Comment Log Display

CARB:
'Regenerative Agriculture' includes farming and grazing practices
that, among other benefits, reverse climate change by rebuilding
soil organic matter with compost and biochar, and restoring
degraded soil biodiversity, resulting in both carbon drawdown and
improving the water cycle. Lawrence Livermore Lab's January 2020
report, 'Getting to Neutral - Options for Negative Carbon Emissions
in California', featured natural solutions, including compost and
biochar application sequestering carbon into the soils, leading to
carbon neutrality by 2045; these programs are noted among the most
cost-effective solutions. CARB needs to include the cost-effective
information from this report into the AB 32 Scoping Plan modeling
and metrics for 2030.
Compost production and use is being viewed as contributing to
carbon neutrality at CARB's Natural and Working Lands Workshops and
in policy documents. The 'Draft California 2030 Natural and Working
Lands Climate Change Implementation Plan' looks to double
agricultural compost and mulch use. It is important that the CARB
Board prioritize healthy soils in its climate change and
environmental policy leadership to provide long-term resiliency and
position California for economic recovery. California's recycling
and composting industry can drive significant investment and job
growth, creating 125,000 new green jobs on the pathway toward
stabilizing the falling statewide recycling rate, while
concurrently reducing between 20 and 30 million metric tons of
greenhouse gases. According to established research, soil can act
as a vast carbon sink to help balance out greenhouse gases,
withholding up to three times as much carbon as is found in the
atmosphere
To get to carbon neutrality, compost and biochar use present carbon
negative options that need to be included into the modeling and
metrics for 2030 and 2045.