Cooling the planet without carbon taxing or trading: is water the elephant in the room?

Carbon farming is being promoted by Healthy Soils Australia, a non-profit organisation that has the support of many innovative farmers. They are learning by doing and creating practical knowledge and case studies for farmers around the world to follow.

To attempt global cooling, funding is required to stop deforestation and drive reforestation. However, the need to involve the government in a direct tax on carbon or managing a carbon trading scheme could be avoided by the formation of private sector partnerships. Emitters of carbon particulates and/or other atmospheric pollutants could be encouraged to form partnership with farmers and/or regional farming co-operatives to sequester their pollution. In this way polluters would compete with each other to research, develop and apply the most cost effective ways to offset their pollution. One way of providing such encouragement would be to fine emitters that did not organise to clean up the pollution they created.

A pollution fine in the form of a Net Emissions Levy (NEL) could be progressively increased by a set rate each year to provide certainty to investors until evidence was produced that satisfactory outcomes were being achieved. An escalating fine on pollution could rapidly spur emitters into action to promote carbon farming and provide funds to avoid deforestation. It could provide a more transparent and effective approach than carbon taxing or trading.

Australia is highly endowed in land area per population. Of the 770 million hectares of land in Australia only 30 million hectares (3.8 per cent) of the country is used for crop farming. Another outcome of a NEL could be a major increase in agricultural production and productivity.

NEL is a policy of “minimum regret” because even if the bacteria hypothesis of global cooling proved to be not valid society would still be better off with more vegetation, cleaner air and more rainfall. In addition an NEL would sequester carbon to enrich soils and make farming more efficient, resilient and profitable.

The enhanced rural revenues, production and productivity would increase government tax revenues. This should make Australia’s effort in global cooling more than just self-financing but also generate a surplus. The surplus could be used to assist low income families in the event there are some suppliers of goods and services who increase their prices because they have not profitably covered the cost of sequestering their pollution.

Australia has land management models for the world and has scientists with leading knowledge about soils, plants, agriculture, climate processes and rain making. Australia has a business opportunity and a moral responsibility to show the world how to sustain humanity on our planet.