James Bruges

Before I read "The Biochar Debate: Charcoal's Potential to Reverse Climate Change and Build Soil Fertility," I was completely unaware that there was a public policy debate in the scientific community on this issue. Over the last few years, I've read a lot about biochar in both the popular and scientific literature. I'm a retired academic research librarian so it is easy for me to get connected with just about any publication on any topic. The motivation for my research was simple: I'm an avid organic gardener and possess an irrepressible intellectual curiosity for a wide range of popular, academic, and scientific subjects.

Unfortunately, this book did not shed additional light on many of the unanswered questions I had about biochar; neither did it provide a clear, coherent introduction to the topic. Readers completely unfamiliar with the topic of biochar might find this book confusing.

I'd hoped that the book might explain the process used by the ancient Amazonians to make terra preta (biochar). It did not. Evidently, that is still a mystery that nobody in the scientific community understands. These ancient people had access only to very primitive technology, but somehow managed to pyrolyze enormous quantities of organic wastes to create fertile farming land in the notoriously infertile soils of the Amazonian rainforest. How did they do it?

Since biochar is still not available commercially, I wanted to know if there was some easy way for me to make it for use in my home organic gardening. I'd already experimented on my own and was extremely pleased with the enormous crop improvement I'd achieved. (I took unadulterated, 100% hardwood charcoal and broke it up into small pieces, and buried them in a small section of my vegetable garden.) But the method I'd used was too labor-intensive (and unhealthful) to be continued on a large scale. The book did shed light on this issue. Basically, the author confirmed that there is no simple way for suburban home gardeners to make biochar; we need to wait for commercial ventures to manufacture and market it on a large scale. His explanations convinced me...but I still wondered why in the world I was not able to do what primitive Amazonians accomplished with ease 1,500 years ago!

The book had a number of good, black-and-white illustrations that helped me visualize biochar-related concepts that I'd previously only read about. But, I found it frustrating that there was often little explanation accompanying the illustrations.

I soon discovered that "The Debate" is the heart of the book. This fact is clearly evident in the title, but I had ignored it. I'd seen the big font-size used for the word "Biochar," and ignored the smaller font-size used for the words that came after it. I soon discovered that this is not an introductory book about biochar, but rather a public policy briefing paper. Its purpose is to explain: 1) how much good biochar could do in fighting global climate change; and 2) how easy it would be for irresponsible capitalists to exploit biochar in ways that would do additional harm to the biosphere. It is an interesting debate. I found myself intellectually drawn to the author's conclusions. But the author does not present an unbiased argument by any stretch of the imagination. He is an enthusiastic follower of sustainable living and a clear adherent of peak oil. In a number of places in the text, he reveals his belief in the coming collapse of global modern civilization. His politics are extremely green and liberal. He is clearly and fundamentally against unregulated free markets. I have an intellectual curiosity for all these topics, so the book held my interest. But I can easily see that the book might irritate a lot of readers who do not share these interests or beliefs.

It is an odd little book. The writing is clear enough, but the jumbled organization of ideas and issues disturbed me. I'm glad I read it, but in the end, I'm sure this book will appeal only to a very narrow audience of readers.… (meer)