A Modest Proposal to Address Climate Change
Our climate needs us. Our most recent climate report demands that we act, urgently. In its aftermath, we’ve seen some audacious, inspiring and even crazy ideas: dimming the sun by using aerosols, using mechanical scrubbers to remove carbon dioxide and beyond. Perhaps they are necessary to help solve the problem of climate change; but we have a more humble request that’s equally audacious, but much simpler. Plant more trees!
In the four and half billion years of Planet Earth’s existence we’ve seen three “versions” of our atmosphere. And our current atmosphere was created by the miracle of photosynthesis — an evolutionary experiment that has already done this once before.
Let’s do some quick math. We’re currently at 400 ppm (parts per million) of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. This represents around 5 X 10¹² tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today. We add about 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year. In order to level off at 400 ppm we have to follow a two-pronged approach: (1) control emissions per current goals (global commitment to move to renewable energy, incentivize green infrastructure development, cut carbon emissions 60-80% by 2050) and (2) increase our carbon sink capacity to absorb 8 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year.
We’re left with the choice of using chemical, mechanical and biological means for carbon sinks. If you ignore the likelihood of unintended consequences from chemical and mechanical means and just consider the cost to use them, they are far too expensive — $500–1000 / ton and at very high efficiencies could come down to $250 / ton with improvements to technology. This is insane, we’d need to spend $2–8 trillion to absorb all the excess carbon dioxide we produce on an annual basis.
There is no better means to do this than biology. After all, this has already been done at scale once before, by trees. Here’s the kicker — we’ve roughly vented 400 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution (the year 1760) but we’ve also scaled back enough forest to have lost the ability to absorb 180 billion tons in that time!
An acre of managed forest absorbs about 15–20 tons of carbon dioxide per year. We could absorb 8 billion tons of carbon dioxide with an additional four hundred million acres of forest land. Sound insane? Perhaps, but there are ten billion acres of forest land on our planet today, and that has crept down from thirteen billion acres pre-industrial revolution. So, this is well short of what we know has existed in recorded history. But, even if we wanted to undertake such an effort how would we even start doing this? Is it possible? Our current options are limited or brutal:
- The largest timber companies plant at most one million acres a year
- Tree planting is manual and brutal and it takes a lot to do relatively little in terms of scale
So how do we solve this problem?
Enter DroneSeed — an innovative company in Seattle, who I’ve had the pleasure of working with over the past three years. They’ve been using swarms of drones to replant forest land in post-wildfire scenarios. A 3-drone swarm can plant 35 acres of forest land per day and each hangar can hold 3–6 swarms. They’re focused on sharpening their ability to scale to one million acres of forest land (hundred million trees) in a relatively short time. What’s more, with a cost of $350 - $750 / acre to plant and monitor forests, DroneSeed is the most cost effective solution at $25–100 per absorbed ton of carbon dioxide versus $500–1000 by chemical or mechanical means.
Ok, so we’re running as fast as we can but could use your help in four possible ways:
- DroneSeed is partnering with the The Nature Conservancy to reforest land today. If you happen to be an organization that undertakes such projects, please contact us right away. We’re in the process of signing up three partners to begin scaling up our efforts as soon as September of this year.
- We’ve partnered with foundations who realize that only 1% of conversation and 3% of climate funding goes to reforestation. If you happen to be one of those foundations we’d love to partner with you, especially now that we have a solution that works!
- If you’re an engineer or scientist and want to make a difference come join us. There is no more important problem to tackle today — and you get to play with huge 55 pound drones, sensors, sensor fusion, routing, machine vision and all the cool tech you can think of.
- If you’re interested in reforestation, and our journey as we tackle this problem follow us as we build out our company.
What have you done
with what was given you,
what have you done with
the blue, beautiful world?
More about DroneSeed:
That night, a forest flew by Devin Coldewey
Drones, Seeds, & Fires: How DroneSeed Plants Trees From The Sky by Erika Clugston
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