Carbon Cycling – Executive Summary

A proposal to help pilot a transition from a linear (consume-and-dump) to a cyclic economy

Context: The FREdome Visionary Trust aims to encourage the evaluation of ideas conceived or recognised at grass-roots. We are currently campaigning to draw attention to a thread of activities relating to the prevention of dangerous climate change. The need to evaluate alternative, effective solutions was clearly highlighted by the difficulty in obtaining accord or commitment at The Copenhagen Climate Conference. The ‘Carbon Cycling’ approach proposed here could potentially help unite climate sceptics & concerned rich/poor countries, conserve the biodiversity of our planet, improve the quality and quantity of food produced, alleviate the growing pressure on our fresh water supply; leading to the creation of a whole new industry led by the UK. It is a safe and permanent solution to climate change, resource depletion and future global conflicts.

During the run-up to Copenhagen, in partnership with our youth team, we recorded a related video message and entered it into the 1minutetosavetheworld international short film competition organised by WeCan in partnership with organisations, such as The Guardian, Greenpeace and the World Development Movement. There were hundreds of entries from 30 countries and 21,275 people voted. Our entry won both the youth category and the public vote, with the most votes and highest average rating, stimulating the greatest amount of discussion. (See http://tinyurl.com/FREdome60secs and http://tinyurl.com/FREdome-crew.)

Uniqueness: There are three main ways to deal with undesired carbon emissions: stop them, bury them or convert them back into carbohydrate resources such as our threatened food and fuel supplies. The current focus appears to be a bitter battle to limit emissions against commercial interest exacerbating economic pressure; whilst much good work on the third prosperity generating option appears to be going on piecemeal and unnoticed. Carbon cycling surely looks the most promising option so long as the piecemeal approach is coordinated, integrated & built upon. Our proposal concerns the practical integration of rapid, natural processes in order to capture carbon and cycle a proportion of it. This offers a solution far greater than the sum of its parts – a well-researched potential combined solution to the climate, energy and food crises.

Our knowledge base identifies and cross-references public domain material which collectively supports the model and it records the original connected work of field experts in disciplines such as forestry, hydroponics, ecology, rain induction, organic agriculture, commercial algae cultivation, microbiology, engineering, climatology and wasteland recovery. These experts spent their lives working across the world, cultivating algae, planting belts of trees, creating soil and producing crops.

The concept can be implemented on a present-to-future, personal-to-global scale. On a personal level organic waste can be composted or better broken down in a domestic biodigester into fertiliser and biogas for a small electrical generator. At a local level in populated or reclaimed areas biorefineries can turn waste biomass into resources required by industry and consumers. At a macro-level in arid areas biodigested carbon-absorbing seaweed, algae or salt-tolerant crops can be used as a medium to grow rain-inducing hardwood trees (initially under sheltered domes) and food/energy/other crops on a vast scale. Once kick-started with carbon capture, the local model can be phased in to conserve soil mineralisation and grow carbon-neutral economies.

Feasibility and Credentials: Scientists have already induced algal blooms in the oceans by adding limiting nutrients or stirring them up from the deep and have measured the local fall in CO2 levels. Therefore if these nutrients together with algae are transferred to inland bodies of sea water algal blooms will absorb CO2. The resulting biomass can be anaerobically digested – a well understood and practised process – to produce biogas and fertiliser. Biogas generators exist & the digestate is successfully used today as a growing medium.

The proposed programme will integrate the current relevant state-of-the-art technology and build upon the little-known original work of numerous global field experts such as: Lawrence D Hills founder of the Henry Doubleday Research Association (HDRA) the world’s largest organic gardening group; James Sholto-Douglas, who led the refertilisation of the Limpopo Valley in Botswana; Dr Christopher Hills who introduced commercial culturing of Spirulina and Chlorella; Richard St Barbe Baker OBE and Dr Sydney Moutia who used trees to induce rainfall in desert areas of Abu Dhabi and Rodrigues; John Davies OBE, who designed continuous cropping in hot climates to make methane gas in large enough quantities to make petrol…

Proposed first phase: This will include: Assembly of the necessary infrastructure; Parallel piloting and cost/effort/timescale/revenue calibration of integrating and implementing the relevant non-pioneering technological aspects; Identification, scoping and refined costing of bridging the residual R&D gap; Intermediate scaling-up of the accompanying social advances required for a full global roll-out.

Investment: The cost of this exploratory phase is equivalent to 0.005% of the UK defence budget, and 0.00023% (less than 2 billionths) of the global defence budget. It alternatively amounts to 6p a year to each tax payer or 3p a year to each UK resident. Compare this with the impact of the UK Climate Change Bill, which will cost each UK family an estimated £10,000. Furthermore, in contrast with cutting carbon emissions, which will reduce standards of living & threaten economies, converting carbon emissions into world resources represents a net economic gain. Bjorn Lomberg (the Sceptical Environmentalist) & world thought leader on the economics of climate change has calculated with the help of 10 or so leading global economists at the Copenhagen Consensus Centre that even if Kyoto had been put into action in 2005 at a cost of $150 Bn a year the impacts of climate change would only be postponed by 6 years at the end of this century (see video @ 6 mins 28 secs) – long past even the most optimistic scientists’ tipping points for the planet.

In the longer term, in order to finance rapid implementation on a huge scale, we suggest a treaty between all nations to allocate an agreed proportion of their defence budgets by declaring climate change and resource depletion as universal threats to national and planetary security. Systematically included in their annual programs then, will be tasks to counter these threats using a mix of military and subcontracted resources.

The Urgency: As we were reminded in the article “Why Copenhagen matters” printed in the Guardian on 30 Nov 2009, “At every step, the science becomes more worrying.” Despite current fears, we are perhaps being lulled into a false sense of security while the polar caps are still reflecting solar energy and the melting of their ice absorbs latent heat, temporarily holding back the rise in average global temperatures. However, when all the ice has gone, in an ever more rapidly shrinking number of years, then ocean warming will accelerate and sea levels will rise more rapidly, not only because of the melted ice, but also due to thermal expansion.

At least as worrying is the resulting weaker sinking of cold water at the poles, causing the system of ocean currents to falter. The last time this happened in earnest 250 million years ago stagnant decaying organic matter released huge quantities of hydrogen sulphide, killing off most of life in the seas and then on land. Studies of crystalline layers in ice cores drilled from the poles indicate that earth’s climate flipped in a single season so when it does happen it may well not be a gradual process. At some point the melting of the immense Siberian, Alaskan and Canadian permafrosts will release vast quantities of methane into the air dwarfing current man made emissions of greenhouse gases and making global warming unstoppable even if we cut our emissions to zero. Huge methane chimneys have already been found bubbling up from beneath the Arctic Ocean. In 2008 leading hazard research scientist Professor Bill McGuire gave us just seven years to the tipping point of dangerous climate change.

Requested Action: The FREdome Visionary Trust requests an opportunity to present the concept to an open-minded public figure or organisation and if sufficiently convinced of its plausibility, to recommend a political debate regarding the allocation of resources to a deeper, practical evaluation of Carbon Cycling.

Contact: Greg Peachey / Ivor Kellock, FREdome Visionary Trust, 43a Napsbury Lane, St ALBANS, AL1 1DU

07900 221347 / 07782 193093 greg@FREdome.org / ivor@trainleaders.co.uk www.FREdome.org