-- The race against time to prevent irreversible climate change damage continues to be a major global crisis – and whilst carbon dioxide is ultimately the problem, Australia’s Environmental Cowboy is proving that ‘mining’ carbon back out of the atmosphere could also be our best chance at fixing it.
Environmental scientist Khory Hancock, who is better known as the Environmental Cowboy, is on a mission to empower and enable businesses to integrate profitable carbon projects into their current practices through the regeneration of forests, oceans, and soils. Working with carbon and farmland management company Upscale Carbon, Khory is overseeing projects from reforesting cattle stations in the outback to koala offsets on the Gold Coast, with a focus on making natural resources more financially valuable when they remain intact.
This is done through the creation of carbon credits, and it’s a concept that flies in the face of the current narrative that acting on environmental issues is too expensive for even big businesses to implement. The concept of making carbon credits a profitable commodity is one that Khory is determined to bring to the fore.
Khory explains, “When you simplify it, there are only two real solutions to climate change – renewable energy and carbon farming. Carbon farming is basically a way to ‘mine’ or draw down the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere causing climate change using the power of nature’s regeneration process; mainly through photosynthesis in plants. There are different scientific methodologies that allow us to do this under current government climate policies and all of them aim to build better soil health, improve ocean health, and by planting or regrowing forests on cattle stations instead of cutting them down. It’s rapidly reversing the damage we have done at scale, and at a profit.”
All of these methods safely store carbon, which is calculated using ‘carbon credits’ – a financial product with the associated environmental value attached. This credit can be traded just like a traditional share, meaning that regenerating nature and reversing climate change is now profitable.
“Putting a value on carbon is a game-changer in tackling the global climate crisis and provides the opportunity to shift the focus of the economy from degeneration to regeneration of nature,” Khory says.
‘We can scale up the natural regeneration process using these methods at a rate fast enough to counteract the 10 years we have left to avoid catastrophic and runaway climate change’.
In part of what is a wide-reaching plan, Khory is also working on a related project that explores how seaweed farming can not only help to protect reefs and regenerate the ocean to reverse climate change, but can also improve profitability for agriculture. Khory is also working with specialist organistaion FutureFeed, who have uncovered that by incorporating seaweed into cattle feed, methane emissions can be reduced by up to 99%, and that if just 10% of livestock producers added only 1% of seaweed meal to ruminant livestock’s daily feed intake, it would have the equivalent impact of taking 100 million cars off the road. The concept also has business benefits for farmers, showing improved productivity alongside the reduction in methane emissions.
This concept is also being explored through a documentary The Last Blue Hope, which will feature industry experts, scientists and indigenous thought leaders discussing how to reverse the impacts of climate change while simultaneously protecting the Great Barrier Reef through growing seaweed. Khory has partnered with the filmmakers of the recently released Envoy: Shark Cull to make this documentary.
Khory’s work is incredibly timely and imperative given the findings of the recently released Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on climate change, which clearly highlighted the need for urgent, large-scale changes if we are to shift the balance on global warming over the next decade. Using an investment model based on ‘profit for purpose’, Upscale Carbon and Khory’s are proving that simultaneously regenerating nature will not only to create a better future for us all, but also offers significant commercial viability for all involved.
For additional information visit:
The Environmental Cowboy: https://khoryhancock.com/ & https://www.instagram.com/environmental_cowboy
Upscale Carbon: www.upscalecarbon.com.au
Contact Info:
Name: Khory Hancock
Email: Send Email
Organization: Environmental Cowboy
Website: https://www.upscalecarbon.com.au/
Release ID: 89064969
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