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Dec 15
2009
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Climate Change and VineyardsPosted by Bruce Robinson in wine , weather , water , trees , Sonoma County , politics , planning , Ideas , Green , government , go green , farms , environment , climate change , chemicals , carbon , California , business , alternative energy , agriculture |
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Global warming poses a real and serious threat to California’s wine industry, but vineyards throughout the state—and other agricultural lands—can also take steps to blunt the pace of climate change.
It is increasingly clear, says Ted Lemon (right) , co-owner of Littorai Wines in Sebastopol, that the dominant business model in American agriculture, needs to change.
Monoculture farming has not succeeded in feeding the world. Lemon observes, so a new approach is clearly needed.
The Littorai Winery is an informal demonstration site for the practical application of principals of agroecology. The Wine Institute of California has also intiated a proactive program in support of sustainable vineyard practicies, which you can read about here.
When it comes to building new reservoirs and hydroelectric plants, there are good dams and bad dams. A new online-calculator developed by Sebastopol’s 
Sonoma County inventor James McElvaney (right), has developed a system to convert organic waste into energy and other beneficial byproducts, one that creates the energy that powers it in the bargain.
The primary process of bioconversion takes place in a series of vertical tanks, such as those seen at left. In addition to the environmental benefits of bioconversion, Hillman notes that it has the economic potential to actually fund some of those productive outcomes.
