This simple message -that we can't save the Earth without saving the actual physical, water-and-soil-and-plant Earth- needs to be said and re-said until everyone understands.
We've been disappointed by the scientists, leaders, and especially the "environmentalists" (like Sierra Club, Audubon, Union of Concerned Scientists, etc...) who have decided to advocate for industrial "renewable" energy as the only solution. They've looked at the massive environmental destruction required to mine, manufacture, and construct solar and wind farms and connecting transmission lines - and said yes, we must destroy the world to save the world.
However, there is hope within the current system. The push to save biodiversity, while sometimes sidelined, has significant support in the COP15 agreement. That agreement, and related work by TNFD, will have to be considered, often for the very first time, by every company and gov't with sustainability disclosures.
Even the IPCC addresses the importance of land use - the latest AR6* still shows global photosynthesis absorbing net carbon every year, despite human land-use change continuing to destroy that literal lifeblood of our planet.
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| All numbers are gigatonnes of Carbon. Image Source: Hillis, David. Life: The Science of Biology. Textbook published 2020 by Macmillan Higher Ed. |
According to the diagram above, net plant growth (photosynthesis - respiration) stores 3 gigatonnes/year of carbon, offsetting almost 1/3 of the yearly emissions from fossil fuels (9.5 gigatonnes/year). However, human-altered land use and human-caused fires emit another 2 gigatonnes/year of carbon to the atmosphere. A gigatonne is about twice the weight of all the humans in the world. (Source: https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Gigatonne)
Also, the upcoming (in 2024) standards for including land use change in Scope 1/2/3 emissions reporting will explicitly tie real environmental destruction (clearing forests, bulldozing farmland) to the statistics that accountants love to worship, total tons of carbon emitted. Now developers (even of renewable energy) can't ignore the cost that continued industrialization has to the Earth's life-giving ability to absorb and store carbon.
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| Source: https://ghgprotocol.org/land-sector-and-removals-guidance |
Hopefully, with all of these connections being made, people will finally start to give credit where credit is due, and give thanks to our beautiful, fragile planet for all it does for us.
*IPCC overview diagrams of global carbon sinks and sources:
AR6 (2023) : https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/figures/chapter-5/figure-5-12/
AR5 (2013) overview: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Simplified-schematic-of-the-global-carbon-cycle-IPCC-2013-Numbers-represent-carbon_fig4_281185559
AR4 (2007) overview: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-global-carbon-cycle-boxes-are-carbon-pools-and-the-arrows-the-fluxes-between-them_fig2_255642401
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