wolfyvegan

For the longest time, when I would see "AMAB" in someone's profile anywhere online, I thought that it stood for "All Men Are Bastards."

the climate crisis is a symptom of global inequality and injustice

Important to note that the most stark inequality, the most blatant injustice, is the normalised mass enslavement and killing of other beings.

racism, colonialism and sexism all underpin global heating

The racism of treating another being as property because they look different and cannot speak the same language; the colonialism of invading and destroying the homeland of countless others in order to install pasture grass and barbed wire; the sexism of turning the female body into a machine for commodity production; these are all major contributors to the current climate crisis, and the author's point could be greatly strengthened by addressing them.

Let us not forget that this is primarily due to deforestation, whether directly (due to loss of tree cover for moisture retention) or indirectly (due to climate change).

People are working on it.

We need both, obviously. Ending animal agriculture is the most practical way to achieve it.

Someone has to be the first.

Is "spikes" a euphemism for durian?

[email protected] welcomes you!

Thank you for sharing such beautiful words of wisdom in these troubled times.

Even if you cover the whole planet in forests, there is a finite amount of fossil fuels you can burn before it is negated.

I think that this is the crux of the matter, and of course you're right. The total amount of carbon stored in fossil fuels is (presumably, without searching for the numbers) much greater than the amount currently stored in living organisms, so there is a finite amount of fossil fuels that can be burnt before the carbon emissions exceed the capacity of forests/vegetation to capture it. Do you know what that "finite amount of fossil fuels" would be? From what I have seen, it is quite large, though humanity is rapidly approaching it. What's needed is for the rate of emissions to be reduced below the rate of capture, and so a reduction in fossil fuel use is urgently needed, but I wouldn't say that completely eliminating fossil fuel use is more important than protecting forests. All that's needed in the long term is for carbon capture to at least equal carbon emissions. In the short term, the planet is already close enough to the "point of no return" that reforestation is necessary in order to bring down levels of carbon dioxide, regardless of how quickly fossil use ceases. It has to be both. Burning fossil fuels is not a sustainable way to meet the energy needs of 8 billion+ humans. Cutting down forests for biofuel is not a sustainable way to meet the energy needs of 8 billion+ humans. Deforestation for biofuel would be sustainable for a much larger population than would burning fossil fuels (due to the extremely slow renewal rate of fossil fuels), but we're past that point. There's not enough land. Either energy consumption needs to drastically decrease, or non-combustion sources of energy are needed.

I get the impression that we are essentially "on the same side" and just quibbling over details. You make an excellent case against fossil fuels! Looking at it in terms of the broader carbon cycle makes the necessity of ending fossil fuel use very obvious even ignoring any concerns about pollution, destructive extraction practices, or other harmful effects.

I understand what you're getting at, but I don't see it as being so simple.

Fossil fuels are essentially just ancient soil carbon, so in a way, we're talking about the same thing on different time-scales. My point was/is that the combination of deforestation and burning of the cut biomass actually reduces the amount of carbon that can be stored in the soil on a given area of land, not just releasing it once and then recycling it. To capture the same amount of carbon again would require a greater area under management than the area originally cut. On a finite planet, there is a limit to how much this deforestation for biomass production could be scaled up without net-positive emissions. (I'm tired, so this may not be the most articulate.)

The world's forests capture a substantial amount of the carbon dioxide emitted by humans, and extensive reforestation could capture even more. By reducing the carbon capture potential of forests, that's less carbon dioxide absorbed year after year. Over a very long period of time, "releasing it one time" is what burning fossil fuels does: it releases stored carbon once, and then trees and other plants recycle it. Deforestation reduces the recycling.

Even though mature forests can store more total carbon, it seems that young forests, with more small trees, may actually be able to absorb more methane, so there can definitely be some advantage to managing trees for wood production on a short cycle. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, so this is one way in which the overall situation is complicated.

Of course, avoiding both deforestation and fossil fuels is even better.

I'm glad that we agree on this point. It doesn't need to be one or the other. The most effective approach to addressing climate change would involve reforestation and eliminating dependence on fossil fuels by developing clean energy technologies.

Ultimately, carbon capture just needs to match carbon emissions (plus a bit extra at first to compensate for current overshoot), and realistically, it will take both reforestation and a reduction in emissions to achieve that. Ending animal agriculture makes the most progress toward both.