James Bruges was an architect in London, Khartoum and Bristol. He subsequently wrote the Little Earth Book, the Big Earth Book, and The Biochar Debate. With David Friese-Greene he advises the Soil Fertility Project at Social Change and Development an NGO in Tamil Nadu, India, concerning anaerobic digester and biochar production using only waste and invasive materials. He is involved with the Positive Money campaign and a member of Feasta’s Cap and Share group, and is a co-author of Feasta's book Sharing for Survival. He lives in Bristol.
James Bruges has written 5 articles so far, you can find them below.
About
James Bruges
Patrick
Not really. It's called entropy. The process that reduces complex life to dust. It happens all the time, not just by fire or pyrolysis. 'The total mass of bio' is not constant, it continually increases and decreases. By growing biomass in desert sand entropy is reversed.
James
Patrick. Thanks for your response and the attached article, which I found interesting because you obviously know so much more about nature’s mechanisms than I do. When the use of biochar is driven by neoliberal economics (as with all aspects of life) it has dangers, as pointed out by BiofuelWatch.
James Bruges provides a useful overview of biochar - charcoal produced for agricultural purposes - based on research from India, the UK and Mozambique. One hope for biochar is for increased global food production while permanently enhancing soil. The other hope is that it could help the struggle against climate change.
For Adam Smith, “Goods can serve many other purposes besides purchasing money, but money can serve no other purpose besides purchasing goods.” Banks and financial traders have other ideas. They are now running a parallel economy in which money makes money out of money. The volume of this trade is ten times the volume of trade in goods and services, and traders extract money that other mortals can’t possibly aspire to. No wonder it causes havoc.
The financial world has out-stripped the real world. Our current economic crisis is too good an opportunity to miss since it allows radical action to be taken.