OPINION:
The climate changes continually, and it is most noticeable when looked at locally (“Painting the White House green,” Web, Jan. 28). Turning grassland or forests into deserts has gone on for 10,000 years at an accelerated rate, which approximates the history of agriculture. Unfortunately climate change as a political issue comes down to carbon dioxide and the oil industry. There are numerous cult-like ideologies that are exploited to gain public support on one side or the other — animal rights and veganism being two leading examples — but it extends into urban versus rural living, individual rights versus collectivism.
Without a doubt modern agriculture has had the greatest effect on the climate. This effect is local, and it can occur readily on a time scale consistent with the human lifespan. You can easily measure the effects in terms of local temperatures and humidity, rain fall, decreases in animal species, soil health or even depletion, and aquifer depletion, etc. If you did address agriculture, it would involve positively affecting the carbon cycle and carbon sequestration to the extent of totally compensating for transportation-emitted carbon.
There is no one way to do agriculture. The two extremes are defined by mono crop versus regenerative agriculture. Amber waves of grain are in no way “green.” It is not to be found in nature; it is purely extractive and only enabled by the use of fossil fuels. Regenerative agriculture, as in the Allen Savory approach, has not been scaled to satisfy global food demand. New technology and better understanding of how to sustain and preserve biological systems is there to be had for the increased use of regenerative agriculture. It would ultimately sequester the carbon in the soil.
However, this solution would kill the politics. The only thing Chinese-made windmills and photovoltaic cells will accomplish is economic destruction and the rise of nation states that recognize what is going on. One of those is China, and Beijing Biden has already positioned himself to profit from it.
SAMUEL BURKEEN
Reston, Va.
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