By Daniel Brouse
June 28, 2023
This article is in response to "Animal Agriculture is the Leading Cause of Climate Change".
I said, "About the paper, it is not a good paper. It is flawed in several ways. The main problem with the paper is it depends on "the potential to sequester over 2000 Giga tons." No amount of sequestering will solve our problem. Sequestration is only a temporary solution. The most important thing for people to do is stop the use of hydrocarbon based products today... followed by everything else. Minimize consumption of everything.
Plant vegetation sequestration only lasts for several years (with old growth hardwood some sequestration may last up to 100 years.) We wrote a paper on it a few years ago. Though the paper focuses on hemp, it covers all vegetation (The Hemp Myth, Carbon Sinks and the Environment).
Some people argue that we can not abruptly stop the use of fossil fuels or it will cause social unrest. The total collapse of society is inevitable. Even if we stopped using fossil fuels today, we have already baked in a rise of 2 degrees Celsius. "The Earth will exceed 1.5℃ (average global surface temperature over the surface of the earth for ten years) by the 2040's and a societal collapse will ensue. For the most part, the Earth will be uninhabitable for humans by 2070 UNLESS immediate action is taken. " -- Brouse and Mukherjee (c.2020)
The average life of a tree planted for carbon credit sequestration is 7 years. (In addition, "Tree Extinction Due to Human Induced Environmental Stress" is already lowering the life expectancy of all trees.) Climate scientists, such as myself, are against the use of sequestering for carbon credits. Giving carbon offsets for planting trees and allowing for the continued use of fossil fuels is greenwashing and accelerates the pace of climate change.