It’s the questions not asked that always interest

Central planning is difficult, really difficult. The number of things it’s necessary to know about in order to plan the lives of 8 billion people. Just astonishing.

For example, this past week or 10 days has given us the plan of M. Piketty and another from Dhr de Schutter. Both of which insist we must have lots, lots, more forest cover in order to beat climate change. At which point:

Trees may store less planet-heating carbon than hoped, study suggests

Photosynthesis does not always result in wood growth, a key factor in carbon dioxide sequestration

Oh well, plans of mice and men gang aft agley and all that. As we say, planning is difficult.

But to us the interesting question here is the one not yet asked. We know that pasture - grazed pasture - builds carbon in the soil. The biggie is how much? Is it more or less than forest cover? Obviously, if we’re going to plan everything this is important. If grazed pasture stores more carbon than forest then we’d better get everyone eating steaks pronto.

If forest cover now is known to absorb less carbon then that crossover point might be coming closer - if, in fact, it hasn’t already been reached as people like Freeman Dyson used to think it has.

Well, we say not asked as yet except George Monbiot appears to be running a scheme to ask exactly that question. We’ll just have to hope that if the answer is pasture that they’ll tell us all, right?

Tim Worstall