How the dirt below our feet can save us from extinction
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
Foreword by Dr. Vandana Shiva
Introduction
BOOK I: Losing the Recipe
Chapter 1: The Roots of a Predicament
Chapter 2: Sombroek's Vision
Chapter 3: Conquistadors
Chapter 4: El Dorado
Chapter 5: The Great White Way
Chapter 6: The View from the Bluff
Chapter 7: Confederados
Chapter 8: Hartt's Breakthrough
Chapter 9: City Z
BOOK II: Agriculture and Climate
Chapter 10: Making Sand
Chapter 11: The Moldboard
Chapter 12: Changing the Paradigm
Chapter 13: The Amazon and the Ice Age
Chapter 14: Predicting Climate's Meander
BOOK III: Capturing Carbon
Chapter 15: Carbon Farming
Chapter 16: Understanding Soil
Chapter 17: The Soil Food Web
Chapter 18: The Role of Ruminants
Chapter 19: Compost
Chapter 20: Tea Craft and Designer Biochar
Chapter 21: From Biochar to Terra Preta
Chapter 22: Making Charcoal
Chapter 23: Stove Wars
BOOK IV: Gardening the Earth
Chapter 24: Milpas
Chapter 25: Chinampas
Chapter 26: Trees
Chapter 27: The Power of Youth
Chapter 28: Greening the Desert
Chapter 29: Sahara Forest
Chapter 30: Drey's Challenge
BOOK V: At the Turning Point
Chapter 31: The Biochar Critique
Chapter 32: Carbon Trading
Chapter 33: The International Biochar Initiative
Chapter 34: Permaculture Marines
Chapter 35: Carbon-Negative Communities
Notes
Index
About the Author
About the Author :
Albert Bates was a delegate to the Copenhagen climate conference, trying to point the world back towards a stable atmosphere using soils and trees. His books include Climate in Crisis and The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook. Working with the Global Ecovillage Network he has taught appropriate technology, natural building and permaculture to students from more than sixty nations.
Review :
"Reading like a detective story and marked by impressive scholarship, Albert Bates' latest book has placed the biochar solution and the vision of a truly regenerative agriculture and settlement squarely in the center of the global crisis. New historical evidence that climate is remarkably responsive to human impacts had me gripping the edge of my seat. The comprehensive and well-informed review of current initiatives and technologies is a tour-de-force, and the grasp of the global policy debate equally sobering. It is hard to imagine a technical subject — compounded of organic chemistry, archeology, rural economics, climate science, and microbiology — presented with greater drama or clarity."
— Peter Bane, Permaculture Activist
"In The Biochar Solution, Albert Bates demonstrates the flaws of the story on which industrial civilization is based and offers the living of a new story that will be created by changing our relationship with the planet, and specifically its carbon element. As a result of decades of experience, Bates is better equipped than anyone I know to guide us in slowing climate change by creating carbon-neutral cities and solidly sustainable agriculture."
— Carolyn Baker, Ph.D., author of Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse
"This book should be required reading for every policymaker, as well as everyone who eats food, breathes air, enjoys life and wishes to continue doing so. Bates has woven together a highly engaging interdisciplinary answer to climate change that draws on archaeology, history, ecology, chemistry, philosophy, and his vast and eclectic personal experience, a lively page-turner that blends clear-headed analysis with nuts-and-bolts advice. The Chinese symbol for crisis, he reminds us, is comprised of two words: danger and opportunity. He gives us both sides of that coin — enough danger to wake us up, but ample opportunity to emerge feeling hopeful."
— Tracy Barnett, multimedia travel journalist, author and founder and editor of The Esperanza Project, www.TheEsperanzaProject.org.
"For things to remain the same, everything must change. Before I traveled to Copenhagen for the climate conference, a Benedictine monk asked me if I thought the survival of the human race was politically feasible. I have reflected on that question many times since then. As The Biochar Solution illustrates, climate change cannot be dealt with solely through scientific and economic means. Social and motivational transformation are essential components of the equation."
— Feargal Duff, Senior Advisor to the Foundation for Economic Sustainability, Ireland
