What Colour is Your Carbon?

A climate accord was recently signed in Paris.  All sorts of countries promised to do all sorts of things to help combat global warming and all of the other countries pretended to believe them.  It was announced as a staggering success and indeed it was.  Thousands of delegates sat down and hammered out agreements nobody is going to follow and argued furiously about exactly what is was that they were going to pretend to do.  So now the world is officially saved and we can all go back to sleep.

Um, ok wake up now, apparently we need to talk about mangroves.  This is what an article said on The Sydney Morning Herald's website today.  Furthermore this conversation should involve a little more than bitching about how smelly, humid and mosquito ridden they are.  It is fair to say that mangroves don't have great press.  However apparently when they aren't reeking up the joint and facilitating disease mangroves are our unsung climate warriors.

Mangroves apparently hold vast stocks of "blue" carbon.  Blue carbon is like black carbon only bluer.  Coastal wetlands lock up massive amounts of carbon (designated blue presumably to indicate that its difficult to run a power station on it) which would otherwise go to less helpful places like the atmosphere.  Environment hating psychopaths who prefer marinas, seaside resorts and their children not dying of malaria are sweeping mangroves away.  This is bad.  Well its bad for the mangroves obviously but it might also be bad for us as everytime we do so apparently we are unleashing hordes of blue carbon onto an already suffering world.

More study is needed to determine exactly how much carbon the wetlands are storing and how this should be factored into the planet saving activities that we won't be getting up to as a result of the Paris conference.  While figures are rubbery at the moment initial indications are that mangroves are the ultimate carbon storage system.  If we covered the planet in mangroves the only climate change we would have to worry about is ice ages and presumably we could fix that by burning some of them.

Sadly there's a problem.  Mangroves, sea grasses and the like are simultaneously aesthetically displeasing and situated on land that would be highly desirable if it wasn't for all the damn mangroves and sea grass.  As a result mangroves and sea grass are swiftly vanishing from the world's surface.  An expert from UTS claims that developed and developing countries have destroyed their coastal habitats.  If you exclude developed and developing countries from any list I don't actually think you have anything left.  So the mangrove situation is parlous to say the least.

Let me be the first to issue a clarion call for the mangroves survival.  Compared with most of the stuff we're supposed to do to save the planet putting up with a handful of stinking swamps seems pretty cheap and easy really.  I'm doing my part.  I live near the Cooks River, a handsome waterway flowing through southern Sydney.  It reeks like an open sewer and the principal decoration on the riverbanks are signs warning you not to eat any fish you might catch there.  It is tidal and, yes folks, there are mangroves.  Not many as the suburbs have encroached as close as they dare but some.  So far despite the smell and the presence of mosquitos in squadrons I have resisted the temptation to take an axe to a single tree.