, farmers and individuals to increase their country's carbon pool. It is based on remote sensing by satellite, a tried and tested technology, and would be applied globally each year to measure the increase or decrease of carbon in plants, soil and roots.
The Biochar Debate sets out experimental and scientific aspects of biochar in the context of global warming, the global economy and negotiations for the future of the Kyoto Protocol. It concludes by encouraging all gardeners and farmers to use biochar to help prevent climate change.

Edition details

• Publisher: Chelsea Green Pub Co
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 160358255X
• ISBN 13: 9781603582551
• Binding: Paperback
• Illustrator: Friese-Greene David
• Number of pages: 120