Saturday - April 25, 2009

Green Conundrum

A greenie concludes that carbon caps may kill off more species than climate change. Oh Noes!!!11! What to do?

Even if we consider the impact of environmental degradation on humanity, deforestation has a more significant and immediate impact on local weather, water availability, water quality, and soil erosion than does global climate change from greenhouse gases. The roots of trees and native brush hold loose, nutrient-rich topsoils together, slowing erosion and absorbing precipitation. You can see the impact of habitat loss on local climate by poking a stick into the parched soils of the Brazilian cerrado or wandering along the boundary of the expanding Sahel Desert in Africa.

[These days] being green is all about greenhouse gases: Neighborhood moms are more apt to fret over food miles than felled forests; organic cattle farmers are more interested in offsetting the methane coming from cow burps than pondering squished tadpoles in hoof prints. Even scientists have grown bored with question of habitat loss, tweaking their grant proposals to emphasize the climate angle no matter how tenuous the connection. Saving the Amazon is so 1980s.

Climate change has the potential to displace the most impoverished human populations and bring about food shortages, flooding, and drought. But from the perspective of saving species, it’s a MacGuffin: a plot device that may impel the tired conservation narrative forward but is hardly a pragmatic strategy for preserving biodiversity. Today, environmentalists tend to describe forests as little more than “carbon sinks,” sucking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. If you really want to conserve plants and animals, though, that may be their least significant attribute.

Well, how about that? Thanks to Doc for the link.

Posted by Drew458     on 04/25/2009 at 11:51 AM   
Filed Under: • Environment •  
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