My submission to North-shore-info
Algae can sequester 100 gigatons of CO2 per year: Algae can survive the eco-apocalypse
by Drew Hempel, MA
I've been an environmental activist since the mid-80s when I first read Winona LaDuke's environmental racism activism in the free Northern Sun News, at the Uptown Minneapolis Library. I started my first full time job doing door to door environmental fundraising for Citizens for a Better Environment led by a female attorney activist in Minneapolis. I then went on to do civil disobedience with eight arrests, while organizing campaigns and coalitions and I worked for half a dozen nonprofits out of Twin Cities, Minnesota, while I also earned a master's degree at University of Minnesota. In the midst of all this research in "sustainability" and conservation biology - when we confront the deeper structural issues at hand, the radical rotten root of civilization is removed.
I'm not going to get into abstract philosophy of science but I did finish my master's degree by doing intensive meditation training from a Chinese spiritual yoga master healer - a qigong master who works with Mayo Clinic doctors in Minnesota. This experience taught me that our modern mentality of left-brain dominance is a type of deep mind control. In fact my final paid op-ed column for the University of Minnesota Daily newspaper, back in 2000, was called "Truth Repressed by Psychic Vampires." It seemed extreme at the time and people just kind of dismissed me. hahaha.
So to focus on the solution we can turn to Sir David King, at Cambridge, with his promotion of algae as a deep ocean marine biological restoration project. We can also turn to Raffael Jovine, a double Ph.D. in marine biology, founder of "Brilliant Planet" to sequester carbon via near-ocean algae farms in the desert. These two projects alone could potentially sequester some 40 gigatons of CO2 per year. But that is just the start. The Monterrey Institute research scientists have acknowledged that indeed when the climate gets out of control only algae can save us.
So algae is by far the best "biofuel" for what that's worth but since Exxon could not achieve a competitive market price compared to a barrel of oil then Exxon dropped all their algae research funds. But this is the wrong focus - rather the true benefit of algae is the environmental and ecological "opportunity cost" of not focusing on algae. Let's cut to the chase: Algae has been alive on Earth for 4.6 billion years and some algae exists as "extremophiles" - meaning algae will likely survive the imminent "biological annihilation" (see googlescholar peer-reviewed articles for more on that term).
So we can embrace the algae - as the most efficient and highest technology on Earth due to its reliance on quantum nonlocal negentropic energy extraction (i.e. photosynthesis) - as there are no stems or roots to algae it is therefore pure photosynthesis for carbon sequestration. Or we can ignore algae but the algae will still take over anyway. For example there's a company in Australia now selling "red seaweed" (macroalgae) that reduces the ungulate methane releases by over 80% - as a food supplement. There is a research project in Germany to also grow the macroalgae seaweed to offset all of Germany's carbon emissions.
We know that the oceans have accumulated already close to 500 Zettajoules of extra heat (since 1995) as Jim Massa, the Oceanographer Ph.D. research science in Alaska, has documented. That heat will be releasing back into the atmosphere. But it is the CO2-equivalent emissions that drives the heat absorption in the atmosphere. As Sir David King points out industrialization killed off some 4 million whales that previously fertilized the deep ocean surfaces thereby causing algae blooms that sequestered the carbon. The plan then is to regenerate this algae that will then feed more krill to then bring back the whale populations to then naturally restore that algae carbon sequestration cycle.
Oil and coal originally are from algae and considering how dense an energy source they are then it should not be surprising that growing algae directly can reverse the effects of burning oil and coal. Algae sequestration at coal power plants is starting to be introduced on industrial scale in China already. Spirulina is an excellent algae food source and growing this food then is the best "regenerative agricultural" practice. The algae can be used as fertilizer or animal feed or human food.
The arctic ice has already lost 80% of its volume and in five years it will have lost 100% of its volume - if not sooner. This means by September at ice minimum the Arctic will have lost its "air conditioner" albedo effect and the ocean water will heat up that much faster. There's 1200 gigatons of pressurized methane in the world's largest ocean shelf - the East Siberian Arctic Shelf - and that methane has already been "triggered" to accelerate exponentially into the atmosphere - just a 50 gigaton release would double atmosphere temperatures, thereby causing massive global famine.
Already we have 50 million people in "acute" food insecurity and over 310 million in food insecurity with our "bread baskets" directly threatened by extreme weather. The biomass fires and deforestation and ocean heat are all causing an acceleration of "biological annihilation" but the meltdown of the 450 or so nuclear power plants would then wipe out the ozone layer, causing immediate frying of life on Earth. Fortunately algae in its extremophile locations would survive this eco-apocalypse.
So I say embrace the algae.
Hi Teresa Anderson: I had never heard of ActionAid before! Thanks for your work on climate justice. (Just discovered you on the Turkish news). I grew up in Minnesota (lots of Andersons
here btw). I've been doing environmental activism since the 1980s and
so I got my undergraduate degree in "international relations" with a new
environmental option (integrating economics, political science and
biology as sustainability) in 1994 (U of Wisconsin-Madison). Back then
this sustainability degree did not lead to any job options (but it did
prove each of those disciplines lie about each other). hahaha. You are
doing awesome work. My dad actually went to Sweden in 1958 to critique
"socialism" for his law Ph.D. at NYU - but he never finished the thesis
for the final degree. (I just submitted a CIA FOIA to see the details on
how his Ford Foundation grant had to be cleared by the CIA)...
My
grandfather was in Sweden and spoke Swedish since my great-grandfather
moved from there. I realize you were born in the Philippines and you
grew up in Kenya. So you have an excellent "international relations"
perspective.
I got arrested eight times here doing civil
disobedience and I worked for half a dozen nonprofits making a menial
wage. I also dumpster-dived food while riding a British 3 speed internal
hub everyday for 10 years. Now I grow mushrooms in the forest in
northern Minnesota - one of the coldest places in the lower 48 U.S. But I
don't expect to need retirement money much - our climate crisis is
truly "biological annihilation" as the googlescholar literature states.
I do think that algae can sequester 100 gigatons of CO2 per year
and so Sir David King and Raffael Jovine are correct to emphasize
algae. I eat spirulina (grown in China) everyday - and hopefully algae
will get promoted more. I did an algae talk recently.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9Y1vrGAC-Q&t=2s
I'm listening to your ActionAid Iowa agribusiness playlist - I see this everyday in Minnesota also but I've worked with regenerative farmers here also.
https://familyfarmers.org/
This group was started by my activist mentor in Madison Wisconsin - his
parents are biology Ph.Ds living in Minnesota.
thanks,
drew hempel
Now
I'm reading your report. The fascism in the U.S. is based on the idea
that rich private charity can replace tax justice. The PR mind control
is strong here due to the extreme inequality of wealth and 100% tax
deductible advertising driving media.
My dad helped his
Swedish 2nd cousin get a job at the World Bank where he worked on "water
privatization." When I asked him about the water crisis in Bolivia he
just dismissed it as "corporate mismanagement." It seems that the
corporate-state can just play off each other very easily.
The table below shows that increasing existing tax-to-GDP ratios by between one and four percentage points in
the 24 rich, polluting ‘developed countries’ (those listed under Annex 2 in the UNFCCC convention) could raise
between US$539 billion and US$2.15 trillion per year for international climate finance.
The data shows that there is a significant variation in present tax-to-GDP ratios across these countries, with
the US having a tax-to-GDP ratio of 26.8%, in stark contrast to countries such as Denmark with 48%.
Michael
E. Hudson, the economics professor, used to work for the Rockefellers
on their tax avoidance structure. Panama was created as a country
primarily for tax avoidance! It seems the U.S. "tax havens" abroad are a
hard structural problem of the U.S. empire.
There are already models and proposals for what a UN Framework Convention on Tax might look like,
ensuring a representative and democratic say for all countries in setting and enforcing rules. In time this
should lead to a clamping down on tax havens, where over US$21 trillion of capital is lying idle – with an
estimated US$427 billion being added every year. Stopping dodgy corporate practices like transfer mis-
pricing and other systemic loopholes could help all countries claim a fair share of tax revenues from the
wealthiest individuals and companies.
Excellent
analysis! Also the CIA relies on drug smuggling for privately funding
"militias" to prop up "client state" regimes for slave-wage and cheap
resources abroad. The drug money is a hard cash bank source of a couple
trillion a year also - so one of the primary hard-currency revenue
sources. When I learned that in my "Latin American International
Relations" class in the early 90s I was immediately shocked. (that class
just promoted NAFTA by the way so my professor told me I would fail -
so I just regurgitated the class notes and I got a B).
Higher Income Tax on the Top 1% - taxing the richest individuals at 60% on their incomes would generate
US$6.4 trillion a year and could reduce global emissions by 700 million tons (more than the total historic
emissions of the UK).
I have been promoting the "return" to the 1950s Eisenhower tax rate of 91% marginal income tax rate on the rich in the U.S.
Heavy rains that began in 2023 and continued into January 2024 took the Congo River to its highest
level in decades, flooding the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC),
causing more than 300 deaths, displacing more than half a million people across the two countries, and
leaving multiple billions of dollars’ worth of damage.
Meanwhile, Southern Africa recorded the most severe drought during the January-to-March agricultural
season in more than 100 years, leading to water scarcity, crop failures, food shortages and outbreaks of
disease such as cholera. The record mid-season dry spell has led Zambia and Zimbabwe to officially
declare states of emergency, and the government of Malawi to declare a state of disaster. Now in the
annual lean season, 26 to 30 million people are facing food insecurity
HOW THE FINANCE FLOWS: CORPORATE CAPTURE OF PUBLIC FINANCE FUELLING THE CLIMATE CRISIS IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH11
RISING TEMPERATURES, BROKEN RECORDS, RUINED LIVES
– 2024 TIMELINE OF CLIMATE DISASTERS
Unprecedented global temperatures caused by a devastating combination of climate change exacerbated
by El Niño, have led to a relentless succession of extreme weather events, climate chaos and climate
disasters across almost every part of the planet through 2024.
Heavy rains that began in 2023 and continued into January 2024 took the Congo River to its highest
level in decades, flooding the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC),
causing more than 300 deaths, displacing more than half a million people across the two countries, and
leaving multiple billions of dollars’ worth of damage.
Meanwhile, Southern Africa recorded the most severe drought during the January-to-March agricultural
season in more than 100 years, leading to water scarcity, crop failures, food shortages and outbreaks of
disease such as cholera. The record mid-season dry spell has led Zambia and Zimbabwe to officially
declare states of emergency, and the government of Malawi to declare a state of disaster. Now in the
annual lean season, 26 to 30 million people are facing food insecurity.
Exceptional and extreme heatwaves, with widespread and sometimes persistent temperatures above
40°C in April across South and Southeast Asia, particularly affected the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam,
Bangladesh and India, causing drought, agricultural losses, heatstroke deaths and disrupting education
and daily life for millions.
Around the same time in April and May, heavy and relentless floods caused by rare cyclones on the East
African coast devastated Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Burundi and Somalia, causing at least 450 deaths,
displacing 480,000, and affecting 1.6m people. The disaster followed several years of severe drought in
the region. Also in April and May, Brazil’s worst flooding disaster for 80 years affected the Southern part
of the country, causing 181 deaths, and displacing 580,0000 people.
In June, Cyclone Remal was one of the most devastating cyclones to strike Bangladesh in recent years,
affecting 4.6 million people, 800,000 of whom were evacuated, and causing damage to more than
170,000 houses.
In late June and early July Hurricane Beryl became the earliest Category 5 storm on record in the
Atlantic basin, causing particularly catastrophic damage in the Caribbean. On the islands of Saint Vincent
and the Grenadines, approximately 36% of the population was affected. The hurricane brought down
the electrical grid serving 95% of the island of Grenada, and damaged or destroyed 90% of Barbados’
country’s fishing fleet. Venezuela and the US state of Texas were also affected.
Deadly heatwaves in July around the Mediterranean (particularly Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and
Morocco), with temperatures surpassing 40°C, has caused wildfires and fatalities. Bouts of both extreme
rainfall and extreme temperatures across Europe in 2024 are now expected to put some of the region’s
expected harvests in jeopardy.
On the heels of the cyclone earlier this year, August has now seen Bangladesh hit by severe flooding that
has impacted nearly 5.8 million people and displaced more than 502,000 into shelters. Transportation,
power and communications have been disrupted, hindering relief efforts. Meanwhile the collapse of
sanitation systems and stagnant floodwaters pose major health risks, including through insect- and
water-borne diseases.
