Fertilizing the oceans with iron could help remove a gigaton of carbon dioxide per year
Fertilizing the oceans with iron could help remove a gigaton of carbon dioxide per year
Phytoplankton absorbs carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, and there's a relatively easy way to boost the world's populations.
Phytoplankton absorbs carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, and there's a relatively easy way to boost the world's populations.
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Buesseler doesn't believe adding iron to the world's oceans on a mass scale to increase phytoplankton levels would cause any harm to global ecosystems. However, he does stress that more research is needed to investigate the effects.
Yes, please!?
doesn’t believe
A far cry from "knows".
At this point doing something that you're unsure whether it will make things better or worse is literally a better option than just nothing. I mean really what's the worst thing that happens? The equivalent of an oil spill? Like that's ever stopped us from doing things for profit? Why should we hold ourselves to these "better be entirely certain" standards when we never held ourselves to that standard on the way here?
This is a legitimate train of thought. "This might hurt things but I'm not sure how" simply isn't good enough. Give me a reason to be afraid to use this. Cause we're not afraid of using oil yet. Fuck it let's put a bunch of iron in the oceans. Really can't hurt things any worse than we have, can it?
Like that's ever stopped us from doing things for profit?
Honestly, that's what's holding us back. Make climate repair profitable, and the climate will be fixed inside of a decade.
Dumping money/metal into the oceans cannot be made profitable. Even if it can, there's always going to be a more profitable use for that material.
I think they meant in terms of subsidies, like corn growth currently.
Corn growth and other subsidies are profitable to the government, because the money comes back to them in lobbying/bribery.
No that's what got us here. Profit above all else brought us where we are, it can't bring us back. Apologies for being blunt but that's a stupid thought you shared.
I'm not debating the finer points of morality; just the reality of the situation.
By positing it as the reality and not just a reality that we can actually change, you're playing defense for em. You're using their talking points.
BTW You don't have to be debating the finer points of morality to be doing something immoral. Corporatists don't debate morality either. Because they know they lose, every time. Hint hint.
I'm not playing defense for anyone. I'm recognizing that deconstructing the corporate money-making machine will take longer than we have to fix the more immediate problem of killing off our biosphere, so working with the system, broken as it is, may be the only way forward.
Profit above all else is how the world has worked for centuries. You're right it's what brought us where we are. We have an increasing ceiling of education, the greatest overall mobility (socially and spatially), vast swathes of entertainment and communication, at least outside of some nations where there's a major problem politically and socially. People are not going to give up that comfortable society they've become accustomed to. Unless you can make this change immediately profitable, which is unlike most change, people are not going to accept it.