Carbon Farming

While I love the message of the video below, it points out poignantly that we have an issue with too much carbon in our atmosphere, and then moves on to solutions. The video even suggests clearly we have to reduce the amount of carbon we are putting into the atmosphere, but it does this with flippant disregard. Carbon along with other greenhouse gasses have already started to kick off positive feedback loops, this feedback means we have to do something urgently. Failure to initiate the solutions will cost lives but the most powerful thing we can do is less.

Fiona and I have been working towards a productive food, fuel and fiber system which sustains us with great food, an amazing life style we both love, a level of productivity in return for diminishing effort year on year, while the level of wildlife within that system grows year on year and all this also stores more carbon in both the trees, plants and the soil beneath them.

This is pointless if we don’t also stop doing or at least do less of some things.

We don’t fly because in one single annual return flight we could wipe out the positive effect of carbon storage of our whole system.

We drive less, much less than our previous life style and less by choice than we could if we wanted.

We use wood to heat our home, water and to cook with, but we still consciously heat our home to a lower temperature to keep our consumption of wood lower, we wear more clothes and sit with a blanket over our legs to save on wood.

We consume less, much less than the average person in the developed world, we buy less, use things for longer, repair what we can, reuse old thing other people have thrown out, re-purpose when it’s appropriate and re-cycle everything we can.

The top 20% of consumers are consuming 80% of the worlds resources, 80% of all energy is consumed by 20% of the global population. 80% of the minerals extracted 80% of all products produced are consumed by 20% of the global population. The fact that you are reading this on the internet makes you one of the 20%.

More carbon farming won’t change the course of climate change unless we all do less. “Less is more”