The Carbon Breakfast Club seeks a new way to fight global warming

It’s early morning in Yolo County, and eight or so locals, some in cowboy hats, who look like they should be out riding the range, are instead situated around a conference table, eating bagels and drinking coffee.

Meet the Carbon Breakfast Club – a group of ranchers, researchers, regulators and environmentalists led in part by Vance Russell of Audubon California’s Landowner Stewardship Program. Though their livelihoods and concerns are diverse, all at the meeting have one thing in common: they want to know how California’s native grasslands and oak woodlands might play a role in the fight against global warming.

The Carbon Breakfast Club is trying to determine the economic, scientific and practical viability of using rangeland in Yolo and elsewhere for carbon sequestration. Carbon sequestration is an effort to mitigate global warming by capturing CO2 emissions from power plants, cars, and other sources and storing them instead of releasing the gasses into the atmosphere. Trees and plants perform the absorption of CO2 naturally, and traditionally, carbon sequestration has been focused on forests, which are known for their large absorption capacities.

In Yolo and surrounding counties, the Landowner Stewardship Program and the ranchers are examining the potential carbon sequestration of native grasslands and oak woodlands.

“It may seem an odd group to assemble to combat global warming,” says Russell. “But the truth is, climate change is going to affect all of us, rangeland covers one-third of the earth’s land mass. It’s critical for us to find cooperative solutions, and carbon sequestration is one of them.”

Ranchers are essential partners in this initiative because they own such large parcels of land in California. Both above and below ground, their ranches could be extremely valuable in carbon sequestration programs. Currently, no such program exists, but the Landowner Stewardship Program hopes to change that by creating a system in which ranchers would be able to register their land with the California Climate Action Registry then trade carbon in an open market.

Carbon sequestration has financial incentives for ranchers to participate in the program. Using a cap-and-trade model (which will likely be implemented in California in the coming years), ranchers would be able to diversify their income by participating in carbon sequestration, and selling carbon credits. Simultaneously, development could be avoided, and conservation of wildlife and habitat achieved. 

In addition to carbon sequestration, Audubon California is hard at work in other efforts to combat climate change. Currently, we’re working in conjunction with Defenders of Wildlife and the Nature Conservancy to make sure that the state of California implements AB 32 in such a manner as to protect nature habitat and wildlife. Passed in August of 2006, AB 32 mandates reduction of air pollution and greenhouse gasses to 1990 levels by 2020.

“We need to act quickly to identify what to do to help wildlife adapt to and survive climate change,” says Dan Taylor, director of public policy for Audubon California. “Adequate funding needs to be provided to establish monitoring systems, so we can detect the effects of climate change as quickly as possible. We can only do this by providing public and private landowners with incentives to make a difference in reducing greenhouse gasses.”