We Need to Talk About Peat
nautil.us
nautil.us
That said, it's fascinating how much of a carbon sink peat has been. It's kind of staggering, actually. And also frightening it could just dry up and become a constant emitter like that.
But you repeat yourself
Shut those down, and there should be plenty of peat to make whisky for the foreseeable future.
> Add to that the furious pace at which humans are burning up wetlands
We need to talk about population. Peat, yes, but talk enough about peat or any environmental issue and you'll hit population.
Between 2019 and 2050, populations are projected to decrease by one per cent or more in 55 countries or areas, of which 26 may see a reduction of at least ten per cent. In China, for example, the population is projected to decrease by 31.4 million, or around 2.2 per cent, between 2019 and 2050.[1]
[1] - https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/world...
India and the EU handily demonstrate that you can have large populations with far less of a per-capita impact than other Western countries like the US, or other rapidly-developing countries like China.
What is also concerning is the rise of fascist rhetoric based on the idea that our population is too large - I've seen statements of the population being too large rapidly followed by pointing fingers at India/China and suggestions of reducing/controlling the population there.
Both are problems. We are over the carrying capacity so we are bringing on collapse, even if rate of growth is decreasing, which still means the total number is increasing.
The numbers I've seen suggest the population that could sustain living around the world average consumption is roughly the population before the Haber-Bosch process enabled us to feed ourselves fossil fuels -- about 2 billion.
Could 7.6 or 10 billion live on 20% of that per capita? Why bother asking when families with 1 child can be filled with as much love as families with more? All the knee-jerk responses to lowering birth rate pale in comparison to dealing with the problems we will face from nature.
That's why we need to talk about population, even more than peat.
From an article about the huge deposit recently noticed in the Congo: "Pound for pound, peat is an incredibly carbon-rich soil. Over thousands of years, peatlands can build up into deposits tens of feet thick. Peatlands cover just 3 percent of the earth, but stockpile twice as much carbon as all of the world’s trees and one-fifth of all the carbon stored in soils. If just a third of this peatland burned, the amount of CO2 in the air would double." [0] [1 Congo]
More info about peat fires in NA. [2]
[0] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/09/inside-se...
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature21048
[2] https://www.wired.com/story/the-bizarre-peaty-science-of-arc...