#44

It's so Wuthering Heights up here. Last week heavy fog hung around all day long. It was hard to tell what time of day it was because it just looked the same ALL day. But when the fog finally lifts, scenes like this just take my breath away.

Peat bogs form in wetlands and moors. It is still an important fuel source in some parts of the world and avid gardeners use it without much thought to where it came from. It has the same energy capacity as burning brown coal. Peat grows at a rate of 1mm a year. The area where I am living has 8000 year old peat beds. Peat bogs are seen by some scientists to be as important and fragile as rainforests. Here in Germany they also rape (harvest/mine) the moors. And what they are doing here is just the tip of the iceberg. This absolute destruction is going on all over the world wherever peat exists. Delicate moorland ecosystems are completely depleted and ruined from the drainage and drying out and mining of huge areas of land for agricultural, forestry and housing purposes. This not only destroys the habitat of many species, but heavily fuels climate change. As a result of peat drainage, the organic carbon that was built up over thousands of years and is normally under water, is suddenly exposed to the air. It decomposes and turns into carbon dioxide (CO₂), which is released into the atmosphere. It takes centuries for a peat bog to regenerate. Recent studies indicate that the world's largest peat bog, located in Western Siberia and the size of France and Germany combined, is thawing for the first time in 11,000 years. As the permafrost melts, it could release billions of tons of methane gas into the atmosphere. Indonesia, China, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea are currently creating the biggest problems in terms of peat fires.

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I found myself speechless standing beside this open cut peat bog, and looking at the destruction of this ancient land. Here is a piece we picked up. At 1mm a year I guess that piece is about 200 years old.