In America, we aren’t thinking about climate change in any remotely serious way. Fortunately, some other people are. Specifically, those people over in Europe. Part of the process of thinking about it seriously is to acknowledge that we are facing catastrophe, and that we need to think in appropriately aggressive terms. To move the conversation in that direction, the Guardian has partnered with the Manchester International Festival to come up with a list of 20 ideas–ranging from a little crazy to forehead-slappingly simple–that “could save the world,” in the parlance of the contest. Many of them involve rethinking our energy or transportation infrastructure.
Under normal circumstances, we’d just link to the Guardian’s story and be done it with it. But, we’ll respectfully observe that the pages they’ve set up are a navigational nightmare, and it’s nearly impossible to figure out what the twenty ideas are without devoting a half hour to task. So, in order to help disseminate the ideas, we compiled an overview of humanity’s 20 best hopes of living out the 21st century without getting roasted alive.
Vaguely in order of how interesting/noteworthy we find them (not necessarily to confused with pure merit):
1. Dump Billions of Tons of Limestone Into The Ocean
Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’ve probably heard that CO2 is making the oceans more acidic (or, strictly speaking, less alkaline). This threatens the viability of many of the creatures–including krill–that form the base of the oceanic food chain. Dumping (or, sprinkling, let’s say) a profoundly enormous quantity of lime into the ocean would in theory restore the water’s chemistry and allow the seas to absorb even more CO2 from the atmosphere.
2. A Giant Artificial Stomach That Eats Seaweed
Step One: Grow lots of kelp near the surface of the ocean. Step Two: Harvest it and “digest” it in a giant plastic “stomach.” The giant green mass gives off lots of gas — the CO2 could be siphoned off and put in some dark place and the methane could be used for powering humanity’s myriad doohickeys and gadgets. So it’s a twofer, removing carbon from the atmosphere and creating an energy source.
3. Make Clouds Whiter — With Seawater!
This scheme–one I first read about in Popular Science about 5 years ago–involves a fleet of weird-looking ships cruising the worlds’ oceans spraying a fine mist of seawater high into the atmosphere. The droplets would expand the size and reflectivity of clouds, meaning more sunlight would bounce back into space. No environmental side effects — except lots and lots of beautiful rainbows.
4. Teach Cows to Act Like Wildebeests
Over grazing has a gigantic carbon penalty. Having domestic livestock nibble and move on like wild ungulates would allow billions of acres of grassland to live up to their potential as carbon sinks. Surprising factiod: Grasslands store more carbon per acre than rain forests.
5. Thorium Nuclear Reactors
Thorium is more a abundant earthly element than uranium. It’s also safer — for instance, it can’t be used to make nuclear weapons. The liquid fluoride reactor is extremely promising but undeveloped technology that dates back to the 1950s and utilizes thorium to create massive amounts of cheap energy. Perhaps it’s time to revisit?
6. A Home Fuel Cell That Looks Just Like Your Dishwasher
If you owned one of these, The Man at the electric company couldn’t send you bills anymore–these units would power your plasma TV and your heated waterbed with no help needed from the grid. Sound like jet pack mythology? Supposedly a retail model is going on sale next year for $5000. Through various efficiencies, these fuel cells could save 12 tons of CO2 emissions per household compared with coal-generated electricity.
7. One Word: Biochar
Think of biochar as do-gooder charcoal. It offers a means of getting the energy out of biomass but releases a lot less CO2 than actually combusting the stuff. The leftovers can then be used as fertilizer for growing crops. Partisans will even argue that you are doing the earth a favor by being an energy hog with biochar-generated power as it’s carbon negative.
8. Convert CO2 Into “Gasoline”
By a relatively straight-forward chemical process, CO2 can be turned into methanol, which could then be burned for energy — either to generate electricity or power vehicles.
9. Huge Solar Farms in the Sahara
A relatively small piece of the Sahara could theoretically provide electricity for the entire planet if it were covered in solar thermal mirrors. Plus think of all those jobs to build a solar plant the size of Britain. The
new transmission grid would be quite a project as well…
10. Efficient Cooking Stoves For Poor People
Every one in the developing world cooks — but almost no one does it efficiently. If you made a cheap, mass-
produced product that accomplished that and you could get it into the hands of a billion or so people, the emissions savings would, um, really add up. Plus, you’d be doing a huge favor to the people who wind up cooking with one.
11. Convince People To Buy “Energy Bonds” Just Like Grandpa Bought War Bonds
The effort to address global warming is as serious as any war we’ve ever fought — or moreso — so why not break out some patriotic bonds to tap public investment for the transition to a green economy?
12. Geothermal 2.0
Drill down a few miles, pump in some agua to bust up the rocks, and you have a ready made heat source for generating electricity. Easy as pie, and it could be used to generate a much larger share of our energy in the industrial world.
13. Chuck The Goal Of Economic Growth Out the Window
Beyond a certain point, GNP doesn’t really correspond with human satisfaction and the idea that a economy can grow forever is probably just dump. To illustrate: Under present rules, the jackass who takes high speed joyrides in his Hummer is a more valuable economic citizen than the person who commutes to work on a bike (all else being equal).
14. Create Carbon Reduction As The New Social Norm
Create new social institutions around the collective goal of reducing our carbon footprints. It could be come as centerpiece for new sorts of social interaction, maybe including zero-carbon potlucks and climate change encounter groups. though it might sound suspect, consider the new norms that took hold during World War II: Would you have wanted to be the person who didn’t appear to be pitching in? It would have made for a mighty lonely social life…
15. Underwater Windmills
Marine turbines capture sea currents and convert them to electricity. Unlike wind and solar, ocean currents are quite predictable and easy to harvest, given a device tough enough to withstand a punishing environment. But, given the dodgy record of experiments in NYC’s East River, we know that’s not an easy thing.
16. Treat Carbon Like A Jury And Sequester It
Burn a mix of coal and wood and then pump the CO2 underground into salt water-filled geological formations. The water will absorb the carbon, become heavy, and sink down to some Hades-like place for all eternity.
17. Reimagining The Car
Rather than put an electric motor in a traditional car, it’s time to rethink the automobile as much lighter–think carbon fiber, not steel–than anything being produced today and capable of recovering a lot of energy from its own motion.
18. Energy Mortgages
Some organization with a lot of money offers to pay for a renovation your home–one that cuts carbon emissions by 70 percent or so–and if you keep your energy bills low enough you’d never have repay a dime.
19. Birth Control For All
Unless you’re Pope it’s tough to argue that universal access to good contraceptive strategies and products is a good thing–though there is a good case to made that family planning is most effective in countries that have already met a few key development criteria.
20. Solar Panels Grow Up
A solar advocate argues we’re at an inflection point with solar panels and within the next few years they will reach cost parity with traditionally generated electricity. Sure, he’s probably been saying that since 1985 — but even a stopped clock…
I notice that some of the best known geoengineering schemes are not part of the discussion (dropping iron filings in the South Pacific, injecting sulfur into the upper atmosphere, etc.) And they didn’t include Tom Friedman’s pet silver bullet, the magic energy-making laser. Any big ideas that truly got overlooked though?
July 14th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
You said:
“To illustrate: Under present rules, the jackass who takes high speed joyrides in his Hummer is a more valuable economic citizen than the person who commutes to work on a bike (all else being equal).”
How do you figure that? All else being equal, the bike rider produces the same economic output for less energy, making him the more valuable economic citizen, not the other way around.
July 14th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
If they have the same job/salary, the hummer owner bought a $50k car and blows through $8k in gas a year. The cyclist bought a $1.2k bike and then uses human power $0. The Hummer guy is splashing more money through the system.
July 14th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
#21 should be the Atmospheric Vortex Engine… http://vortexengine.ca/index.shtml
A full size one in operation could transfer heat to the upper atmosphere very quickly and let it dissipate out into space.
July 14th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
How did the krill survive during prior periods in the Earth history when it was substantially warmer than it is now and warmer than anyone projects that it’s going to get?
July 14th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
“The Hummer guy is splashing more money through the system.” That is nonsense, simply spending money does not make one a better economic citizen, it is the productive use of that money that matters. Think of it this way, if we replace bike guy and hummer guy with dump trucks, then its clear that if dump truck A moves 1 ton of stuff using X fuel cost and dump truck B moves 1 ton of stuff using 2X fuel cost, that dump truck A is clearly the better economic choice.
Besides, even if splashing money was the only factor in making someone a good economic citizen, there is still no indication that the bike guy isnt doing something else with the money he saves. Heck, if he spent his $58k on hummers of a different type, or lottery tickets or in Las Vegas he would still be putting money into the system.
The thing is, from an economic standpoint, activity is not nearly as important as productivity. Simply spending money does not help an economy unless the thing you buy has some productive purpose, even if that purpose is to amuse the owner.
July 14th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Colin-
The Hummer guy adds more to immediate GDP than bike guy, assuming the bike guy puts his savings under his mattress or in CDs or whatever.
For god’s sake, the US economy over the past decade or so has been a textbook study of “growth” through ultimately unproductive economic activity. (See: financial industry innovation, housing sector bubble, etc.)
July 14th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
I dont believe that is correct. If the bike guy puts his money in the bank, or CD or whatever, then it becomes available to the bank to loan out, thus adding to GDP. The only way he can prevent his money from going back into the system is to take it as cash and do nothing with that cash.
You are correct that the US economy has had growth but ultimately unproductive economic activity. That we had a crash only goes to show why you are wrong to believe that the hummer guy is better for the economy: if his activities are unproductive then he is (at best) simply churning money, and more likely, wasting resources, not adding to the economy. Again, productivity is what matters, not simple spending, and in the hypothetical offered here, the bike guy is more productive, same output using less input.
July 14th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Um, colin he actually agrees with you.
And consider what happens to those money he saved: they got lent out to some *other* jackass to buy him a hummer! If he saves, then someone has to spend his money.
One way of looking at it is that the biker-dude’s sacrifice (if one wants to consider it that) creates long-run benefits for society only if the banks constrain credit to those that a: can actually repay it, and b: invests it in non-hummer producing companies.
July 14th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Im pretty sure admin does not agree with me, unless he is a different person that the one who wrote the article. I believe that this statement (from the article) is incorrect:
“To illustrate: Under present rules, the jackass who takes high speed joyrides in his Hummer is a more valuable economic citizen than the person who commutes to work on a bike (all else being equal).”
If admin wrote the article, then surely he feels that statement is correct, right?
Heck, even if you ignore the productivity aspect of the argument, that statement is still not correct, unless you assume that the bike guy takes the money he saves and lights it on fire. There is no reason to assume that the bike guy doesnt do something with the money, and if you believe that economic activity == being a more valuable economic citizen, then the bike dude cant help but be the same as the hummer dude, even if the bike dude just spends the difference on prostitutes and booze.
July 14th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Colin,
I think you might be staring at this one a bit too hard.
But here’s a link to the Guardian’s page for this idea: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/13/manchester-report-consumption
-Jeb (aka “admin”)
July 14th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
I dont want to overstep my bounds here, but i really think this is an important point. As you correctly stated above, a lot of the ‘growth’ in the US of late has been unproductive and unsustainable. In my opinion, the root cause of this unproductive growth is the strongly held belief by many that productivity doesnt matter. That so long as there is economic activity, the nature of that activity is irrelevant. Governments write policy with that implicit assumption, people agitate for changes based on that assumption and the net effect is unsustainable bubbles and phantom ‘growth’. I firmly believe that if we are going to change that, people generally have to be divorced from the notion that all spending is good because it is spending.
Idea 13 is based implicitly on the notion that productivity and growth are distinct. If you take away that notion, it is plain to see that idea 13 really doesnt make sense. Heck, several other ideas in this list would actually create growth if they could be made to happen. Consider more efficient solar panels, if they could be made to generate a usable amount of power, then the net effect would be economic growth because you would be spending less on power then you did previously.
Again, Im sorry if I went to far, but i really believe that it is important to understand why productivity is critical to economic growth, and spending, especially government spending on infrastructure. Note, nothing about this belief invalidates global warming arguments, or the notion that we should build with a mind to dealing with that problem.
July 14th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Not overstepping remotely, Colin. Agree that it’s an important point.
You say: “the root cause of this unproductive growth is the strongly held belief by many that productivity doesnt matter. That so long as there is economic activity, the nature of that activity is irrelevant. Governments write policy with that implicit assumption.”
I think that’s what I was trying to express. Keep in mind though it was a summary of someone else’s views. It might been the use of the word “valuable” that was confusing. The word was intended contextually, if you know what I mean.
More to say on this, but don’t have time to say it right now…
Jeb
July 14th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
On Item 12, there was a recent article in the NYT about how such drilling can and has set off earthquakes…
…on the other hand, I love the solar-Sahara and ocean lime ideas.
July 14th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
What did this list accomplish?
July 15th, 2009 at 4:56 am
Zach, (with an h) on your #12 issue; They drill to the same depths as deep oil wells and you don’t hear people complaining from them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_geothermal_systems
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/geothermal/egs_animation.html
July 15th, 2009 at 7:45 am
If your standard of ‘taking things seriously’ is a magazine coming out with an article of this nature, it should be noted that either PopSci or PopMech (I can’t remember which off of the top of my head.) ran just about the same article last year. Of course, it was only comprised of 10 pie-in-the-sky ideas, so I guess we’re only taking things half as seriously.
July 15th, 2009 at 11:29 am
Why all the fascination with dumping CO2 some dark hidden place?
While we are currently overproducing CO2 by virtually all estimates, that CO2 contains carbon and oxygen that are essential to life. Ideally plant matter splits them apart into their useful forms but one way or another we can’t just sock the stuff away.
Nor should we forget that the injection ideas assume no ill consequences on the plates we float atop over the earth’s core. Would really suck for our great grandchildren to explain to their grandkids that their house fell down in an earthquake because we fractured the crust or that there didn’t used to be a volcano in Iowa.
July 15th, 2009 at 11:41 am
#2 - I interpret this as growing kelp, which conslidates carbon into the seaweed; and then digesting it, which sets free its carbon, and then burning it: which sets the carbon loose. It sounds more cyclical rather than a carbon sink. It seems more a greener energy source than necessarily environmental tool (#8 is similar in this regard).
#3 - Lots of pressure to shoot water that high; what about sea life at the intakes? How about impacts of larger clouds w/ more moisture?
#10 - What goes into the production of such efficient stoves, and would shipping a billion such units itself add to such unfavorable impacts?
#13 - One caveat is that zero growth would necessitate maintaining 0% inflation (or I suppose deflation might also work), lest the people become insolvent.
#15 - Maintenance will likely drive up costs. Just as windmills have issues with birds, so too would marine turbines have issues with sea life. I’m also curious how much impact large arrays of wind/sea turbines would have on currents: if the infinitesimal impacts of each were multiplied over enough, is that “infinitesimal” impact really so insignificant? Could changing currents have unforseen effects?
#20 - Just reminded me of the “microwave power plant” from SimCity 2000… that is, solar panels in space that beam the energy to ground-level receivers. I could swear there were some articles in science & engineering journals in the late 90s early 2000s about the real-life prospects of such.
…#21 - No mention of fusion research?
July 15th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
#10 is immensely important because it would cut down on soot, which is one of the biggest reasons glaciers are melting in places where they shouldn’t be, i.e. the Himalayas (and it probably contributed greatly to Mt. Kilimanjaro’s loss of snow)
July 15th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Bossi,
Many good points. Re #2: My understanding: Only the methane would be burned, which would only constitute a portion of the carbon from digested kelp. The rest would be sequestered.
July 16th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
[...] changing ideas July 16th, 2009 admin Leave a comment Go to comments Here are 20 bold/crazy ideas that could save the world…most of them related to energy and climate change. A relatively small piece of the Sahara [...]
July 16th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
[...] Here are 20 bold/crazy ideas that could save the world…most of them related to energy and climate change. A relatively small piece of the Sahara could theoretically provide electricity for the entire planet if it were covered in solar thermal mirrors. Plus think of all those jobs to build a solar plant the size of Britain. The new transmission grid would be quite a project as well… Tags: energy global warming lists [...]
July 16th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
[...] changing ideas July 16th, 2009 admin Leave a comment Go to comments Here are 20 bold/crazy ideas that could save the world…most of them related to energy and climate change. A relatively small piece of the Sahara [...]
July 16th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
“Through various efficiencies, these fuel cells could save 12 tons of CO2 emissions per household compared with coal-generated electricity.” How do you figure? Fuel cells take hydrogen and oxygen and convert them to water and electricity. Pure molecular hydrogen is relatively rare on Earth, and so the most common way to get hydrogen is to make it through electrolysis of water, which takes electricity– most likely coal-generated electricity. Plus you have to store the hydrogen and transport it to consumers, using fossil fuels to do so.
July 19th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
[...] 20 Bold Schemes that Could Save the World [infrastructurist.com] [...]
July 22nd, 2009 at 6:10 pm
A lot of these ideas aren’t really viable… Or have a lot of downsides. There are some really interesting ideas though. One that was overlooked that I like a lot is Calera, http://www.calera.biz/ , which is all about storing carbon in cement.
September 16th, 2009 at 8:27 am
[...] From the UK: 20 Bold Schemes That Could Save The World ยป INFRASTRUCTURIST (tags: environment inspiration science) [...]