The Biochar Debate: Charcoal's Potential to Reverse Climate Change and Build Soil Fertility Book

If you've never heard of biochar, I would give this introduction four stars. I gave it three only because it does not include instructions on how interested persons can experiment with making biochar themselves. Instructions, however, are prevalent on the Internet. Biochar is, after all, an emerging science that has not gotten a strong toehold yet. Bruges successfully presents the case that it should be one of our top strategies while cautioning against making the same mistakes we've made with letting oil- and money-hungry agribusinesses drive our food growth and choices to human and other species' detriment.

In all the climate gloom and doom today, much of it more understatedly real than manufactured, four ideas positively excite me and give me hope: (1) bills like Georgia HB 842 (which, if passed, would permit families to grow their own food and raise their own small livestock, such as hens, to feed themselves), (2) permaculture, (3) mycelium running, and (4) biochar. Combining all four approaches in small urban and suburban homesteads--as well as in rural areas, where it's being done already--is a strategy for sustainability and curtailing runaway climate change that we need to be implementing NOW. Being able to provide ourselves and our children healthy food, exercise, collaborative survival skills, and a vision for a future working with, not against, Mother Nature, is of priceless value. Not to put too dire an edge on it, but it may be the only way our species can avoid extinction.

"The BioChar Debate" discusses what biochar is and how it can be best used for carbon sequestration. Bruges is not an alarmist, but it is difficult to read this book without becoming mightily alarmed about the course we are on--especially if you also read Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do about It. Biochar is carbon NEGATIVE: it actually removes carbon (from carbon dioxide) from the air and sequesters it in the ground, all while improving soil fertility. How nice it would be to be able to go to one's local Lowe's and pick up a bag of charged biochar as simply as one now purchases Black Cow. Hopefully, some enterprising soul has this in the works as we speak.

After reading this book, I started scouring the internet for YouTube videos on how to make your own biochar and sources for stoves to use for that purpose; some are mentioned in the book. But James Bruges cautions us that, as with any endeavor, balance is critical. If biochar becomes just another means for huge agribusinesses to make a lot of money at the expense of thriving ecosystems and the local food movement, it will not live up to its promise and could even be destructive.

Bruges condenses earlier scientific works on biochar into a readable format for lay persons, and it's definitely a good read for anyone new to the subject. The Science chapter will open some eyes on how the climate-change naysayers are manipulating the data to make it look like we don't have a problem when we most undeniably do. What I came away with after reading this book is that it certainly is not going to hurt anything for individuals to try to make biochar for incorporation into their yards and gardens, and if enough of us did it, it might make a huge difference in the trajectory of environmental degradation that we ARE going to experience over the coming years. Best of all, biochar can begin to help recover seriously depleted soils and, with the aid of mycelium, even reclaim some of our stripped, poisoned lands.

Finally, a word to the wise: It's time to stop taking grocery stores for granted. Start learning about permaculture, organic gardening, and soil diversity now. Even if you don't "believe" in climate change, believe that the heavily fossil-fuel-subsidized food we now depend on will either run out or become so prohibitively expensive you won't be able to buy it. Sooner, not later. It's already happening now.