The appendix of last year’s IPCC report contained a list of potential solutions. Repairing damaged soil was high on the list. Trees are an obvious thing; we sho

The appendix of last year’s IPCC report contained a list of potential solutions. Repairing damaged soil was high on the list. Trees are an obvious thing; we should be planting large numbers of trees. Large scale reforestation as well as everywhere else we can fit them. But soil holds the potential to sequester an enormous amount of carbon. Degraded soil lacks microbial life. If usually ends up that way from conventional farming and poor land management. Repairing it would mean moving away from conventional monocrop farming towards rotational grazing [and other alternative practices]. A good reason to eat mostly local food from small organic farms, and if you eat beef to at least make sure it’s grass fed, pasture raised. This also cuts down on the carbon cost of transporting food halfway across the world in trucks and planes. (Those transportation costs are not factored into the EPAs estimates for how much agriculture contribute to climate change. Neither are the emissions generated in producing all the chemicals used in agriculture. They also don’t factor in how much carbon would be sequestered in all the acreage currently used for conventional farming, if it were to be replaced with practices like Silvopasture and agroforestry, or healthy pastures.) The issue of climate change is a systemic one. A centralized food production system that relies on fossil fuels for both inputs and outputs (petrochemicals as well as transportation) has resulted in a society of sprawl. You don’t have to have a farm down the block anymore, and you can drive 30 miles to work. It’s all connected. One idea is we can move back to a model of small local farms, keeping communities more tightly knitted and less sprawled. That would limit food choices more towards what’s in season, or has a long shelf life. Arguably, while limited by seasonality, the food would taste better since these days we engineer for transportability over taste. Another option would be to keep with a centralized model but rapidly decarbonize it; electric trains, agroforestry, etc. I personally think the decentralized model has the potential to be very beautiful. But we should be pragmatic and take whatever the best elements are of either path and just start making changes.