Lungs of earth on fire? No hope unless we rise above BS.

Climate challenges threaten the very existence of the human species, but attracts a kind of BS distortion effect which undermines any hope of meeting these challenges in a clear rational way, without which there will not be much hope.  Key message: we need better information flows, somehow, freeing us from the twin BS effects of fake solutions and fake indifference.

The debates this week about what's happening in Brazil are a beautifully clear example. The entire EU has united behind President Macron at the G7 in attacking Bolsonaro of Brazil, for allowing "the lungs of the planet to catch fire" through his Trump-like policies encouraging unrestrained development. But the counterreactions have been even more distracted and off-beat:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/08/26/why-everything-they-say-about-the-amazon-including-that-its-the-lungs-of-the-world-is-wrong/#338d78a65bde

Yesterday, when Luda drive me to Quakers, I said; "I will NOT be EITHER a hippie or a berserker. We have too many of both those irrational attitudes out there already. " So what ABOUT Brazil?
After all, we have really been there, and what we see in the press doesn't seem to have been there.
We have met strong Bolsonaro supporters AND opponents, and see how BOTH groups have important points to make. What about that real, hard truth? What is REALLY going on, for all us earth people, not just Bolsonaro or Macron or Macri?

Luda's first observation: Why isn't the press covering the big new fires in Siberia too? It is not just Brazil.

That was a zinger to me! About ten years ago, there was LOTS of publicity about Russian soil and permafrost burning, during a summer which was then the hottest on record. That was not Russian development policy; that was global climate change. (NOAA posted color maps by month, showing record heat almost everywhere, though Afghanistan was a bit cold back then, fitting the spirit of the place at the time.) This is a key input to accelerated methane release, and a major worry for folks considering a coming breakout. Why WAS a new larger event not reported? Personalities?

It reminded me of our visit last spring to the best organic chocolate farm by the Atlantic Ocean in Brazil. So MUCH has happened in the politics and culture of Brazil that I was happy to have a quiet conversation in broken Spanish in the forest with a guy who had been working there for decades. "What do you feel about the big changes here? Such very big changes?" I thought a civil war or two might count, but he surprised me  by pointing to the trees and talking about the huge effect of climate change on their life. I don't think he got that from CNN! (Hint: he pointed to what he saw in his life.)

So it's not all development policy, but policies have effects.

I could even imagine a fake news story ("the voice of Loki"): "It was all about Trump. Chinese are trying to get revenge on Trump by cutting back on US soybean exports, and they have to ramp up imports from Brazil -- mainly via Cargill -- to make up for them. So of course they are putting pressure on Bolsonaro and Cargill to do a massive ramp up, to hell with long-term impacts on the soil, just to get over the short-term problem.  And yes, long-term impacts could get lots of people killed and impoverished, but does Beijing care? Do they even care about the people of Hong Kong?"

(I do keep hoping Xi Jinping will find a way to "make lemonade out of lemons" with Hong Kong, but few political leaders are creative and mature enough to really go THAT far.)

More seriously, the critics at Forbes are right that the Amazon has not been recycling that much
carbon to the soil, for generations untold. We read many sources on the Amazon when we visited there last March, such as the book "River of Doubt" and books I showed pictures of on Facebook.
Most of the soil is quite shallow. The current wildfires remind me a lot of the wildfires in California and Pennsylvania forests, which were important when we worked on truly rational strategies to reduce net CO2 emissions. (The good old days of rationality...). Since Bolsonaro, like Trump, relies heavily on advisors (some of whom know more but have strong corrupt vested interests), this may be the whole story, so far as he knows.

But there are very important things people haven't talked about as much.

The first thing which struck me is :"Do these guys know about tera preta or biochar?"

The soil around the Amazon is NOT all shallow or irrelevant. We even posted photos on Facebook of the fertile American-looking town Bel Terra, founded by Henry Ford, not far from Santorem. (Thanks much, Pierre!) In THAT region, the local tribes followed a very distinctive practice of agriculture which vastly increased the carbon content AND fertility of the soil. For hundreds of hears, there was a mix of tribes, some just burning away (like some Mayan cultures heading towards disintegration), but some building foundations of a new sustainable, high-product ecofriendly culture. Grazil had spent lots of money supporting ALL tribes, but more emphasis on the SUSTAINABLE stuff could be hugely valuable both to Brazil and the world. It is not Bolsonaro's fault, exactly, but it is a continuing lost opportunity. Trump was right not to imitate the gross ineffective waste of the Obama climate bill or certain past EU efforts, but why not do something more efficient, more product, less cost, less waste? Will the new EU investment in the Amazon expand (and upgrade) terra preta and biochar? One may hope. Any truly rational carbon fee for the US would include rational payments to US farmers, managed by programs USDA was prepared to implement, which incentivize effective new practices which enhance the soil AND sequester more carbon. But if we don't know how to be rational, can the Brazilians?

By the way, google "Lovelock biochar terra preta" to learn a bit more, a very big part of the global situation. A hell of a lot cheaper than the dangerous underground CO2 storage favored by certain lobbyists hoping for fees much larger than what biochar needs...

And then there are new sources of biofuel and renewable electricity, two other really big political failures in Brazil so far. Lost opportunities, still available in case of human intelligence. I could write about them in even greater length, since I know THOSE players too. But this is long enough, and I wouldn't want any berserkers to give ME priority today. They have done enough already, and we have enough real hot wars going on.