> root fusion and fungal symbiosis, rather than trunk volume and canopy size
one could consider the soil itself as a living organism by the ton, and I would hope conversations around sequestering carbon will transition into conversations around increasing total biomass on earth.
Carbon gets top billing because its easily measurable and has a direct influence on the greenhouse effect, but the costs of climate change really come from the climate becoming more chaotic - every living organism acts as a buffer for storing energy, carbon, and water - the more life on earth, the more stable the atmosphere becomes.
(I'm no climate scientist, this is my impression from reading Charles Eisenstein's Climate: a New Story, totally turned me around on being fatalistic about climate change)
Gabe Brown refers to the sugars plants offer to fungi as 'liquid carbon'. Ingham calls them 'soil exudates', which is technically more accurate but I think both get the point across.
We can definitely use soil recarbonization as an air brake (pun not intended) for atmospheric carbon increases, but at the end of the day we enjoy an environment that was created by trees running unchecked for millions of years depositing carbon dioxide in the ground, before other fungi learned to eat lignin and slowed the process down.
When you're trying to change habits you need something to do, instead of a list of things not to do, and planting trees and learning how to make them happy are certainly things we can do.
one could consider the soil itself as a living organism by the ton, and I would hope conversations around sequestering carbon will transition into conversations around increasing total biomass on earth.
Carbon gets top billing because its easily measurable and has a direct influence on the greenhouse effect, but the costs of climate change really come from the climate becoming more chaotic - every living organism acts as a buffer for storing energy, carbon, and water - the more life on earth, the more stable the atmosphere becomes.
(I'm no climate scientist, this is my impression from reading Charles Eisenstein's Climate: a New Story, totally turned me around on being fatalistic about climate change)