From 0 to 2 in one day. At the beginning of the day, zero was the number of contributions that peat had made to the climate change discussion for me, and now it’s up to two. First, Clare Wilson in NewScientist (29 May 2021) notes that it will soon become illegal in Great Britain to sell peat for home composting purposes:
Source: thebacklabel
THIS month, the UK government announced that peat-based composts would no longer be sold to home gardeners by 2024. But some say the ban should happen sooner and also encompass peat’s use by plant nurseries, which is under consultation but not definitely going to be included.
It is ironic that gardeners, who tend to care about the wider environment as well as their own personal green space, often buy peat-based growing media, which is bad for the planet. I have done it myself out of habit and convenience.
Commercially available peat compost is usually made from peat dug out of lowland bogs that form in high rainfall areas of northern Europe and Canada. It makes a wonderful growing medium for new plants because of its ability to hold air and water and retain nutrients.
Yet peat bogs are a precious and finite resource, taking thousands of years to form out of partially decomposed moss residues. When we drain and rip up the bogs, we lose unique ecosystems and release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Later in the day, WaPo had a more detailed article on the matter, including a citation of Minnesota folks draining wetlands for ag purposes. Money quote:
Long before the era of fossil fuels, humans may have triggered a massive but mysterious “carbon bomb” lurking beneath the Earth’s surface, a new scientific study suggests. If the finding is correct, it would mean that we have been neglecting a major human contribution to global warming — one whose legacy continues.
The researchers, from France’s Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences and several other institutions across the globe, suggest that beginning well before the industrial era, the mass conversion of carbon-rich peatlands for agriculture could have added over 250 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. That’s the equivalent of more than seven years of current emissions from the burning of fossil fuels for energy.
“Globally [peatlands] are only 3 percent of the land surface but store about 30 percent of the global soil carbon,” said Chunjing Qiu, a researcher at the laboratory, a joint institution supported by French government research bodies and the Versailles Saint-Quentin University, and the first author of the study published Friday in the journal Science Advances.
The next time you buy growing medium for your petunias, check that the bag does not say peat.
