Marin Carbon Project — Airminers Log 005
When we manage for carbon, we solve for water, nitrogen, nutrients, and economics everywhere.
John Wick is the co-founder of the Marin Carbon Project, or MCP, a carbon farm in Marin County, California, that demonstrates how we can use soil to improve health, the economy, and to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The Marin Carbon Project also enables verification of carbon removal, a critical piece of carbon offsets markets. [1]
John is also on the Project Drawdown Board of Directors, [2] and works with scientists from Bay Area labs at the University of California Berkeley and Davis, as well as a broad spectrum of agencies to create viable and effective land management practices.
We sat down with him last year to understand what role the Marin Carbon Project plays in the global effort to mine carbon from the air. Enjoy!
What is the Marin Carbon Project approach, and why is it the thing we need?
We established the Marin Carbon Project in 2008 to answer the question, can we increase durable soil carbon in agricultural soils and create carbon credits? We are a volunteer consortium of agricultural scientists, agencies, organizations, institutions, as well as local land managers, experts, and advisors, who collectively conducted the rigorous science required to establish the scientific understanding of the biogeochemical mechanisms and processes within managed agricultural soil systems, including measurement of the net fluxes of Greenhouse Gases in and out of the system. The MCP has found a suite of practices [3] that are known to be climate beneficial. Our Compost Application to Grazed Rangeland Protocol is known to sequester durable soil carbon that is additive, permanent, has no leakage or externalizations, and qualifies for California Environmental Quality Act carbon credit transactions.
How much carbon dioxide will the Marin Carbon Project remove from the atmosphere this year?
I think that’s our human foible. I think we talk in terms of units and it’s our biggest mistake. I think what we’re missing is talking in terms of the flows of the units. That’s where my whole attention has been. What are the flows? In our human society we touch organic materials all over the place, and so by looking at where those flows are happening, what can we change about our social behavior to start closing these loops.
What is your scale up plan?
Our plan from the beginning required that anything that we created was replicable, scalable, and broadly applicable. By working with State and Federal Agencies, we created an approach to agriculture that can be distributed across the Country and around the world, and it has begun. The MCP is inspiring mimes, and carbon is at the center. When we manage for carbon, we solve for water, nitrogen, nutrients, and economics everywhere.
What is your biggest challenge?
Social Justice. How do we include everyone in this equally, with fairness and equitable distribution of and access to resources like land and water? Rather than the notion of competing for depleting resources, there’s a whole other version of an economy based on increasing resources through use by managing for the natural phenomena of photosynthesis: the transformation of sunshine, rain, and soil minerals into nutritious products that support all forms of life.
What would be a big win in the next five years?
Newspaper headline: “Now That We’re Measurably Cooling The Planet, What Does Success Look Like?”
We belong on Earth. We are learning new dashboards. We thought there was just a reverse gear. It turns out this thing also has forward gears, a steering wheel, a heater and air conditioner. It’s quite a lovely ride. And it runs on solar power, so rather than pushing like we have been doing, we can climb in, turn it on, and drive it away! Let’s have a nice life with 7.5 billion people, soon to be 9 billion, where every single thing every single person does contributes to stabilizing the climate and increasing the resources from which we produce more. That’s within reach right now, and it requires our understanding, and measuring, and monitoring, and mapping, and modeling, and then managing our relationship to the natural systems upon which we rely. Life comes from life, and life is good!
Are there any global goals that you feel strongly about?
The focus of my wife and mine is to cool the planet Earth and change the pH of the oceans. The IPCC 5th Assessment [4] has established that emission reductions alone are no longer going to stop runaway global temperatures. We must develop an ongoing strategy of removing atmospheric carbon that is sustainable. That’s exactly what we’ve done with the MCP, while also increasing the resource base upon which we rely: healthy, water holding, productive, carbon-rich soil. We are now looking at human consumer behavior, the largest single economic force on earth, as the driver. If we can provide material solutions for human culture - food, fuel, fiber, and flora, from restorative agricultural systems that rebalance earth’s carbon cycles, we will actually cool the planet and change the pH of the ocean. We know that one pound of wool produced on a carbon farm system removes 6 pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, whereas a pound of restorative agriculture sourced wool removes 7 pounds of carbon dioxide. So the more wool you produce and the more clothing you buy, the quicker we can cool the planet. That’s amazing!
ABOUT
Airminers.org, the index of companies and projects mining carbon from the air, launched on 15 Nov 2017, with 49 companies and projects listed. It is a view of the activity in carbon sequestration through an economic lens, and since then, we’ve added 31 more groups to our database.
Our mission is to catalyze growth in the new carbon economy by connecting the unconnected and shedding light on attainable economic opportunities.
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