Following former US vice president Al Gore's highly successful film promotion "An Inconvenient Truth" to alert us to the impending disaster of climate change, it was fascinating to hear him talk about how he altered his life, just like a diet or fitness program, to lead a life that's carbon neutral.
What he is referring to is of course the fact that every time we drive a car, turn on a light or buy food that we don't grow ourselves, we are causing emissions of carbon dioxide that have reached such catastrophic levels that they alter our climate.
The average Australian car is far less fuel efficient than the modern European diesels which are just as fuel efficient as the hybrids. In fact, at Digger's we have two C4 Citroens that use only 5 litres per 100 kilometres. If you don't switch cars you can eliminate the impact of CO2 by joining Greenfleet for $40. This is the amount of money needed to plant 17 trees to lock up your CO2 emissions. If you fly to Europe or America by plane you will need to spend about $120 (or effectively pay a tax of 5%) to cover the planting of 48 trees.
Greenfleet 26 Koala Drive, Koonwarra Vic 3954
Phone: 03 5664 2220. (www.greenfleet.com.au)
Most electricity providers offer a greenpower source which in effect means they are sourcing the electricity, not from dirty coal powered generators, but from renewable sources like hydro-power or wind. The incremental increase is less than $100 annually. It is also essential that you minimise your shower time or even better install solar powered hot water since this is the most wasteful use of domestic power. (Do you need to leave so many lights on, run heating, air conditioners and other hungry appliances?
Twenty-five percent of greenhouse gas emissions are caused by us not growing our own food. When you buy tropical mangos, bananas or pineapples in the southern states each piece of fruit may have travelled 4000km. If you buy strawberries or tomatoes out of season, say from May until November, then they will have been shipped 4000km from Perth. At our local Safeway garlic is being shipped from Mexico and cherries from California, which are both 18,000km trips. Food miles are a CO2 emission disaster. When you grow your own food you immediately eliminate 25% of your greenhouse gas emissions!
One of the most important activities that Al Gore and Tim Flannery continue to neglect is the importance of organic gardening, or in this case, carbon gardening. Carbon dioxide is 27% carbon but organic matter is 58% carbon, so when a tonne of organic matter is made it has taken 2 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. To completely eliminate our greenhouse gas problem we need to bury 38 tonnes per hectare, which is less than 10% of the high carbon levels of our best organic soils. (Yeoman's, Priority One, 2005.)
At a CSIRO research centre in South Australia very poor scrubland was cleared and sheep were grazed. With low applications of superphosphate, soil biology thrived, the grass grew and the animals grazed and recycled their wastes. In a 40 year period soil organic matter lifted from 1.2% to 5% – a 400% increase.
This effectively buried nearly 100 tonnes of carbon per hectare or 2 ½ times the minimum level needed to counteract climate change. Applied over all of the cultivated area of the planet if we raised organic levels by just 1.6% we would sequester all the excess atmospheric carbon. (Yeoman's, Priority One, 2005.)
If a backyard were 1/10 of a hectare or 1000 square metres (ie 50m x 20m) we need to bury only 4 to10 kilos of carbon/square metre through the soil profile. Our new fruit and vegetable book recommends 1-3kg of compost per square metre each year, so just by following a normal application of compost to your soil you will produce the necessary rise in carbon in just 10 years! (Not 20, or 50 years that political inertia is causing.)
At Digger's
Apart from buying fuel efficient cars, switching to greenpower, building a low carbon office and cafe, we propagate hundreds of thousands of plants that sequester carbon. By building organic composts and growing as much of our own food we are a step ahead of Al Gore – we are truly carbon positive.