The World’s Peatlands Are Climate Bombs Waiting to Detonate

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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/05/opinion/climate-warming-peatlands.html

By Daniel Zarin, executive director of forests and climate change at the Wildlife Conservation Society—opinion piece in The New York Times. 

Excerpt: ...wetlands make up only 3 percent of the earth’s land area but store twice as much carbon as all of the trees on the planet. Yet for all their importance, these landscapes have been largely forgotten in the global effort to address the climate crisis. This oversight has been hugely consequential and looms ever more so. Peatlands are filled with deep accumulations of slowly decomposing plants and other organic material known as peat. They are carbon sinks, absorbing more carbon than they release into the atmosphere, and have been crucial in slowing planetary warming. They also absorb, filter and release rainwater slowly, helping to ease droughts and floods that have increased in severity with changes to the climate. But increasingly, these landscapes are being decimated, and global action is required to protect them — and the climate.… 

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