The Carbon Underground: Reversing Global Warming
‘If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current levels [398 ppm.] to at most 350 ppm’¦’ – Dr. James Hansen
Since Dr. James Hansen, a leading climatologist, warned in 2008 that we need to reduce the amount of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere to 350 parts-per-million (ppm) in order to preserve life on Earth, little has been done to get us there.
It’s getting late. If we’re going to preserve a livable Earth, we the global grassroots, must do more than mitigate global warming.
We must reverse it.
But how?
Hint number one: not by politely asking out-of-control corporations and politicians to please stop destroying the planet.
Hint number two: not by pinning our hopes for survival and climate stability on hi-tech, unproven and dangerous, ‘solutions’ such as genetic engineering, geoengineering, or carbon capture and sequestration for coal plants.
Hint number three: not by naively believing that soon (or soon enough) ordinary consumers all over the planet will spontaneously abandon their cars, air travel, air conditioning, central heating, and fossil fuel-based diets and lifestyles just in time to prevent atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases from moving past the tipping point of 450 ppm or more of CO2 to the catastrophic point of no return.
We can reverse climate change by sequestering several hundred billion tons of excess CO2 using the ‘tools’ we already have at hand: regenerative, organic farming, ranching and land use.
And we can make this world-changing transition by mobilizing a vast green corps of farmers, ranchers, gardeners, consumers, climate activists and conservationists to begin the monumental task of moving the Carbon Behemoth safely back underground.