The nation’s annual carbon dioxide output was nearly 7 billion metric tons in 2018, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. But carbon storage is another matter, particularly for oil and gas companies looking for ways to offset the carbon dioxide that they emit.Īll native grasslands in the country together could sequester up to 1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, Blackburn estimates. It was hard to identify anyone who would pay landowners to mitigate flood damage, Blackburn said. “That would be the best long-term insurance policy on the Texas coast,” he said. To create incentives for landowners to preserve natural land, Blackburn and the Baker Institute at Rice are leading a group of organizations as varied as the Nature Conservancy and Valero Energy to brainstorm ways to create a market for storing carbon in the soil of prairies, farms, ranches and grasslands in Texas and around the country.įunding is available to landowners for carbon stored in forests, such as California’s cap-and-trade market, and the same should be done for soil, Blackburn said.īlackburn wondered how property owners could be persuaded to keep the land in its natural state to help bear the brunt of future storms. The trend is the same throughout the tallgrass prairie system that runs from the Texas coast north to Manitoba, making it one of the most endangered ecosystems in North America. Less than 0.1 percent, or about 5,000 acres, remain of the original 12 million acres of Blackland Prairie that once spanned from San Antonio to the Red River north of Dallas, according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. “Carbon will stay in the soil for centuries."īut there are few pieces of pristine land left like Daphne Prairie, untouched by plow or urban sprawl. “It’s a good locker to put the carbon into,” said Jim Blackburn, an environmental lawyer and Rice University professor. Poets and explorers wrote about the spectacular view above ground, but the real magic is what happens below the surface. BOTTOM RIGHT: The Hicks property is official.Ī pristine prairie can also be home to hundreds of types of plants. BOTTOM LEFT: Hicks, a lawyer who visits his property weekly, is hopeful that untouched grasslands in Texas and across the country can help mitigate climate change. TOP: The land, outside Mount Vernon, Tex., is a registered native prairie.
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