Let’s be careful with the overhyping of “regenerative ag” as a large climate solution, folks.

Here are the facts.

Food, agriculture, and land use emit about 22% of greenhouse gases *directly*. The wider food system emits about 34%.

Carbon removal on farmland is less than 0.1% Of the direct 22% of emissions, half of it comes from one thing — tropical deforestation. Another 5% from methane from livestock. About 3% from industrial ag practices. And 2% from rice methane.

I just had a really upsetting experience with a major, used-to-be-respected media outlet.

They asked to interview me about climate change and agriculture -- something I've worked on for over 20 years.

Sure, I said, even though I was on vacation. I was trying to be helpful. So, we scheduled the interview. But they rescheduled due to some mix-up on their end. I then changed my family vacation plans again, only to have them cancel again -- 5 minutes before the interview.

But that's not the worst part. That was only rude.

It was what they said next.

If you want to address climate change, stop biodiversity loss, preserve our critical natural resources, and have a sustainable future -- then we must fix the world's food system.

drawdown.org/news/insights/… Agriculture uses more land -- by far -- than anything we do.

37% of Earth's land is used to grow food, and 75% of that is used for grazing animals or growing their feed.

When it comes to climate solutions, it turns out *time* is the most important variable.

Every year we wait for a solution to kick in, we pour another year’s emissions into the sky, locking in more warming.

That why *time is more important than tech*.

go.ted.com/jonathanfoley That’s why we need to invest in “emergency break” climate solutions most of all. Solutions that have an extra fast impact on the atmosphere, such as:

- stopping fugitive methane emissions from oil, gas, and coal

- stopping deforestation

- cutting black carbon emissions

Some people who oppose renewable energy like to criticize their material requirements — the metals and rare Earth minerals they use.

Usually, this is a disingenuous argument, but there are issues with mining that need to be fixed.

But here’s some important context. First, fossil fuel production requires *far more* mining of materials — including fossil fuels, but also metals and rare Earth minerals.

Cobalt for oil refining. Platinum for catalytic converters.

Overall, fossil fuels use >500x more materials than renewables would.

Do you want to know how much CO2 an EV actually emits into the atmosphere from every charge?

It's pretty easy. You just need to know three numbers. First, you need to know the electricity needed by the EV per mile driven. For my Ioniq 6, it's rated at 4.2 miles per kWh. In my driving so far, I'm actually getting a little over 5 miles per kWh.

I think deploying industrial carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is a waste of resources.

It’s hugely expensive — usually at taxpayer expense — and removes essentially zero carbon, despite decades of effort and billions of tax dollars.

In short: it doesn’t work, and costs too much. It’s also providing PR cover for the fossil fuel industry, which seems to be its only real purpose right now.

CEOs of fossil fuel companies even publicly admit this, and how they need it to extend the life of their industry.

So it’s worse than useless. It’s holding us back.

There seems to be a strange, straw-person argument out there…

That we cannot be *scientifically accurate* about climate change — especially if it’s countering wildly wrong information — without somehow lessening the sense of urgency about stopping it.

I strongly disagree. We absolutely *must* get the science right, even if it occasionally runs counter to a popular climate message or media story.

Just as climate science has fought against outright denial, fraud, and lies — saying that climate change is false — for years. Often at great cost.

When folks say climate change is “caused by fossil fuels”, it’s good to remember that this is ~2/3 right.

A full ~1/3 of greenhouse gas emissions come from other things, unrelated to fossil fuels — agriculture, land use, materials (like cement, refrigerants), landfills, etc. And CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion is only 58% of the total greenhouse gas burden. It’s only ~2/3 when you add methane, energy processing, etc.

The recently published study about the possible "collapse" of an important part of the Atlantic Ocean circulation has gotten a lot of attention this week.

While the media coverage of it has been pretty uneven in quality, let's not lose sight of how important this could be. The current in question is called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation -- or AMOC.

It is *not* the Gulf Stream. Nor is the Gulf Stream "part of" the AMOC. They are connected by another current called the North Atlantic Drift.

But the AMOC is *really* important.

Oh my god. The @Guardian needs to issue a correction here, as quickly as possible, for this sloppy reporting.

theguardian.com/environment/20… Here are some of the many problems with the piece.

First and foremost, they are confusing the Gulf Stream with the AMOC -- or the "Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation".

They are *not* the same thing. Not at all. It's like comparing a super highway with a side street.

There is a lot of confusion out there about “tipping points” in the climate system.

The basic idea is this: a little bit of additional warming could change something (e.g., melting snow) that amplifies the warming (e.g., by making the ground darker, absorbing more sun, warming a… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… The key thing to understand is that all of them are “self-limiting” — that is, they eventually stop because they can’t get any larger, or they only proceed at a certain rate, due to basic physical limits.

For example, when warming melts snow and ice, it only amplifies the… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

The world needs to focus on climate solutions , not just problems.

But it helps to understand the science underlying solutions -- including science behind greenhouse gases, the carbon cycle, and beyond.

Drawdown's "Climate Solutions 101" can help:

drawdown.org/climate-soluti… Unit 1: Building the future we want requires an understanding of our collective past. Explore the last 50 years of stunning change—from food demand, water, population, ocean health, and beyond—to see our current climate inflection point in context.

drawdown.org/climate-soluti…

I keep on hearing and reading that the "carbon footprint" concept was created by BP in the 2005 as part of their campaign to shift responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions to consumers.

But that's not entirely true. The carbon footprint concept is much older than that, and was being used and taught in the 1990s. (I had units on it in my courses at the time.)

The concept originated as a key part of the "ecological footprint" framework created by Mathis Wackernagel and Bill Reese at UBC.

Sometimes people debate the role of individual- versus policy-level action on climate change as “individuals sacrificing” versus “governments need to fix it”…

I don’t see it that way. It presents individual climate action as a “sacrifice” when it doesn’t need to be… Some, if not most, of the most effective things we can do to help climate change at the individual level are *good for us* are no sacrifice at all.

- wasting less energy
- cutting food waste
- eating healthier diets
- wasting less money (and time)
- living in healthier places

It never fails. When talking about the energy transition and climate solutions, someone will ask, "but what about the materials -- lithium, copper, etc. -- that this would take... isn't that worse?"

Yes, but compared to what? The world we would have otherwise? We already had a battery problem -- before electric cars.

We already had an e-waste problem -- before solar panels.

We already had mining / extractive economy / environmental justice problems -- before climate tech

And they already need to be solved.

Many folks continue to miss a key point on climate change solutions --that solutions deployed *today* are far more useful than those that come later.

Why?

It's because of the "time value of carbon". The idea is simple: climate solutions are *cumulative*.

They cut annual emissions (gigatons per year) over multiple years.

To get the total impact, you need to multiply the impact per year by the number of years it's operating.

The longer they operate, the more they can do.

It’s great that the federal government is about to make a big investment in climate. It will help. A lot.

But keep in mind that lots of things have been happening all along, absent big federal action, and they are helping too.

A thread… US emissions have already been falling since the mid-2000s, and have dropped by about ~20% since 2007.

Smaller policy actions, changes in behavior, and big moves in technology and markets, have been largely driving this.

A lot of folks seem to think the US military is a *huge* climate polluter.

Not really. Let's do the math.

US military emissions: ~70 million tons of CO2e / year (see data below). The world emits ~55 *billion* tons of CO2e / year.

So, the US military = ~0.13% global emissions This is for *all* US military emissions, wherever they happen -- all around the world.

Again, it's about ~0.13% of the world's total emissions.

Or about ~1% of all U.S. emissions.

I’ve been working on climate issues for decades, and I have to say that I’m actually more optimistic than ever that we will address it.

Why? A thread…

Technology and markets are pushing ahead on numerous climate solutions — faster than predicted. Businesses are taking serious notice of climate change — both as a risk and an opportunity (to rethink their models). They are going to lead a lot of this effort.

Investors (and the SEC) are taking serious notice of climate change, and shifting capital in important ways.

There are fundamental physical, chemical, and geologic constraints to carbon removal technologies.

While we can still find areas of efficiency gain, the fundamental laws of thermodynamics make it very, very challenging to remove a gas *after* it’s burned. rechargenews.com/energy-transit… I think we need to do more rigorous analysis of what the fundamental, inviolable physical, chemical, biological, and geologic limits of carbon removal are.

What are the limits to DAC? CCS? Nature-based solutions?

I’m not sure we really know.