There are people trying to reforest the Amazon pasture lands with food forests which should reduce the incidence of fires as well as providing many other benefits.
The Dunstan chestnut is a traditional hybrid developed decades ago. It wasn't exactly the same as the original American chestnut (Castanea dentata), but was that really such a problem?
There is one type of regenerative agriculture that is good and should be promoted: Regenerative Veganic Agriculture. Veganic farming is the organic cultivation of plants and crops with a minimal amount of exploitation or harm to any animal. For instance, no use of animal manure or bone/fish meal, and use instead mulch, vegetable compost, green manure, or chipped branched wood. No pesticides and no use of animals to plough fields either. Veganic farmers try to produce their sources of fertility directly on the farm and use crop rotation and polyculture. Regenerative Veganic Agriculture is the transformation of veganic gardening or small-scale veganic farming into a scalable solution to address the current global environmental crisis.
Regenerative veganic agriculture is exactly what is needed, especially tree-based agriculture (agroforestry) using syntropic methods to build fertility. If more people would convert pasture land to largely tree-based agricultural systems, like various projects are doing around the world, then that would spare existing forests from agricultural expansion while simultaneously planting trees as a by-product of growing food on land that would not have otherwise been allowed to naturally reforest itself anyway. It is by far the most sensible and sustainable form of agriculture, with the potential to be the most ethical as well.
Thank you for taking the time!
Lychee can grow at tropical latitudes, but it needs hot (rainier) summers and (drier) winters w/ 50-150 hours at 0-12°C in order to fruit well, so it's more of a subtropical fruit.
!fruit@slrpnk.net welcomes you!
Thank you for sharing such beautiful words of wisdom in these troubled times.
Even if you cover the whole planet in forests, there is a finite amount of fossil fuels you can burn before it is negated.
I think that this is the crux of the matter, and of course you're right. The total amount of carbon stored in fossil fuels is (presumably, without searching for the numbers) much greater than the amount currently stored in living organisms, so there is a finite amount of fossil fuels that can be burnt before the carbon emissions exceed the capacity of forests/vegetation to capture it. Do you know what that "finite amount of fossil fuels" would be? From what I have seen, it is quite large, though humanity is rapidly approaching it. What's needed is for the rate of emissions to be reduced below the rate of capture, and so a reduction in fossil fuel use is urgently needed, but I wouldn't say that completely eliminating fossil fuel use is more important than protecting forests. All that's needed in the long term is for carbon capture to at least equal carbon emissions. In the short term, the planet is already close enough to the "point of no return" that reforestation is necessary in order to bring down levels of carbon dioxide, regardless of how quickly fossil use ceases. It has to be both. Burning fossil fuels is not a sustainable way to meet the energy needs of 8 billion+ humans. Cutting down forests for biofuel is not a sustainable way to meet the energy needs of 8 billion+ humans. Deforestation for biofuel would be sustainable for a much larger population than would burning fossil fuels (due to the extremely slow renewal rate of fossil fuels), but we're past that point. There's not enough land. Either energy consumption needs to drastically decrease, or non-combustion sources of energy are needed.
I get the impression that we are essentially "on the same side" and just quibbling over details. You make an excellent case against fossil fuels! Looking at it in terms of the broader carbon cycle makes the necessity of ending fossil fuel use very obvious even ignoring any concerns about pollution, destructive extraction practices, or other harmful effects.
I understand what you're getting at, but I don't see it as being so simple.
Fossil fuels are essentially just ancient soil carbon, so in a way, we're talking about the same thing on different time-scales. My point was/is that the combination of deforestation and burning of the cut biomass actually reduces the amount of carbon that can be stored in the soil on a given area of land, not just releasing it once and then recycling it. To capture the same amount of carbon again would require a greater area under management than the area originally cut. On a finite planet, there is a limit to how much this deforestation for biomass production could be scaled up without net-positive emissions. (I'm tired, so this may not be the most articulate.)
The world's forests capture a substantial amount of the carbon dioxide emitted by humans, and extensive reforestation could capture even more. By reducing the carbon capture potential of forests, that's less carbon dioxide absorbed year after year. Over a very long period of time, "releasing it one time" is what burning fossil fuels does: it releases stored carbon once, and then trees and other plants recycle it. Deforestation reduces the recycling.
Even though mature forests can store more total carbon, it seems that young forests, with more small trees, may actually be able to absorb more methane, so there can definitely be some advantage to managing trees for wood production on a short cycle. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, so this is one way in which the overall situation is complicated.
Of course, avoiding both deforestation and fossil fuels is even better.
I'm glad that we agree on this point. It doesn't need to be one or the other. The most effective approach to addressing climate change would involve reforestation and eliminating dependence on fossil fuels by developing clean energy technologies.
Ultimately, carbon capture just needs to match carbon emissions (plus a bit extra at first to compensate for current overshoot), and realistically, it will take both reforestation and a reduction in emissions to achieve that. Ending animal agriculture makes the most progress toward both.
For those finding this post for the first time, OP is now an admin of https://lemmy.vg/ which is a Lemmy instance run by vegans for vegans.