I grew up being taught El Nino isn’t a big deal and it’s just the seasons going through their normal cycle. But with Super El Nino, I finally bothered to read about climate change, and now it’s a rabbit hole I can’t get out of. I calculated my own personal carbon footprint, and I feel disgusted with myself :(
I looked up all the ways to decrease my own footprint- but now I learned that’s not enough, we also need to capture and lockup all the extra carbon that’s in the air now too.
I read about all the ways to do that, and I learned about biochar and it’s relatively the quickest way we have right now that locks carbon up for at least a century if done right.
So I thought about ways to make biochar that’s actually impactful, and of course it has to be a collective action not just the individual.
Now I’m thinking, why don’t cities adopt a biochar bin for their residents just like Stockholm? Is this something I can advocate for my own community?
The biochar part is a detail, all the other pieces need to be in place to optimize the benefit.
Carbon capture comes from planting more trees and not just leaving them there, but cutting them down when their growth rate slows and planting new ones.
Creating the bio char is a byproduct of using the plant mass to heat water for the district heating system, which is an extremely efficient method of heating homes and businesses.
Biochar as a byproduct, in contrast to landfill or burning in an oxygen rich environment comes from a method where carbon release is minimized. In landfills, it’s methane. In fire, it’s carbon dioxide.
You can advocate for local solutions! The magic here is that they found a mix that works well for local conditions. Your city or town may already be looking at things like this. If they publish a master plan or other planning documents they may include things on energy, waste, climate change, etc. They usually aren’t too detailed, but can point you to other things to look at.
That makes a lot of sense. I’ll look at my city’s website, maybe there’s some type of residential hearing I can attend or online plan I can read.
I think the most discouraging about this for me is that even though I’ve seen countless headlines about climate change, I’ve never really bothered to be curious about it until now. Now I wish I knew how to tell this to other people without sounding like alarmist.
The other thing to keep in mind is that it is not simply a matter of personal individual responsibility. The only meaningful way to address climate change humanely is to work toward dismantling global capitalism and building toward a socialist and communist new world.