Agricultural soil carbon sinks cheapest and fastest, says Professor

Soil carbon sinks can play a key role in the global strategy to mitigate against greenhouse emissions, says US climate change economist Professor Bruce A. McCarl of Texas A&M University. In a paper called "Enhancement of Carbon Sequestration in U.S. Soils" he wrote: "With focused effort, the amount of carbon sequestered in soil by land management could be significantly increased. Various studies estimate that the soil C sequestration rate may be increased to 0.44-0.88 Pg C y-1 and sustained over a 50-year time frame," says Prof. McCarl. "Results from integrated assessment analyses indicate that soil carbon sequestration may have an important strategic role – due to potential for early deployment and low costs – within a technology portfolio to mitigate climate change.
"The important aspect of land management for soil C sequestration is that, unlike many other technologies to offset fossil fuel emissions (e.g. geologic carbon sequestration, carbon capture), it can be implemented immediately, provided there are economic and other incentives to do so.
"Due to the cumulative effect of CO2 on climate, an immediate offset of CO2 emissions provides a significant delay in the rise of atmospheric CO2 concentration. In addition, by the time that land management C sequestration begins to saturate the soil’s capacity to store additional C, other methods of reducing emissions or sequestering carbon may be available or already in use."

Prof. Bruce A. McCarl is Regents Professor of Agricultural Economics at Texas A&M University. He specialises in policy analysis (mainly in climate change, climate change mitigation, among other things).