The solution to global warming is right in front of our eyes. If it's growing and it's green then right there carbon is continually being taken from the atmosphere and converted to a form that is not merely harmless but positively useful. This process, called photosynthesis, is the source of all life on earth. The sun provides the energy for photosynthesis to convert airborne carbon into solid carbon by chemically bonding carbon from the air with hydrogen from water to produce carbohydrates, the building blocks of all vegetation. This natural sequestration (locking away) of carbon is fundamental to the survival of animals as well as plants. The key element is water. Water is hydrogen and oxygen combined and when the plants take the hydrogen, the oxygen is liberated to be breathed by animals.
Every plant and every tree, every day, does its best to minimise global warming by removing carbon from the atmosphere - but the health of the system depends on the water cycle. Plants need a regular supply of water. The problem we face in Australia (and in other parts of the world) is two-fold. First, we release a large amount of carbon into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels and then, we sequester too little carbon into our landscape as a result of poor land and water management.
To this day trees are still being felled and land cleared. The amount of coal, oil and gas we burn could be reduced from tomorrow onwards - and it will be if we elect sensible and far- sighted people to government, but to do so will require significant changes in transportation and electricity generation. In the meantime though, we can get moving on reducing atmospheric carbon by rehabilitating the landscape.
The rehydration of the rural sector in Australia is the best way to reduce our net carbon output. We can change from being the highest carbon producers per person on the planet to a carbon absorbing nation. Our small population relative to our large land mass will make this possible quite quickly - once we get started.
We need to look at the ideas of people like Peter Andrews, one of Australia's landscape visionaries. His 30 years of work in analysis and experimentation with rehydration of degraded farm land has been recognised by the scientific community at last. Peter has learnt to see the landscape as it was pre-settlement; and realised the unique way our vast, hot continent would use every drop of water and guard it against loss.
As Peter likes to say, "It's not that difficult once you read the landscape. Our water used to travel very slowly through wetlands and chains of ponds, sustaining a 'step diffusion system' where the water cycled through the surrounding landscape promoting growth and controlling salt".
"European farming methods converted this to a 'plumbing and drainage system', the wetlands were cleared and then in the next flood, massive erosion ruined the land and washed much of the top soil into the sea."
Peter Andrews has demonstrated that our wetlands can be rehabilitated - all it takes is for landholders to embrace this solution and for government to provide funds for its implementation. Economically, the benefits vastly outweigh the costs - but the long-term cost of not doing it is too tragic to calculate.
So here is our challenge, our chance and our responsibility - to rehydrate the landscape. It will be a win for all of us - to be able to reach our carbon emission targets with less pain, a win for farmers who will benefit by having more productive land and best of all a win for the land itself that is our home and our legacy.
Paul Cockram from Mongarlowe was a founding member of the Time & Energy collective, established in 1978 to question the wisdom of uranium mining, the ever-increasing use of finite fossil fuels and to promote alternative forms of energy such as wind and solar power. The collective lost its way in the 1980s when it became apparent that hardly anyone was listening.
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