Jacques Leslie

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ReflexionesNaturaleza, ,  

La última gran esperanza de evitar el cambio climático catastrófico podría estar en una sustancia tan común que generalmente la ignoramos o simplemente caminamos sobre ella: el suelo bajo nuestros pies.

La tierra tiene cinco principales reservas de carbono. La atmósfera ya está sobrecargada de ese material; los océanos se están haciendo ácidos mientras se llenan de él; los bosques se están reduciendo, y las reservas subterráneas de combustible fósil se están vaciando. Eso hace que el suelo sea el depósito más probable de inmensas cantidades de carbono.

Ahora, los científicos están documentando cómo atrapar el carbono en el suelo puede producir dividendos: reduce el cambio climático al extraer el carbono de la atmósfera, restaura la salud del suelo degradado y aumenta la producción agrícola.…  Seguir leyendo »

Soil Power! The Dirty Way to a Green Planet

ReflexionesNaturaleza, ,  

The last great hope of avoiding catastrophic climate change may lie in a substance so commonplace that we typically ignore it or else walk all over it: the soil beneath our feet.

The earth possesses five major pools of carbon. Of those pools, the atmosphere is already overloaded with the stuff; the oceans are turning acidic as they become saturated with it; the forests are diminishing; and underground fossil fuel reserves are being emptied. That leaves soil as the most likely repository for immense quantities of carbon.

Now scientists are documenting how sequestering carbon in soil can produce a double dividend: It reduces climate change by extracting carbon from the atmosphere, and it restores the health of degraded soil and increases agricultural yields.…  Seguir leyendo »

An aerial view of the Kariba Dam between Zambia and Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, circa 1965. Credit Paul Popper/Popperfoto — Getty Images

ReflexionesNaturaleza,

Thayer Scudder, the world’s leading authority on the impact of dams on poor people, has changed his mind about dams.

A frequent consultant on large dam projects, Mr. Scudder held out hope through most of his 58-year career that the poverty relief delivered by a properly constructed and managed dam would outweigh the social and environmental damage it caused. Now, at age 84, he has concluded that large dams not only aren’t worth their cost, but that many currently under construction “will have disastrous environmental and socio-economic consequences,” as he wrote in a recent email.

Mr. Scudder, an emeritus anthropology professor at the California Institute of Technology, describes his disillusionment with dams as gradual.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica, ,

Start with the term “tar sands.” In Canada only fervent opponents of oil development in northern Alberta dare to use those words; the preferred phrase is the more reassuring “oil sands.” Never mind that the “oil” in the world’s third largest petroleum reserve is in fact bitumen, a substance with the consistency of peanut butter, so viscous that another fossil fuel must be used to dilute it enough to make it flow.

Never mind, too, that the process that turns bitumen into consumable oil is very dirty, even by the oil industry’s standards. But say “tar sands” in Canada, and you’ll risk being labeled unpatriotic, radical, subversive.…  Seguir leyendo »