The Boston Globe has a very interesting article How to solve climate change with cows (maybe).
Could better grazing patterns be the answer? A sweeping new theory divides the environmental world
.
.
.
The core premise of their thinking is a belief in the overlooked importance of soil. Carbon, harmful at current levels in our air and water, is essential in the ground, where it makes soil rich and fertile. Our greenhouse-gas problem, they argue, began long before we realize, with agricultural mismanagement and other disruptions of land deep in human history, and solving it depends on restoring our soil to the point where it pulls immense amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere—possibly enough to reverse the effects of industrial emissions.
This topic is new to me. It seems like an eminently sensible idea that we try many approaches to solving a problem as complex as global climate change. It seems a little silly to get caught up in an argument about whether we should just try cutting greenhouse grass emissions or we should just try capturing the excess emissions. Trying both approaches at the same time increases the odds that the two approaches together will be sufficient as opposed to the odds for any one approach being sufficient.
Moreover, improvement of the soil is only one part of the idea of carbon sequestration. So we aren’t just talking about a two pronged approach. We are talking about considering as many good ideas as can be imagined.