[freebeard]

science.slashdot.org/story/.../tree-planting-has-mind-blowing-potential-to-tackle-climate-crisis

Good article with some near misses (Score:5, Informative)
by Dasher42 ( 514179 ) on Thursday July 04, 2019 @10:30PM (#58875434)

This article was on the brink of covering some really important topics that could simultaneously resolve our climate issues and reform our agricultural system to bring it into better harmony with the land and its natural cycles.

For example, it suggested that two or three trees in every cow pasture would help. Project Drawdown (https://www.drawdown.org) goes further, and describes silvopasture, mixing sparse forest with grazing animals, as an old practice ripe for revival that, for an estimated $41.59 billion USD net implementation cost worldwide, would yield $699.37 billion USD in savings. This is one of many approaches that make sense when one draws on ecosystems for inspiration for designing systems that can support human life, without wrecking the planet.

Drawdown's write-ups are significant because they represent a lot of research and solid estimates of what the costs and benefits are of many approaches that, in unison, could resolve the climate crisis.

Other significant write-ups:

https://www.drawdown.org/solut... [drawdown.org] (Basic forest-planting as most people think of it)
https://www.drawdown.org/solut... [drawdown.org] (Restoring tropical rainforests)
https://www.drawdown.org/solut... [drawdown.org] (Biochar, which if you research leads into a fascinating revival of the creation of carbonaceous soils which better retain water and nutrients, while sequestering CO2 more rapidly than forests and is immediately applicable to our grasslands and plains)
https://www.drawdown.org/solut... [drawdown.org] (Multistrata agroforestry...)
https://www.drawdown.org/solut... [drawdown.org] (Tree polyculture which conveys benefits for resilience, resistance to pests, soil health, and multiple yields from the same land)

Towards the end of that list you might notice a theme of pursuing polycultures in agriculture, which 20th century industrial agriculture eschewed for obvious reasons. Might we not revisit that? A combination of ancient polycultural techniques which allowed complementary plant species to maintain long-term yields and new levels of AI-guided farming may well finally unite our ancient and current knowledge and help solve this crisis.

Notice the Slashdot comment moderation. The social media could take a clue.