This is an interesting post by Ramez Naam. He argues that too much attention is given to transportation & energy emissions and not enough to agriculture & industry emissions. Naam thinks that renewable tech will continue to drop in cost, and he’s optimistic that part of the equation will solve itself. He says the highest-leverage action is the development of new tech to address agriculture & industry emissions.
Not only is agriculture higher leverage for reducing emissions, it also holds a high potential for drawdown. This potential to store more CO2 in well managed soils is unfortunately neglected, even though some organizations like 4p1000 have a potential ability to promote the storage of Gigatons for a very low rate.
Moreover, the impact of methane emissions (which are mainly linked to agriculture) are probably undervalued by non-specialists, as we tend to convert methane emissions to CO2 based on a 100 year global warming potential, using an indicator of 28x, which is not relevant for the short term. If we only have 15 years to act before getting into dangerous feedback loops, then focusing more on methane would be a good idea, as methane is less stable in the long run but much more potent as a greenhouse gas over 20 years than over 100 as compared to CO2.
This is an interesting post by Ramez Naam. He argues that too much attention is given to transportation & energy emissions and not enough to agriculture & industry emissions. Naam thinks that renewable tech will continue to drop in cost, and he’s optimistic that part of the equation will solve itself. He says the highest-leverage action is the development of new tech to address agriculture & industry emissions.
Not only is agriculture higher leverage for reducing emissions, it also holds a high potential for drawdown. This potential to store more CO2 in well managed soils is unfortunately neglected, even though some organizations like 4p1000 have a potential ability to promote the storage of Gigatons for a very low rate.
Moreover, the impact of methane emissions (which are mainly linked to agriculture) are probably undervalued by non-specialists, as we tend to convert methane emissions to CO2 based on a 100 year global warming potential, using an indicator of 28x, which is not relevant for the short term. If we only have 15 years to act before getting into dangerous feedback loops, then focusing more on methane would be a good idea, as methane is less stable in the long run but much more potent as a greenhouse gas over 20 years than over 100 as compared to CO2.