Can Dirt Clean the Climate?
By Somini Sengupta, The New York Times.
Excerpt: Across 100,000 acres in the vast agricultural heartland of Australia, an unusual approach is taking root to slow down the wrecking ball of climate change. Farmers are trying to tap the superpowers of tiny subterranean tendrils of fungus to pull carbon dioxide out of the air and stash it underground. It’s part of a big bet that entrepreneurs and investors around the world are making on whether dirt can clean up climate pollution. They are using a variety of technologies on farmland not just to grow food but to also eat the excess carbon dioxide produced by more than a century of fossil fuel burning and intensive agriculture. Why fungus? Because fungi act as nature’s carbon traders. As they sow their crops, farmers are adding a pulverized dust of fungal spores. The fungus latches on to the crop roots, takes carbon that is absorbed by the plants from the air and locks it away in subterranean storage in a form that may keep it underground for much longer than the natural carbon cycle. The fungal venture, the handiwork of an Australian company called Loam Bio, is among several start-ups to have mobilized hundreds of millions of dollars in investments in efforts to use soil to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere....