Is Soil The Secret to Slowing Climate Change?
CrowdScience
BBC
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 30 November 2018
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Removing carbon dioxide from our atmosphere - and stopping it getting up there in the first place - is becoming increasingly urgent if we want to prevent catastrophic climate change. There are some seriously high tech machines being developed to try and tackle this problem, but could an equally powerful solution be found in the dirt under our feet? Prompted by New Zealand farmer and CrowdScience listener Kem, we dig deep to see how effectively plants and soils soak up CO2 from the air; and what that means for how we should farm the land around the world. And we visit a Scottish forest to find out how the ancient art of making charcoal is staging a comeback in the fight against climate change.
Presenter: Marnie Chesterton Producer: Cathy Edwards for BBC World Service
(Photo: A young plant in soil, in the morning light. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and maybe it's when I had a hand in. |
| 0:04.0 | I'm Tammy Walker and I produce podcasts for the BBC. |
| 0:08.0 | My role is to give new and diverse creators a voice with the opportunity to build a career. |
| 0:12.0 | That's the thing I love about podcasts. |
| 0:14.4 | You start with just a good idea, but then you have the space to see where it goes. |
| 0:18.4 | And doing that at the BBC means we can really run with the best stories |
| 0:21.9 | while developing the most unique audio talent. |
| 0:24.3 | So if you like what you hear, why not check out the huge range of podcast we've got on BBC |
| 0:29.1 | Sounds. This is our yard paddock. There's 26 yearling heifers out there. We've been doing it for now 20 years and it seems to work. |
| 0:43.0 | Hello, this is Crowd Science from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:47.0 | I'm Marnie Chesterton and that's Kim, |
| 0:50.0 | one of our loyal listeners on his cattle farm. |
| 0:53.2 | Crowd Science is the program that takes your science questions |
| 0:56.6 | and turns them into audio adventures. |
| 0:58.9 | And one common topic is climate change. |
| 1:02.2 | Earlier this year, we made a program exploring one of those |
| 1:04.9 | questions whether we can deal with the high levels of carbon dioxide in our |
| 1:09.0 | atmosphere by sucking it out of the air. It sounded a bit like this. |
| 1:14.0 | But Lissner Kem, who you just heard there on his farm |
| 1:20.0 | thought it should have sounded more like this. |
| 1:23.0 | Kia or crowd science. |
| 1:27.0 | I'm Kim Johnson from Methvin in New Zealand. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

