Labour want to be the ‘party of the countryside’ according to their shadow environment secretary Steve Reed. But what do they have to do to become that? And what role does carbon counting have to play in averting the worst effects of climate breakdown?
Last month, we heard that the world’s temperature had exceeded an increase of 1.5o C, signalling that ‘more climate action is required’ as explained by Brian McHugh in Yorkshire Bylines. Much ‘climate action’ focuses on greenhouse gases (GHGs) causing the warming.
High in the sky these gases help keep heat in. But they account for only about 4-5% of heat exchange in the world. 95% is through water, and that will have more immediate impacts, explained by Alan Simpson also in Yorkshire Bylines. The farming and food sectors are generally reckoned to contribute about 25-30% of the total GHGs worldwide. But this ignores many other contributions to global warming like water use and soil temperatures.
We have reduced the complex matter of GHGs – mixture of compounds like carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxides, emitted after fertiliser applications – to ‘carbon’. A new word ‘sequestration’ is used for capturing carbon, often in trees and soil. Soil is now getting more attention but is reduced to a lump of carbon.
Carbon trading
This does not stop carbon now becoming a commodity. We keep hearing about ‘net zero’ as if we can balance the GHGs emitted by our activities by storing more in various ways – in the jargon we can ‘offset’ our emissions. To do so we have a lot of counting to do.
Carbon is now traded on the world market, through various carbon markets here in the UK, the EU, India and the USA. Compulsory schemes, such as the UK emissions trading scheme (UK ETS), are regulated. The scheme makes an allowance (UKA) that lets your organisation emit one tonne of ‘carbon dioxide equivalent’, in return for £30-35/tonne. Agriculture does not fall under the UK ETS but forests do. Trees are easy to count, with tight conifers collecting more carbon than mixed broadleaved forest. This all adds up to the global carbon credit market valued at $331.8bn in 2022 and expected to reach $1.6tn in 2028. That is about half of all African countries GDP combined.
And remember trees take 15 years to have an effect, and we may not have that much time.
Carbon counting in the Yorkshire region
There is a lot of carbon counting going on round here in the hills. On the A59 round Skipton or the M6 over Shap, you can see the plastic guards. There are some benefits to growing round here. A representative of the local chamber of commerce welcomed this, saying their members would prefer to buy ‘local’ carbon’ than ‘imported’ carbon. I wish many more would say the same about fruit and veg. There is another advantage to growing carbon credit trees here – they are unlikely to burn down like they have in California with all the carbon credits going up in smoke due to – er global warming.
The NFU Scotland has warned that it is ‘fundamentally opposed’ to largescale forestry expansion. Saying that on an almost daily basis members are contacting them about the loss of productive Scottish agricultural land to wholesale forestry. Similarly, Wales is becoming the ‘wild west’ of carbon offsetting destroying Welsh farming communities. Geraint Davies, Labour MP for Swansea West said that “It was quite ridiculous that farming in Wales was being displaced because of some sort of carbon offset to enable BA to fly more planes around the world”.
The recent farm protest was against the proposal for all farms to put aside a fifth of their land for ‘habitat’ and ‘trees’. Reed hopes the Welsh government will amend their proposals. But what is he proposing – as there are worldwide issues at play?
Nearly 1000 small farmers left the industry last year lured by the promise of three years subsidy in the lump sum exit scheme and I know of several small local farmers being gently ‘encouraged’ to leave.
What is the impact?
What is there to show for all this carbon counting? There is absolutely no sign that all the carbon markets together have slowed global warming one bit, or even slowed the rate of increased warming. Not one thousandth of a degree.
The earth is warming up faster than most of us thought. I started to take note in the early 1990s and never expected to see this sort of rise in my lifetime. Look at NASA’s climate spiral and you will see that between 1880 and 1980, global temperature increase doubled from 0.3 – 0.6o C. Yet in the 40+ years since 1980 it has more than doubled again from 0.6-1.2o C and now 1.5o C. Why do we keep going on about pre-industrial times when it is since 1980 that most heating has happened?
What could be causing this acceleration since then? There are several candidates, like transport and deforestation, but I am rooting for farming. The green revolution has helped feed millions of people but its practices of throwing more chemicals on arable crops may be helping that warming.
It is well established that pesticides such as neonicotinoids have a deleterious effect on pollinators and their residues are toxic to humans and the environment. It is also often overlooked that pesticides play a significant part in climate change – fossil fuels are used in their production and transportation, they impede the ability of soils to sequester carbon, and their use perpetuates unsustainable agricultural methods.
The most viable alternative in reshaping agricultural production to tackle global warming would be the widespread implementation of agroecology or what we are increasingly seeing – regenerative farming, where we let the soil do the work.
Greening the desert
Along with many others I welcome effective tree growing. Plant a few here and there in fields to provide shade and drainage, along river banks to reduce erosion and provide a habitat over the river, and in all sorts of city areas to keep them cool. That is telling us a lot – that ambiently, trees keep land cool.
So the place where it will have the most effect is around the deserts. About 2/5 of the planet’s land is subject to desertification with an estimated 12mn hectares (ha= football pitch) being lost each year. Trees would help reduce global warming directly by keeping the ground cool and recycling water to produce rain.
At long last the UN is regrowing plants and trees but it needs the sort of money presently going into carbon markets. Greening deserts should reduce global warming in a measurable way.
So, as well as planting conifers, why not start locally by growing more orchards here in Yorkshire? The Northern Fruit group could advise on apples and pears, but also figs, bilberries, strawberries, and sloes. We would be doing ourselves a favour in terms of our own health and easing pressure on the planet – it is estimated that we have about 10-15 years to take action and we must do everything we can.
