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Chuck and the soil science community as a whole would never claim that carbon sequestration in soil is the singular answer to reducing greenhouse gases, but see it instead as one of the pieces of the mitigation plans while we look for something other than fossil fuels for energy.

Beyond the illusion of debate on the preponderance of scientific evidence, I always come back to the question that if we could access sunlight, wind, wave power, and geothermal possibilities more immediately and more efficiently than say waiting until 2014 to extirpate oil six and a half miles below the surface of the warming, hurricane-ready waters of the The Gulf of Mexico or say using up to nine barrels of clean water to force the Alberta Tar Sands oil soup, why wouldn’t we?

And even given that the ocean temperatures this summer were the hottest ever recorded since record-keeping began, Doug, the ineluctable question remains: if we can design, cultivate, and create more intelligently and more efficiently, why wouldn’t we?

There is something called permaculture that could ensure that the human population is fed while also ensuring that the integrity (and quanity) of soil is kept and in fact enhanced (and not sent down The Mississippi to the tune of a 150 acre farm a day. Companion planting, vertical farming and the use of \”nitrogen fixing\” plants, are all practices that can save our soil, and us in the process. We need to move away from tilling, one-crop monocultures such as corn, which demands much of the soil and requires far more water and fertilizer. We need to start transitioning to the kind of farming that was practiced prior to the presence of cheap oil and industrial farming in the last century.