Conservation Corner: August 13, 2001

Addressing Global Warming Through Carbon Sequestration
by James L. Cummins

On April 28, 1975, Newsweek reported that the earth's climate was cooling and that agricultural productivity would decline. On June 1, 1992, that same publication reported that the atmosphere is reaching its limit to absorb carbon dioxide. Two weeks ago, 180 countries met in Bonn, Germany, for a final effort to keep the Kyoto Protocol from becoming "nonrecyclable trash."

This treaty is about stopping economic development, not balance. Many of the extreme environmentalists oppose the use of planting more trees to filter carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during photosynthesis because they don't like it benefitting agriculture. This process is termed carbon sequestration. Carbon is cycled throughout the biosphere and exists as a prominent element in living things. For example, one-half of the dry wood of a tree is composed of carbon. Carbon sequestration helps restore the natural environment, better air quality and provide habitat for countless species.

Unfortunately, activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and changing land use have resulted in an excessive amount of carbon dioxide, and according to many scientists, causing an imbalance. Excessive carbon dioxide is the most prominent gas that causes global warming. While the earth does benefit from a natural greenhouse effect caused by gases in the atmosphere that help keep the earth's temperature at a relatively constant level to support life, the addition of more greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, increases warming to an undesirable level.

Many energy companies are working with the Department of Energy to reduce carbon emissions through the use of better technology, cleaner burning fuels and the sequestration of carbon from the atmosphere. More than 600 utilities are participating. Some of the methods that have been utilized to reduce carbon dioxide emissions include conversion to cleaner burning fuels and retrofitting electric generating plants with more effective equipment.

Carbon sequestration can be conducted by the reforestation of agricultural lands. Healthy growing hardwood forests are highly effective at naturally sequestering carbon and converting it to forest biomass. Over a 70-year period, the net difference between an acre in annual row crop production and an acre of bottomland hardwood forest is roughly 600 tons of atmospheric carbon that is sequestered by the forest.

American Electric Power has conducted voluntary carbon sequestration projects to protect rain forests in Bolivia and Brazil and restoe 10,000 acres of wetlands in Louisiana. Texaco is involved with the Rio Bravo Project in Belize. Wildlife Mississippi and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have a 500 acre reforestation project pending with a German company.

Addressing global warming at the same time we develop a national energy policy is a very difficult proposition, but the expansion of the use of nuclear energy, increasing the efficiency of coal-based generating plants and the use of ethanol-based fuels will greatly reduce carbon dioxide emissions, as well as provide more demand for U.S. grain. These approaches will be supported by main-line environmental groups and practical-minded people.

James L. Cummins is Executive Director of the Mississippi Fish and Wildlife Foundation in Stoneville, Mississippi. Known as "Wildlife Mississippi," the Foundation is a non-profit, conservation organization founded to conserve, restore and enhance fish, wildlife and plant resources throughout Mississippi.