Allopathic Environmentalism ~ Carbon
The carbon cycles
Part 1. — Fundamentalism, the lipid cycle, and how nutrition is essentially about communication.
PART 2. — THE CARBON CYCLES
Part 4. — Conclusions and strategies ~ resilience
“The thing the ecologically illiterate don’t realize about an ecosystem,” Kynes said, “is that it’s a system. A system! A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche. A system has order, a flowing from point to point. If something dams that flow, order collapses. The untrained might miss that collapse until it was too late. That’s why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.” (Frank Herbert, Dune)
I can at last turn to the environment. Even more complex than the human body, the Earth is made up of intertwining systems within intertwining systems. Like the myopic focus on cholesterol as an isolated ingredient, in any discussion concerning climate change, one ingredient, namely carbon, typically takes up all the oxygen in room. In fact, we have international conventions and multilateral agreements about this most ubiquitous element and our need to mitigate it. Do I really need to remind people that carbon, with its four valence electrons, is the basis of life? From the structure of our DNA to the food we eat, carbon is at the heart of it all. Beyond the carbon within ourselves, the environment is also utterly dependent on carbon. Without the carbon cycling between the earth’s crust, the air, the soil, water, plants, and animals, this planet would probably look something like Venus and be altogether uninhabitable.
And yet, like the allopathic doctor, we treat carbon in our atmosphere much the same way we do cholesterol. We know there is a buildup. We can measure the increasingly high levels. And we look to science for a quick fix. Like the statin-triggering threshold of cholesterol of 190mg/dL, there is a similar widespread consensus of the numerical threshold of how much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere puts us at great risk. The doctor who is guided by numbers and parameters of normality is satisfied with any quantitative solution regardless of whether the root cause is addressed. As discussed in A. E. Part 1, if cholesterol builds up as plaque because of a disrupted lipid cycle, simply administering a statin amounts to a cover-up. If the patient continues to consume excess sugar and oxidized polyunsaturated fats, many other issues can begin to rear their heads, which, I suppose, are more opportunities to administer even more pharmaceuticals. When it comes to carbon, I am afraid too many endeavors of carbon sequestration are simply cover-ups. Such efforts may help reduce a small portion of our carbon emissions, but ignoring root causes ensures other related issues will also rear their ugly heads.
As is the case with cholesterol, carbon does not float around willy-nilly. To make any relevant statement about carbon, we need to understand it within a bare minimum framework of at least two cycles, two systems. Typically these are described as the slow and the fast carbon cycles.
The average person is vaguely familiar with the fast cycle. This is where carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is absorbed by plants, and even more so by phytoplankton in the oceans. The phytoplankton and plants use the carbon to either build their bodies or trade the carbon for nutrients. The dioxide part of carbon dioxide gets separated out and returned to the atmosphere. Animals, such as humans, breath in oxygen to use for energy and the byproduct is the carbon dioxide we exhale. As the quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is affected by the photosynthesis of phytoplankton and plants, there is a natural ebb and flow of concentration that follows the seasons of growth, giving the cycle a yearly rhythm. As large as the atmosphere is, and as resilient as the fast carbon cycle is, this seasonal ebb and flow, despite all the emissions from animals (including ourselves), barely registers any effect on overall temperature. The carbon is cycled into the atmosphere, then back into plants and animals and soil, and then returns to the air — a fairly stable exchange.
We also ingest carbon with every carbohydrate, protein, and fat we consume. While alive, like all living things, our bodies are a net carbon sink. Once dead, our decomposing bodies release the stored carbon back into the atmosphere. Consequently, the lifespans of animals and plants and trees are one more rhythm within this fast cycle.
Looking at the long history of the earth, the fast carbon cycle has proven rather resilient. In light of the cycle’s scale, the natural exchange of carbon that happens simply from growing the body of any living thing, the constant cycling of metabolizing while alive, and then decomposing as we return to the earth, is well within the boundaries of a healthy system. Much ado is made about methane emissions of cow burps. If my article, Beyond Mitigation, did not put the red herring of methane to rest, consider the fact that the methane cycle is part of the fast carbon cycle in the same way that all living things retain carbon in their bodies and then release it back when decomposing. The fermentation within the “stomach” of a ruminant is the decomposing of cellulose-rich living organism, i.e. grasses. The anaerobic byproduct is methane (CH4), which quickly oxidizes in the atmosphere into carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O). These will eventually return to the ocean, the plants, and the earth. So whether you are a marsh or a cow or a vastly more populous animal such as a human being, there is no legitimate concern that the carbon dioxide you exhale or the methane you burp or emit is going to throw the massive carbon cycle out of whack. Living organisms have been existing, metabolizing, and decomposing for billions of years, and actually play an essential role in cycling carbon from the air to the soil. Historically, the greatest variable to affect the overall concentration of carbon in the atmosphere is the tilt of the earth’s axis and the shape of its orbit around the sun. The changing proximity to the sun translates into periods of higher and lower radiation of the sun entering our atmosphere. Still considered as part of the fast cycle, the shift of the earth’s tilt and orbit is generally taken as a rhythm of around 30,000 years, and explains the regular occurrences between ice ages.
On the other hand, the second carbon cycle is called slow because its rhythms are measured in time-frames of hundreds of millions of years. Here is my simplified version. Water (H2O) falls as rain and combines with carbon to make carbonic acid (H2CO3), which slowly dissolves rocks, and the ensuing chemicals make their way into the oceans. In the seas, calcium carbonate (CaCO3) is made, which either is temporarily used by shelled oceanic animals, or is directly deposited to the ocean floor to make limestone. The slow but steady carbon captured within limestone accounts for over 90% of all carbon on our planet. The completion of the cycle, however, is as dramatic as the sequestration is slow. Tectonic shifts of the earth’s crust cause volcanoes, erupting enormous amounts of carbon back into the atmosphere, keeping the overall percentages of carbon within the earth and atmosphere relatively stable.
Rock made from calcium carbonate, however, only accounts for four fifths of stone containing carbon. The remaining fifth includes sedimentary mud that was full of organic material — basically carbon that once was part of living organisms. This once-living material was compressed and transformed into rock called shale, essentially a transfer of carbon from the fast cycle into the slow. If the mud was compressed faster than the organic carbon could decompose, this turned into coal, oil, or even natural gas — what we call fossil fuels (https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/CarbonCycle).
Here is the crux of this entire explanation of the two carbon cycles.
The burning of fossil fuels essentially amounts to moving ingredients out of the slow cycle into the fast cycle, much, much, much faster than the organic carbons can be transformed into shale or other fossil fuels. It is as if humans have added billions of tiny worldwide volcanoes to vastly increase the carbon erupting into the atmosphere, shifting the percentages of carbon within the earth and air. In light of the time-scale of the slow carbon cycle, this near-instant transfer of carbon back into the fast carbon cycle may turn out to be on par with other cataclysmic events.
It is a strategic and catastrophic error to not differentiate between carbon that has been naturally cycling through the air, living things, and the soil for eons, and the carbon that we are extracting from the slow cycle and releasing into the air. We have limited resources and limited time. We need to make our efforts count, mitigating carbon where it is actually throwing the cycle out of sync, and supporting the cycling of carbon where its flux is the foundation of a healthy ecosystem.
Naturally, the story of this carbon shift is much more complicated, as there are other cycles involved. Worth mentioning is the oceans’ carbon cycle, which is mitigating much of the atmospheric accumulation. Such oceanic sequestration of carbon has cascading repercussions, like the acidification of water and its effect on sea creatures. The truth is, we don’t rightly know what all will happen as we keep shifting carbon from one cycle to the other. One frame of reference can be taken from around three million years ago in the Pliocene Epoch, which was the last time we had as much overall carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as we do today. We estimate that the earth’s temperature was a couple degrees Celsius warmer on average than it is currently. A couple degrees may not sound like much, but for a system as large as the whole earth, this amount of change is representative of vast, almost incomprehensible, quantities. From this grand perspective, where we change the resolution of our focus to view the earth as a whole, it becomes apparent how finely-tuned the ecosystems of our planet are. Consequently, this overall increase of temperature is dramatically changing the face of our planet. From the melting glaciers, to the rising sea level, to the shift in seasons, we are in for the ride of our lives.
Unfortunately, carbon is predominately associated with the need to mitigate it indiscriminately, and from the perspective of the reductionist lens, we understand it primarily in terms of quantity rather than its flux through the different cycles. For all the awareness it has brought to important environmental issues, an organization like Bill McKibben’s 350.org remains firmly in a reductionist paradigm. Focusing on a threshold of parts per million is precisely the logic of the LDL threshold that triggers a prescription of statins. Quantitative thresholds outside the context of systems generally end up endorsing means that are inimical to the health of the very system one was originally trying to heal. I would like to explore two of these mitigating solutions, ones that seem, in isolation, to be quite appropriate — a technological solution and a natural one.
Let us start with the oh-so-promising technology that mirrors the slow cycle’s ability to sequester carbon into rock. The concrete industry is huge and one of the largest industrial contributors to CO2 emissions — the stuff is everywhere. Concrete is made with cement, which is from limestone. The process of obtaining cement from limestone (calcium carbonate - CaCO3 ) involves very, very high heat which ends up sending its carbon back into the atmosphere, leaving the manufacturer with simply lime (calcium oxide - CaO). On top of the fossil fuels used up to power such endeavors, the inorganic carbon escaping the limestone is also from the slow cycle. One company, called CarbonCure, with funding from Bill Gates, figured out a way to reinsert captured CO2 back into the cement mix, and under pressure, the CO2 combines with minerals to become none other than calcium carbonate. The other positive thing about this process is that the calcium carbonate actually makes the mix stronger, which translates into less cement needed. This hopefully turns into a trade-off financially so that the expenses in using this “green” technology are offset by using less cement — the expensive ingredient within concrete. So much carbon is sequestered that CarbonCure advertises that in one year they have accomplished what millions of acres of trees do in a year (carboncure.com).
Sounds great, right? Technological recapturing of carbon could be considered an improvement, but it is purely a mitigation — at best, a lessening of the increase of something bad. Expand the parameters slightly to include the carbon emission of the energy used at all levels of the industry to make concrete, including the energy to capture the CO2, and you have essentially achieved the difference of pouring water directly out of a pot versus through a sieve. One could make the argument that the process of CarbonCure actually transferred carbon from the fast to the slow carbon cycle, but you would have to do an in-depth analysis to see how much carbon was transferred to the fast cycle in order to produce the energy to transfer it back to the slow before you could claim any kind of net gain within the smallest of parameters. To compare this technology to trees is absurd for the simple fact that trees did not use any carbon from the slow cycle to make the forest.
So what about trees? If trees are not taking from the slow carbon cycle and are a carbon sink, are they not the perfect answer? There is a part of me that has always gravitated towards being a tree-hugger. I grew up on Tolkien and absorbed some of his anger at the treatment of Nature and trees in particular. As a kid, my favorite characters from the Lord of the Rings were Tom Bombadil and Treebeard, and at times I fantasized that my visceral despair at environmental destruction might be so powerful it could wake up some ancient force as it did for my favorite Ent. It is precisely because of this dendritic affinity that I respond so negatively to the glib, ubiquitous, and naive environmental solution of planting trees. We have essentially reduced the complex living organism of a tree into a Lego. In the trillion tree campaign, we have all the makings and dangers of a reductionistic solution. To see trees within the single parameter of carbon makes as much sense as to see humans through the same singular lens of a carbon sink. Only from the most mechanistic, reductionistic framework could the planting of trees be considered an appropriate compensation for carbon emissions. As if we were balancing a checkbook, we think this ‘positive’ environmental act will counteract the negative affects of pollution.
Studies put the number of species of trees somewhere around 60,000. Each of these species has its own unique niche it fills in an ecosystem. The mental act of reducing trees to a unit of pollution-cancellation amounts to little more than a “get out of jail free card” for the destructive practices of corporations that already lack any accountability. In response to this faulty thinking of tree-as-Lego, I hear Treabeard’s voice: Side? I am on nobody’s side, because nobody is on my side, little orc (The Two Towers). However, let us put aside all the tricky ecological logistics concerning which trees should be planted in which environments, let alone the question whether we simply want all our ‘natural’ spaces to be completely covered by forests. Within the broader perspective of the two carbon cycles, planting trees has little bearing on the carbon being moved from the slow cycle into the fast cycle. The prevalence of trees can be a tool to affect the fast carbon cycle, but cannot be expected to right the imbalance of burning fossil fuels.
This distinction is worth unpacking a bit more. In relation to the increasing global temperatures, deforestation and the decimation of soil and the carbon within is the insult on top of greater injury of burning fossil fuels. Like a perfect storm, the devastating agricultural practices and environmental destruction of ecosystems compound the climate chaos, but they remain a qualitatively separate issue from the carbon entering our atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels.
If the increase of atmospheric carbon was simply an issue within the fast carbon cycle, we would already have a handle on how to fix the problem, which absolutely would involve tree planting. Reforestation would also have an end goal, which would involve an equilibrium re-established, rather than an open ended ‘solution’ to compensate for the carbon coming in from the slow cycle. And remember that the fast cycle has several rhythms to it. One such rhythm was the life span of organisms such as trees, whose carbon sequestration is simply a function of the amount within their ‘bodies.’ When the tree dies and decomposes, the carbon will return to the atmosphere to be cycled again.
A longer rhythm of storing carbon involves non-forest soils such as pastures and grasslands. My profession involves a daily practice of sequestering carbon through rotational grazing. Our farm does this on our perennial pastures with minimal dependence on fossil fuels and plays its part in reestablishing the equilibrium of the fast carbon cycle. And yet, as others have pointed out, as essential as rotational grazing is to heal our soils, it cannot save us from the separate problem of carbon flowing in from the slow cycle. As powerful a tool as rotational grazing is for restoring our soils, sequestering water, and sequestering carbon, we have centuries of abuse to the land to compensate for and heal from. Only after such healing could we explore the possibility of such restoration as a further mitigation of other carbon pressures. Even then, it is doubtful that reforestation, rotational grazing, and regenerative agriculture in general, could ever compensate for the sheer quantity and speed of the extra surplus of carbon flowing in from the slow cycle.
Let me be clear. These natural solutions are utterly essential, as the disruption of the fast carbon cycle by itself is enough to have already put us in mortal danger. Getting the fast cycle back into a healthy equilibrium is a must and might even give us an extra buffer to mitigate the damage incurring from the carbon extracted from the slow cycle. But such mitigation remains as only a stop-gap measure. Our addiction to the burning of fossil fuels is going to take much more severe and comprehensive action than planting some trees or fixing our agricultural practices. As vital as these natural solutions are, they remain in the domain of fixing only the insult, while the more drastic injury has not been addressed.
