I personally have been using biochar for my own needs in home gardens and orchards for several years. I am quite happy with the results and find the above comment to lack real world flexibility. If biochar (or any true fix) is to make a deep impact on the threat we ourselves are presenting to our world, then it is going to have to be accessible for the average Joe. Speaking in industrial terms, products, importing char, etc. is still living in the mindset from which our problems proliferate from. A common household produces, aside from compostables, enough organic waste convertable to biochar to easily replace the carbon lost around the home. Especially over the years. I may not single handedly be solving the global warming crisis, but on our 1/5 acre lot we are producing a lot of food and taking responsibility for our little corner. The soil here is far more fertile than it ever was as lawn, which we removed, and we are not stealing our carbon from unfortunate neighbors. It is a part of the resource/waste stream of this house already. We are merely capturing it and retaining it in the soil. no additional crops need to be grown here to meet that need, this culture is already wasteful enough to produce all that is necessary. ANY PROCESS THAT OCCURS AT INDUSTRIAL SCALES BECOMES UNSUSTAINABLE. If we continue to act at that level, we will cause harm and lose access to the side benefits that come from any process that is done by an individual or household that can identify and take advantage of incidental byproducts of that process (ie, heat, waste removal, cooking, etc.) Biochar needs to be as accessible and common as composting. Individuals need to educate themselves and act. The degree to which knowledge/data about biochar will proliferate under those conditions will be great. Also, fire is a natural part of most terrestrial ecosystems. It has been gone for too long from most forest and rangelands that were traditionally managed heavily, and sophisticatedly, by First Nations peoples. I believe this would go a long way toward fixing carbon, both into soil, and into faster growing trees (temperate forest fires typically become carbon negative after only 3 yrs due to faster tree growth). Everyone needs to become a conscious part of their ecosystems again or we will continue to cause blind harm.
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