But it’s not going to happen without the cooperation of farmers. And that’s not an easy task, given that farming is a low margin, high-risk affair. Now consider that sustainable and intensive farming practices often require high initial investment with uncertain or delayed payoff. Most farmers don’t have the luxury of waiting years for a return on investment - they can hardly think past this year’s harvest. So how can governments make it easier for farmers to adopt practices and technologies that protect the biosphere? Here are some ideas…
Unfortunately, farmers often resist new ways of doing things, especially poor farmers in developing countries. Who could blame them? Farming is full of risk and uncertainty, between the weather, pests, volatile markets, bad policies, lack of storage facilities, and inadequate infrastructure. Sustainable farming requires an investment of time, labor and capital, and the return on this investment may take years. Small farmers in particular may not have the luxury to think past the current harvest.
At the present time, almost 33% of the earth’s total land area is used for agriculture. Let’s reduce that by a fifth, from roughly 49 million to 38 million square kilometers: close to the amount of agricultural land in 1950. Sounds crazy, but it’s doable, considering that agricultural productivity has already improved to the point that to produce the same amount of crops as in 1961, we need only 30% of the farmland (Our World in Data).
Granted, the Living Planet Index doesn’t cover most species but it’s a pretty good proxy for the health of the land-based biosphere. And from this chart, it’s clear that the relation between regional population growth and biodiversity is complicated.
A recent study identified 101,583 square kilometers (km2) of mining operations across the globe, based on the latest satellite imagery (Maus, Giljum, da Silva et al, 2022). This figure includes open cuts, tailings dams, waste rock dumps, water ponds, processing plants, and other ground features related to the mining activities. To put that number in perspective, agricultural land covers over 47 million km2 worldwide. However, the amount of land devoted to mining increases every year - thanks in large part to the growing market for renewal energy and electric vehicles.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, agricultural land includes croplands, pastures, orchards, vineyards, and flowering shrubs but excludes trees grown for wood or timber. Almost 33% of the earth’s total land area is used for agriculture. The rest goes to forest/shrub ( 37%), glaciers (10%) barren land such as deserts (19%) and a minuscule 1% for human urban areas and built-up land…Expanding wild habitat is mostly about taking from agriculture and giving to forests and shrub lands.
The biggest threat to biodiversity is loss of habitat. Agriculture is the main driver of habitat loss on the planet and a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Climate change will reduce agricultural productivity unless crops become more resilient. GM crops require less land and are more resilient than conventional and organic crops.
The first thing I noticed was that CCDH conflated “disinformation” and “misinformation”. Standard definitions distinguish them: disinformation is deliberate and malicious, whereas misinformation does not imply an intention to deceive, being simply false or inaccurate information.
I want to know about studies that are reassuring as well as alarming. I don’t need to be a true believer unwilling to question articles of the faith to be very worried about climate change. So why should anyone else?
Countries that consume a lot of energy tend to have large populations, advanced economies, or both. However, high country-level energy consumption may be coupled with low per capita consumption, because some countries are populous but still developing and largely rural, as is the case with India and Brazil.
Per Part II of this series, atmospheric CO2 keeps rising at a steady pace. Lack of progress in the atmosphere most likely reflects lack of progress on the ground (allowing for some lag time and other complications). But some parts of the planet are doing better than others. Take a look…
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is Earth’s most important greenhouse gas, responsible for about two-thirds of the total heating influence of all human-produced greenhouse gases (Lindsey/NOAA Climate.gov, 2022). The last time atmospheric CO2 amounts were this high was more than 3 million years ago during the Mid-Pliocene Warm Period when global surface temperature was 2.5–4°C (4.5–7.2°F) warmer than during the pre-industrial era and sea levels were at least 16 feet higher than they are today.
So are we making much progress in reining in atmospheric CO2?…
Total CO2 emissions are driven by four fundamental factors: 1) population; 2) average emissions per person; 3) energy intensity; and, 4) carbon intensity.
Small scale subsistence farming is a lose-lose proposition. It perpetuates poverty and degrades the environment. Smallholders cannot afford to be stewards of their environments. Between the vagaries of growing conditions and food prices, they can’t count on a stable income year to year, so they have little incentive to forego additional income or food now for better returns later. Larger farms are in a better position to ride out price fluctuations and to maintain the long-term vitality of their land.
Then again, the above chart makes the decline in cropland look bigger than it has been, which was just 5% over a period of 20 years. We can do better. Unfortunately, the federal government’s Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) undermines efforts to shrink US cropland further by subsidizing farmers to grow biofuel crops - mainly corn for ethanol - to meet biofuel mandates for transportation and heating fuel. Check out the next chart and guess the year RFS went into effect:...That would be 2006, or almost 10 million additional acres of corn ago. Now, nearly 40% of corn grown in the US goes to ethanol, up from 5% in 1996 (Saavoss et al, 2021).
In a previous post, I provided evidence that most Americans of prime working age (25-54) want to live in detached houses in low-density residential areas. Americans also prefer community and residential features such as limited street traffic, open space options nearby, large back yards and off-street parking. They especially want to live in quiet neighborhoods that are safe for walking and for kids to play outdoors. So is there a way to make low-density residential communities climate friendly?
“...you’ll see that mostly what we’re building these days is single-family homes. That form is inherently challenging when it comes to carbon emissions, and it’s made more so by the fact that we’re building much bigger houses than we used to…Simply put, you should build as small as you can for what you need, and if possible, you should avoid having a [concrete] basement.” - Professor Shoshanna Saxe/University of Toronto, quoted in Large carbon footprint of new house construction mostly due to concrete basements (2021)
It might be tempting to dismiss housing preferences as merely a matter of taste or culture, which can evolve with the proper incentives or education. However, global studies have consistently found that high-rise apartment living is a net negative for most people, especially families and children, and regardless of culture, nationality, or aesthetic traditions. Here’s a smattering of what researchers have found…
New legislation that would see planes forced to use "sustainable aviation fuel"… Overall, this is good, says Chelsea Baldino at the International Council on Clean Transportation, a non-profit research organisation. But several suggested amendments to the legislation widen the definition of sustainable aviation fuels to include food-based biofuels, she says. And it isn’t just about the climate. The loss of habitat is the main driver of biodiversity loss around the world. “The main message is that there should not be any food and feedstock biofuels,” says Baldino.
— EU plan for cutting emissions from planes could end up increasing them. By Michael Le Page/New Scientist April 27, 2022
Approximately 73% (over 94 million acres) of remaining grasslands in the Northern Great Plains are privately owned. While ranchers operate across a spectrum of sustainability, they all face pressure to convert existing grasslands into cropland, which—depending on market fluctuations—can yield better short-term profits than livestock can. This reality means that, when wheat and barley prices go up, ranchers may feel compelled to plow up and plant crops on large areas of intact grasslands. But in the long term, plains land is not well-suited for row crops. - Common Ground. By Di Tipping-Woods, World Wildlife Magazine/Summer 2022