Hands Off My Carbon Sink!

Ask 100 random people to tell you the scariest climate change messages they’ve ever heard. They will probably mention drought, fires, tornadoes, or floods. Or, they’ll tell you how three-quarters of global electricity is still made by burning coal––belching out planet-warming gases that endanger our kids’ health and their financial futures. 

But I’m pretty confident that we would not hear much about oceans, forests, and good old-fashioned soil if we are looking for top of mind “climate horror stories”. So, is there a connection between those beautiful, calming things and the nasty, scary “climate stuff”? Yes! Read on…

Oceans, forests and soils can absorb and store more carbon than they emit, and are called “carbon sinks”. This absorbing and storing of our pollution is known as carbon sequestration. Carbon sinks are part of nature’s clean-up toolkit to undo the damage from the carbon dioxide we have been pumping into the air non-stop for 200 years since the Industrial Revolution. 

The ocean has absorbed a quarter of the CO2 we have been emitting since we discovered energy from burning coal two centuries ago. Phytoplankton, marine algae and bacteria absorb as much carbon as all the plants and trees on land combined. But our plastic pollution creates micro-plastics that kill phytoplankton trying to eat them. This sharply reduces the ocean’s ability to absorb our carbon pollution. There’s also overfishing and oil spills, and garbage thrown into the sea by cruise ships. Not all of us are doing these things, but all of us are hurt by them (most of all our kids, who won’t have these natural defences available to them). We need to elect people who care enough to stop this!

The world’s forests absorb 2.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year (remember photosynthesis, where plants use their green chlorophyll, take in sunlight, carbon dioxide and water to create energy/sugars for their own growth, and give off oxygen (fresh air) as a by-product?) But we damage this planet-saving gift of nature with illegal logging. We have destroyed a forest area the size of a football pitch nearly every second since 2016. (“Zoonotic” diseases like Covid-19, which pass to humans from animals, become ever more likely as we lose forest cover. This could mean more pandemics for our kids!)The earth’s soil absorbs roughly a quarter of the world’s man-made emissions each year when it is undisturbed. But our industrial agriculture practices of tilling and poisoning the soil with pesticides remove the soil’s ability to provide its natural carbon storing function. 

Looks like we’re saying “Let’s first pump out way more harmful gases than the atmosphere can absorb, to poison and overheat the planet, and then let’s also disable all the shock-absorbers that nature has provided us with”.  

Destruction of our natural defences should be avoidable, but we don’t seem to recognize how we are hurting our kids’ futures by not insisting on responsible, certified production methods. In fact, we end up actively supporting deforestation with our wallets when we benefit from its outputs (such as beef, palm oil, soy, timber, paper). As consumers, we rely on entire industries built on ocean poisoning and factory farms. How can we change things?

Certified sustainable production methods will help. Businesses involved in logging, ocean pollution, soil disturbance etc, should be accountable to the rest of us, to prove that they are operating responsibly and not destroying the inheritance of our kids. In Europe there are laws. For example, you cannot remove more wood each year from a forest than the amount of growth in that year.

We also need to get involved and use our VOTING POWER to change things, and elect decision-makers who care about the same things we do. Let’s force our elected representatives to change laws to end the wilful destruction of our various carbon sinks (among other things). That to me is the real climate horror story: deforestation, marine pollution and industrial agriculture are happening in plain sight.Yet they aren’t being called out for the dangerous climate villains they are, doing untold damage to our kids’ future prospects of living a normal life.

That to me is the real climate horror story: deforestation, marine pollution and industrial agriculture are happening in plain sight.

Here’s an uplifting suggestion: take 90 minutes out of your busy schedule to sit with your kids and watch a new online movie called “Kiss the Ground” [Available on Netflix Here] Tell your friends about it. (If you don’t have Netflix, there is a free 45-minute educational version you can request on the official website). This movie opens your eyes and also offers many solutions!

Let me know what you thought of this Gup Shup—please share with friends and leave a comment. Till next time, Mohua