Gaia’s Way Out
Gaia is no dummy. She is in the process of shifting from supporting humanity to killing it off.
I’ve never completed writing a book without offering a positive solution. Granted, those are sometimes long shots. Some may even be futile. But we don’t know unless we try and if we don’t try then we make the outcome certain in a negative direction.
Just to recap the predicament, in the framework currently used by climate scientists, there are 16 tipping elements—large, interconnected, biophysical systems that regulate the habitability of Earth. Nine of these have recently—within my lifetime—become unstable and others are showing signs of instability or awaiting further study. By changing the heat balance of the planet, with more sunlight trapped in the infrared spectrum (due to heat-trapping greenhouse gases) than Earth is capable of reflecting, we have messed up these large biophysical systems, and we are for the most part incapable of repairing them.
Gaia is no dummy. She is in the process of shifting from supporting humanity to killing it off.
Today we are experiencing the warmest temperatures since the last ice age. In fact, warmer than the past half dozen ice ages. We’ve already locked in a 20-meter (66-foot) sea level rise, that will erase all the coastal cities. We are in the process of doubling or tripling that rise by melting all the ice at the poles. Long-term, thermal expansion of ocean water will make ice melt seem like child’s play. During the transition from the last ice age/glacial maximum, starting about 18000 years ago, sea level rose ~120 meters over a ~10,000-year period.
Worse, as these tipping points fall like dominoes they’ll reduce, then remove, the human capacity for adaptation.
Merely eliminating fossil fuels by replacing them with renewables will no longer save us. That is a bandaid on a spurting jugular vein. Had we started half a century ago when Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter were briefed, we might have been able to switch in time. We missed the turn. In fact, we mashed the accelerator and are still burning more fossil carbon every year. The “bridge out ahead” signs come up faster every mile we travel. Our bridge to the future—renewables—is a footbridge.
As this decade proceeds we draw ever closer to our Thelma and Louise moment.
We have already come to the point where fewer areas are suited for farming. As freshwater rivers and lakes dry up, billions of people will try to migrate. Extreme weather, hurricanes and wildfire lick at their heels. Climate change may also produce more volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis. Civil order will fray. Chaos will reign.
That is the doomsplain.
Now for the good news. What do we choose — retreating coastlines hundreds of miles or pulling CO2 out of the air? The good news is that biogeophysical response moves slower than we do. Australian climate scientist Darren Ray compares the melting at the poles to moving a block of ice from your freezer to your fridge. The block takes a while to melt, but you know it will absolutely turn into a puddle of water eventually. Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets take many thousands of years to melt—they were still adding ice in my lifetime—so think 1–2 meters higher sea level in your lifetime, not ten times that. Sea level rise in 2022 was 4 millimeters—1/16 inch—although not evenly distributed.
Averaging the transition from the last ice age/glacial maximum, the sea level rise was 12 mm/y. We are only experiencing one-third of the rate of rise we had over 10,000 years before the industrial era. Studies now recommend coastal region planners should assume a greater than two-meter rise this century because we know the rate will speed up—to 25 mm/y on average and likely double that by the 2090s.
Likewise, not every summer will have heatwaves and droughts where you live. There are still variables like the El Niño and La Niña cycles and the ability of forests to regenerate after a fire. Hotter air evaporates more water and holds more, so it will rain more, on average, as Earth warms.
Gaia knows she has a fever and is doing what she does to reduce it. Stratospheric clouds are cutting the amount of sunlight reaching the surface and bouncing it back to space. Wherever allowed, forests are reclaiming lands once cleared, on their own. Forests have both a net cooling effect and suck greenhouse gases out of the air, converting CO2 to oxygen and soil fertility.
We have been trying to learn from forests and although it might take us a million years to catch up to the wisdom Gaia gained from trial and error over periods 2000 times longer than that, we now know how to make an artificial tree that can do the carbon removal work of 10,000 real trees. Of course, that comes with a hitch. It needs welded metals, processed chemicals and electricity. A lot of electricity.
Darren Ray says,
If we can’t strongly reduce emissions to zero before 2050, our other option to avoid the 10m higher sea level is then to reduce the atmospheric radiative forcing from the higher CO2 levels, by sucking down CO2 out of the atmosphere and reducing methane emissions. That is the fancy scientific way of saying “ we need to turn the temperature knob in the fridge compartment down to a lower level”.
He has done some useful calculations.
Currently, it seems to take between 1200 to 2000 kWh of energy to remove 1 tonne of CO2 from the atmosphere. .
That is a lot of energy. And 1 tonne of CO2 is about a return flight from Paris to New York. Or maybe 1/4 of emissions for driving your car, not SUV, around for a year.
So… to remove just 1 ppm of CO2 using current technology would use:
8x10⁹ x 2x10⁶ Watthours of energy = 1.6x10¹⁶ Watthours of energy
This is also ignoring the likely effect of CO2 that the oceans have taken up coming re-gassing back out of the oceans as atmospheric levels are reduced. I have no idea what that might end up being but could make it roughly twice as difficult.
Just taking the above figures, current global electricity production that could run direct air capture is 27 PetaWh (10¹⁵) or 2.7x10¹⁶Wh.
So, using current technology being used by people like Climeworks, it would take 60% of world electricity production to reduce CO2 levels by 1 ppm… assuming ocean CO2 out-gassing does not occur.
Or, to offset the 2022 2.5ppm increase in CO2 would we have to increase world electricity consumption by 50% and then use all of it for direct air capture :( …again assuming no ocean CO2 outgassing occurs.
This is why I like Gaia’s trees better. Even if they are less efficient than DAC machines at pulling out CO2, they have lots of co-benefits, repair themselves and make their own replacements. And Ray is right about the outgassing. It does work out to approximately double the amount of CO2 you have to remove. Therefore to offset 2022’s increase in CO2 coming from human civilization world electricity production would need to double and all of be devoted to DAC. Just to offset the 2.5 ppm increase.
I have written three whole books with these natural climate solution calculations so rather than extend this essay let me just summarize the key points:
There is enough land available to reforest enough trees to rebalance the carbon cycle, assuming we phase out fossil burning
Using biochar agroforestry and cascades of durable forest products, carbon sequestration by forests can be multiplied a hundredfold or a thousandfold
If that were not enough, farming and reforesting the ocean, again with a virtuous biochar harvesting cycle, can do the trick
Farming the ocean with kelp, for instance, and converting coastal seaweed to biochar, for instance, would take us to net drawdown territory, even factoring in outgassing
None of this requires electricity. You can use that to watch your favorite streaming service while you crank up the A/c and distill some water from the air
Pyrolysis is exothermic, so you can make electricity by doing this
Kelp and plankton farming and foresting would also help thwart the ocean outgassing factor as well as offering huge biodiversity gains—de-desertifying the ocean.
Darren Ray also ran the numbers on what it would cost to suck enough CO2 from the atmosphere using artificial trees to reduce CO2 from say 420 ppm to ~350 ppm:
Using $50 US per tonne of CO2. The total cost is ~$20 trillion total. The global economy generates about ~$90 trillion per year, and we unbelievably still give ~$6 trillion US per year to fossil fuel companies in subsidies — so this is feasible if CO2 capture can be made less expensive in the future, and even at $1000 US per tonne is probably still a positive return on investment.
$20 trillion is a small price to pay, especially if it can save cities like Miami and New Orleans! But where will all that electricity come from? Fusion? Renewables?
Sorry, DAC fans, but I prefer Gaia’s way. Just not the part about eliminating humans.
References:
Lebling, K., Leslie-Bole, H., Byrum, Z., & Bridgwater, L. (2022). 6 Things to Know About Direct Air Capture, World Resources Institute.
Ray, D., The most important climate change paper of 2022 you never heard of (2023).
Meanwhile, let’s end this war. Towns, villages and cities in Ukraine are being bombed every day. Ecovillages and permaculture farms have organized something like an underground railroad to shelter families fleeing the cities, either on a long-term basis or temporarily, as people wait for the best moments to cross the border to a safer place, or to return to their homes if that becomes possible. There are still 70 sites in Ukraine and 300 around the region. They are calling their project “The Green Road.”
The Green Road is helping these places grow their own food, and raising money to acquire farm machinery and seed, and to erect greenhouses. The opportunity, however, is larger than that. The majority of the migrants are children. This will be the first experience in ecovillage living for most. They will directly experience its wonders, skills, and safety. They may never want to go back. Those that do will carry the seeds within them of the better world they glimpsed through the eyes of a child.
Those wishing to make a tax-deductible gift can do so through Global Village Institute by going to http://PayPal.me/greenroad2022 or by directing donations to greenroad@thefarm.org.
There is more info on the Global Village Institute website at https://www.gvix.org/greenroad
The COVID-19 pandemic destroyed lives, livelihoods, and economies. But it has not slowed climate change, a juggernaut threat to all life, humans included. We had a trial run at emergency problem-solving on a global scale with COVID — and we failed. 6.7 million people, and counting, have died. We ignored well-laid plans to isolate and contact trace early cases; overloaded our ICUs; parked morgue trucks on the streets; incinerated bodies until the smoke obscured our cities as much as the raging wildfires. We set back our children’s education and mental health. We virtualized the work week until few wanted to return to their open-plan cubicle offices. We invented and produced tests and vaccines faster than anyone thought possible but then we hoarded them for the wealthy and denied them to two-thirds of the world, who became the Petri-plates for new variants. SARS jumped from people to dogs and cats to field mice. The modern world took a masterclass in how abysmally, unbelievably, shockingly bad we could fail, despite our amazing science, vast wealth, and singular talents as a species.
Having failed so dramatically, so convincingly, with such breathtaking ineptitude, do we imagine we will now do better with climate? Having demonstrated such extreme disorientation in the face of a few simple strands of RNA, do we imagine we can call upon some magic power that will change all that for planetary-ecosystem-destroying climate change?
As the world emerges into pandemic recovery (maybe), there is growing recognition that we must learn to do better. We must chart a pathway to a new carbon economy that goes beyond zero emissions and runs the industrial carbon cycle backward — taking CO2 from the atmosphere and ocean, turning it into coal and oil, and burying it in the ground. The triple bottom line of this new economy is antifragility, regeneration, and resilience. We must lead by good examples; carrots, not sticks; ecovillages, not carbon indulgences. We must attract a broad swath of people to this work by honoring it, rewarding it, and making it fun. That is our challenge now.
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Plants for the win!