Hot off the Press! Three, new books on proposed solutions to the climate crises
Here are book reviews of three books which I have read since the Global Earth Repair Summit. All of them published in 2022. Between them, they give an overview of proposed solutions – from advanced technologies to nature-based solutions.
How Plants Cool and Heal the Climate. Finding Solutions Close to Home. Peter Bruce-Iri. 2022, Engagement Edge Books. New Zealand. 233 pages. My favorite book of these three because Bruce-Iri is about low-cost local solutions without high technology, based on permaculture and with an indigenous perspective. He also covers oceans. Also the most attractive of these books with color photos, and graphs. I highly recommend the book. Peter Bruce-Iri was a presenter at the Global Earth Repair Summit and attended throughout the North America program, even though it was the middle of the night for him in New Zealand. You can listen to his Summit presentation here:
Climate Restoration: The Only Future that will Sustain the Human Race.
Peter Fiekowsky. 2022. Rivertowns Books, 259 pages. Fiekowsky covers many proposed climate solutions I hadn’t heard about. Synthetic limestone. A nice chapter on seaweed and marine permaculture. Iron fertilization of oceans, Enhanced atmospheric methane oxidation, and population restoration. I am skeptical of a lot of the technology proposals, but another book for thinking outside the box. Fiekowsky was a presenter at the Global Earth Repair Summit. You can listen to his Summit presentation here:
Rebalancing our Climate: The Future Starts Today.Eelco J. Rohling. 2022, Oxford University Press. 302 pages. Rohling goes for the big picture, an overview of global climate change problems and proposed solutions. Emissions reduction, carbon dioxide capture & deep rock injection (high-energy technology), solar radiation management, including arrays of mirrors in space, stratospheric aerosol injection, marine cloud brightening and iron salt aerosals. Fertilizing oceans with iron and other things, blue carbon, ocean alkalinization, ocean artificial upwelling and other ocean geoengineering. Relatively little of the book is about vegetation and soils and he doesn’t see it as big a part of the solution as I do. What made me take the book more seriously is that is has a favorable review by Thomas Goreau (one of my climate gurus). So I read it carefully and learned a lot. Much of the book is over my head, controversial stuff, too science fictiony for me and many of the solutions proposed require huge budgets/industrial production using fossil fuels. I may not like many of the proposals but Rohling is not coming up all these proposals, he is chronicling what is out there. He does add a useful discussion of pros and cons from his perspective.
Here is the title to his Section 4 of the book. The New Kid on the Block: Negative Emissions through Greenhouse Gas Removal. Here are some chapters in this section
4.2 Land-based Earth Systems NETs
4.2.1 Vegetation and Soils
4.2.2. Biochar
4.2.3 Enhanced Weathering
4.2.4 Products Made from Captured CO2.
This title, The New Kid on the Block: shows that, slowly but surely, the decision makers on the planet are being informed that revegetation, ecosystem restoration and earth repair are part of the solution. But they are all Johnny-come-latelys. The amount of information on the topic has grown steadily for the past century and has accelerated greatly in the last three decades. I’ve been studying this assiduously for over 50 years now and published my first article on climate change in 1974. There have been many thousands of others going back generations and now more recently, there are millions of us. Keep going on the grassroots, folks. Keep your eye on the ball.
