Civilization as we know it is at a crossroads. For the past 10,000 years, we have turned a growing understanding of physics, chemistry and biology to our advantage in producing more energy and more food and as a consequence have produced exponential population surges, resource depletion, ocean acidification, desertification and climate change. The path we are following began with long-ago discoveries in agriculture, but it divided into two branches, about 8,000 years ago. The branch we have been following for the most part is conventional farming -- irrigation, tilling the soil, and removing weeds and pests. That branch has degraded soil carbon levels by as much as 80 percent in most of the world's breadbaskets, sending all that carbon skyward with each pass of the plow. The other branch disappeared from our view some 500 years ago, although archaeologists are starting to pick up its trail now. At one time it achieved success as great as the agriculture that we know, producing exponential population surges and great cities, but all that was lost in a fluke historical event borne of a single genetic quirk. It vanished when European and Asian diseases arrived in the Americas. From excavations on the banks of the Amazon river, clearings of the savanna/gallery forests in the Upper Xingu, and ethnographic studies of Mesoamerican milpas, science has now re-traced the path of the second great agriculture, and, to its astonishment, found it more sustainable and productive that what we are currently pursuing. While conventional agriculture leads to deserts, blowing parched dirt across the globe and melting ice caps, this other, older style, brings fertile soils, plant and animal diversity and birdsong. While the agriculture we use has been shifting Earth's carbon balance from soil and living vegetation to atmosphere and ocean, the agriculture that was nearly lost moves carbon from sky to soil and crops. The needed shift, once embarked upon, can be profound and immediate. We could once more become a garden planet, with deep black earths and forests of fruit and nuts where deserts now stand. We can heal our atmosphere and oceans. Come along on this journey of rediscovery with The Biochar Solution: Carbon Farming and Climate Change.

The Biochar Solution: Carbon Farming and Climate Change

Science & Math

Bates, Albert K.

Earth Sciences

New Catalyst Books

One of the clearest pictues of the greenhouse effect - why its happening and what we can do about it. Graphs and illustrations to help you visualize the facts. With a forword by Vice-President Al Gore.

Climate in Crisis: The Greenhouse Effect and What We Can Do

Book Pub. Co

This book is an invaluable resource to prepare for any kind of disaster, be it Y2K or mother nature. It contains recipes and methods for cooking without a kitchen stove, information on buying and storing food, general supplies to have on hand, how to safely store water, how to dispose wastes when power is out, how to heat and light your home without electricity, what tools and equipment to have on hand, and much more.

The Y2K Survival Guide and Cookbook

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Bates, Dorothy R.

Cooking Education & Reference

Global Village Institute

There is no way to meet the targets laid out in The Paris Agreement without keeping 90 percent or more of remaining coal, oil and gas in the ground. The adoption of this accord by more than 190 countries on December 12, 2015 marks the end of the era of fossil fuels. The final text still has some serious gaps, and the timetable will have to speed up, but the treaty places a red line on carbon emissions that all nations have agreed we cannot cross. With science, economics and law coming into historic alignment, a solar-powered economy is now unstoppable, and it will change everything. Will it come soon enough to matter? Will it be enough? How difficult will the transition be? There is a still a very large gap between climate science and this new prescription. There is a gap in political will, economic planning and general public awareness that must be bridged, and quickly. Our new way of operating will be crafted in the coming decade. This book looks at the pieces we have and the pieces that are still missing. The Paris Agreement follows the author's personal journey from COP-15 in Copenhagen to Le Bourget's Blue Zone, stopping along the way at endangered tropical rainforests, melting glaciers and sinking islands. It takes you through the exciting weeks in Paris, with the outcome uncertain, and how the text made its way through each day. We hang out in Belushi's Bar, attend the nightly Place to Brief, and travel along the Seine with the First Nations. At no time have the historic stakes been higher. In Paris there was rare drama, being played out among people from every corner of the planet, through the long hours of each night. Albert Bates takes us there, watches it all as it happened, and then looks at the final document, reproduced in entirety, and what it does and does not say.

The Paris Agreement: the best chance we have to save the one planet we've got

History

World

ecovillage

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Books by Bates, Albert K.