Introduction

The Garnaut Climate Change Review has a greater responsibility for the well-being of generations to come than any other enquiry in Australia’s history. Its findings and recommendations will have an impact that will affect the security of all Australians.

Soil Carbon is a divisive issue. It divides scientists and policy makers and their advisors. It divides landholders and industry association leaders. It has led to wild and unsupported statements from both sides. It has all the hallmarks of a clash between competing paradigms, as described by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

The conflict is based on fundamental scientific principles of replication (repeatability of experiments) and reductionism (isolating a single variable for study) and the study of complex ecological systems, including the failure of experimental scientific method to reproduce the findings of farmers on their properties.

These tensions have not kept a group of Australia’s most prominent soil scientists from joining with farmers and graziers in meetings and conferences to build bridges and share perspectives. The Carbon Coalition thanks these scientists and the agronomists and agency personnel who have reached out to producers.

World authority on soil carbon, Dr Rattan Lal, who described our Carbon Farming Conference in November 2007 as “an historic event of international significance”, has sounded the call to arms for his colleagues: “While the market is just developing, there is vast scope for growing soil C as a cash crop… Researchers must put their act together before the train leaves the station.”

All objections and anxiety about difficulties with soil C should be seen in context of our objectives: preventing the disintegration of the infrastructure of our civilization through the impact of extreme weather events and armed conflict between nations and peoples displaced in their millions, desperate and seeking shelter, land and water. These are the warnings of the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Defence Force, and the Pentagon.

If the amount of time and energy that has been expended in finding objections to soil C trading had instead been channeled into finding solutions to the difficulties, the world would already be safer place for our children and grandchildren.