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| Active versus Fossil Carbon |
| | [BOX WITHIN 'Understanding Carbon' by Jutta Kill]
The argument to use carbon sink credits to halt climate change is based on the faulty assumption that ‘carbon is carbon’, which ignores the different interactions of the carbon with the atmosphere, depending on where the carbon is stored.
Forests, soils, oceans and the atmosphere all store carbon, which moves among those different stores over time; these stores form the active carbon pool. Destroying forests (in climate speak, turning them from a sink into a source) will shift the balance within this pool towards higher concentrations in the atmosphere and lower levels of carbon stored in the world’s forests, but it will not increase the overall amount of carbon that interacts with the atmosphere.
Another important carbon store is fossil fuel deposits. But this particular carbon store, buried deep inside the earth, is naturally separated from the carbon cycling in the atmosphere, unless humans decide to release it into the atmosphere when we burn fossil fuels like coal, oil or natural gas. Any releases from this pool of carbon will increase the amount of carbon available to the active carbon pool. This is the crucial difference overlooked by those who advocate carbon sink credits to halt climate change.
Visit Sinkswatch for more information |
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Jutta Kill, SinksWatch |
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