Conspiracy by environmentalists against soil carbon?

Ever wondered why the Green Groups have never endorsed or supported us? Andrea Koch - a Gore presenter based in Sydney - sends us a link to an article about Al Gore’s latest book OUR CHOICE. "It confirms my suspicion about why the Climate Change lobby (i.e. NGO’s like ACF) wont engage on soil carbon sequestration, which is because they know that it will work so well, that it will take the heat off the emissions side of the equation. They want to get the world off of oil before they let farmers get due credit for sucking up CO2."

The line to look for in this extract is: "If you tell people soils can be managed to suck up lots of our carbon emissions, it sounds like a get-out-of-jail-free card, and could decrease what little enthusiasm there is for reducing those emissions."

The Evolution Of An Eco-Prophet
By Sharon Begley | NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Nov 9, 2009

'The potential for soils to absorb more of the CO2 that our utilities, factories, and vehicles spew poses a dilemma for Gore, one of two where his scientific and political instincts collide. With better management, soils could sequester much more carbon than they do now. The question is how much more. Soils scientist Rattan Lal of Ohio State University was surprised to get a call last summer ("Vice President Gore would like to talk to you") that began, "I have 15 or 20 questions about soils and climate for you." Lal calculates that if more farmers adopted mulching, no-till farming, and the use of cover crops and manure, 3,700 million acres worldwide could sequester 1 gigaton per year of CO2, roughly 12 percent of annual global emissions. Other experts are even more sanguine. "If we feed the biology and manage grasslands appropriately, we could sequester as much carbon as we emit," says Timothy LaSalle, CEO of the Rodale Institute, who presented at two summits. The political clash is this: if you tell people soils can be managed to suck up lots of our carbon emissions, it sounds like a get-out-of-jail-free card, and could decrease what little enthusiasm there is for reducing those emissions—as one of Gore's assistants told LaSalle in asking him to dial down his estimate. (He didn't.)
To his credit, Gore sides with the science, letting the political chips fall where they may. He writes that soils could sequester an additional 15 percent of annual global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. That could cut 50 parts per million of CO2 from the atmosphere over the next 50 years. (We are now at 387, up from 280 before the industrial era, with 450 ppm or even less a dangerous level.) To encourage changes in agriculture that would foster carbon sequestration, Gore advocates moving away from price supports and toward paying farmers for "how much carbon they can put into and keep in their soil," he says.