Carbon Sequestration

Carbon is transactional. Greenhouse gas emissions are human’s trillion bounced checks, and the earth is refusing to take any more without reciprocation.

Blue Carbon

Bull kelp, Nereocystis luetkeana, emblematic of the Pacific Northwest’s coasts is trying to help us. It has long been a key habitat for marine life, as well as food source for humans. As one of this planet’s fastest growing organisms, bull kelp is already acting as a stabilizing force and carbon sponge, buffering against further ocean acidity from our continual emissions. Native kelp forests are resilient and yet also in a state of decline because our collective impact is so overwhelming. Assisting their re-establishment is an obligation we own for living in the absolutely unique Pacific Northwest.

Thankfully, there are efforts well underway to honor this obligation. Puget Sound Restoration Fund is a key local organization studying bull kelp re-seeding. University of Washington’s Dr Thomas Mumford’s work, as seen in this accompanying video, points to why kelp is of paramount interest and optimism in our world today.

Carbon Farming

Carbon farming is simply the principle of returning life, by way of complex living organisms, to our soils when we farm, ranch, or manage land. Commonly, this looks like applying compost directly to area, or by implementing intensive grazing with livestock.

This may appear basic and obvious, yet the degradation of land has threatened and doomed civilizations for thousands of years. The United States witnessed the consequences of avoidable degradation less than one hundred years ago during the Dust Bowl. We adjusted our approach to soil, though conventional farming now relies on factory-grown nutrients to supplement the life we extract from the land.

We know we can do better, and not only that, but this land that has sustained us deserves better. Through returning organic matter back into the soil we can encourage more life, more water, and more carbon to remain where we need it most: in the ground.

The Marin Carbon Project is a noteworthy example of innovative collaboration between academia, government, and landowners in an effort to improve farm viability and the health of local ecosystems. Their measure of success for carbon farming is, “when carbon gains resulting from enhanced land management or conservation practices exceed carbon losses.”