Carbon trading, also known as “carbon offsets” or “cap and trade”, is a controversial and as yet unproven practice. It is a way for industrial polluters to pay for the right to pollute with biomass offsets that absorb CO2 and emit oxygen, like planting forests and creating farms. The concept is sound but it takes too long to reduce GHGs (GreenHouse Gas) this way.
Like a dog chasing its tail, big industrial polluters pay to continue polluting, but the Earth’s biomass cannot grow fast enough to counteract it.
At the the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the mid 1700s, we began burning fossil fuels like coal to run steam engines and do work. This long term burning of fossil fuels has released more GHG into the atmosphere than the ecosystem can absorb. We are out of balance and it’s getting worse.
In a balanced ecosystem, GHG is generated and captured naturally in several ways. Natural sources of GHG include decomposing vegetation, outgassing from the ocean, venting volcanoes, naturally occurring wildfires, and even flatulence from ruminant animals.
Biomass is one of the Earth’s primary natural mechanisms for removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Biomass consists of the Earth’s massive amounts of continuously growing vegetation in forests, farms and plants. Farms absorb CO2 and store carbon in the soil. Trees absorb CO2 and store the carbon in wood. Unfortunately the carbon is released when the wood is burned, either by forest fires or human consumption. Yes, sorry, your wood stove pollutes.
We need to act faster.
There is no question that increasing biomass naturally captures and stores CO2. There are major organizations raising money from polluters to create farms and plant forests.
The ocean is another primary component of Earth’s biomass. It both emits and absorbs GHG. Decomposing vegetation emits CO2. Algae and phytoplankton are the primary absorbers of it. Warmer ocean temperatures are causing three major things to happen:
- Warming causes natural algae to grow faster and spread farther. This is called “algal blooming“
- Warming enables a more toxic strain of algae to grow and bloom
- Algae shades the light which hinders the survival of phytoplankton, which consumes CO2.