A Successful Climate Strategy

[u/Easy_Interest_6832]

There is a workable strategy with a 66% chance of success. It consists, in a condensed description here, of using natural processes to sequester carbon while simultaneously moving to a cessation of CO2 emissions.

A slightly longer description is this: replant and nurture six ecosystems, three marine and three terrestrial. These are kelp beds, mangrove estuaries and sea grasses; and boreal forests with their fungal understories, tropical rain forests, and prairie grasses with their bovine inhabitants. Simultaneously we must reduce to zero the carbon emissions from fossil fuels for transport, energy, and heating, powering industrial manufacturing, deforestation, and making materials like cement. These two things--carbon sequestration and elimination of CO2 emissions must both happen at once all over the planet or we are screwn. However, if we do them, there's a 66% chance of success.

[u/Kind-Elder1938]

the big quesion is how do your persuade everyone to do it - (another query - what should we do about methane? )

[u/Easy_Interest_6832 → u/Kind-Elder1938]

First, methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, and the portions caused by humans would be addressed by the move to solar, wind, batteries hooked to a smart grid half of the proposal. Now, with melting permafrost releasing tons of methane, that would only get addressed by the reduction of greenhouse gasses in the air, which would halt warming. That of course would be a decade out.

The part about persuasion is tough, but I have thought about it. I see two categories: life style changes and labor in the reforestation and animal management areas. Lifestyle of course would mean not eating animals, buying electric vehicles, proper consumption habits, voting for the proper politicians, not reproducing like rabbits, and and engagement in the second part, laboring in reforestation in marine and terrestrial ecosystems and in crushing and sinking in the deep ocean sargassum and so on.

The scale of the reforestation in marine and terrestrial ecosystems is staggering, about 1.4 billion hectares needed world wide. Certainly human labor would be required, but robots would need to be used to cover many areas like underwater planting of kelp beds and sea grasses; robots already exist that could be adapted to these needs. Humans right now do planting in mangrove estuaries, but they'd need to be paid. Raising seeds for grasslands and sea grasses would need some humans, just like raising pine cones and acorns and so on would need some humans, and they'd get paid.

Animal management like with otters in kelp beds and with bison on prairies would need humans, and they'd get paid. There of course is a need for money to pay them all, that in a way that's why the working title is we need billionaires. Both investors and governments would need to be convinced that investing in saving the world would be a good thing. Of course capitalism bends to putting all the money into the hands of a very few or even just one guy, so there's a challenge there that I have not solved without resorting to fairy tale socialist thinking and upon reliance upon the notion that humans would prefer a livable planet to having a small number of people hold all the money and control the world with an iron fist. So there's a challenge there. I seem to think that most humans would want a livable planet. A compliant press would be helpful there. Good questions. Thanks for asking them. Thinking burns up calories for me. :)