Land use's relationship to global warming is gaining prominence within climate change policy-making. Oregon is studying how to reduce vehicle miles and thus emissions by reducing urban sprawl [arksearch]. And the biofuel debate rages as food and forests [search] pay a high price from growing and burning plant materials for energy.
It is relatively easy to see how burning fossil fuels causes climate change. What is more inscrutable and often given short thrift is the extent to which the condition of terrestrial ecosystems is coupled to the atmosphere [search]. Humanity is already using nearly half of both the energy captured by plants and the Earth's surface for agriculture. I am certain that a full-accounting of the matter would show millenia of human caused land cover changes to be the...