I agree. It is just a series of complaints, not a document that actually helps us progress towards a zero-carbon future.

We don’t have the luxury of rejecting any form of energy that has any problems whatsoever. Yes, dams flood forest. Yes, nuclear is risky. Yes, wind turbines kill bats. Despite all that, we need low- and zero-carbon energy sources if we are to deal with climate change without returning ourselves to the dark ages.

As an advocate of carbon negative energy such as biochar and biomass/carbon storage, I found it disturbing and disquieting to have biochar (a genuinely good idea, I think) lumped in with more risky geoengineering strategies as seeding the atmosphere with sulfur particulates.

Trying to visualize the problem, it appears to me that without carbon negative energy such as biomass with carbon capture and storage or biochar, the climate will soon pass tipping points, and will spiral out of control. The eventual outcome if we do nothing will be a methane catastrophe, I believe.

Environmentalists need to be logical, flexible, and pragmatic as well during this crisis. We need to implement solutions that really work, no matter whose sacred cow gets gored. If we need to plant millions of acres of biomass plantations, and deep inject the CO2 into the earth in order to stop runaway global warming, then we will have to do this, regardless of the sensitivities of environmentalists.

I believe myself that we need to seize the coal fired power plants, and convert them into oxyfuel combustion, biocarbon fuel, and carbon sequestration. Nothing else can take the necessary billions of tons of carbon out of the atmosphere in time to avert runaway global warming leading to a methane catastrophe. We need carbon negative energy, such as biochar or biomass with carbon capture and storage, on a massive scale.

It’s carbon negative energy or watch the climate destabilize and the biosphere die.

If environmentalists love the biosphere, they need to be logical, reasonable, and flexible. Nothing but science and intelligence will get us out of the terrible fix we have put ourselves in.

http://www.killerinourmidst.com

REALTY CHECK: social justice, climate and environmental justice concerned activists live JUST AS MUCH in the developing world as the developed world.

Indeed, it is these environmentalists who have been foremost in calling out “false solutions.”

We should let them lead on energy practices in their country (in both their own national *as well as* international policy) just as we want strive to take the lead on practices for *our* country — especially considering how much of their energy production is for export or for production of products for export and is, in reality *OUR* consumption.

The alternative – that the 1st world’s climate advocate’s views should for some twisted reason trump environmentalists views in the Global South, as if they had a poorer understanding of their country’s energy politics or the risks of climate change to their livelihoods than we do! — is IMHO absurd, and suggests a colonialist understanding of the developing world.