— A new climate study out today estimates that significant human carbon emissions
actually began more than 100 years before scientists previously thought.
That could move the tipping point for irreversible temperature rise even closer.
One of the primary causes of human-driven climate change is industrial farming.
But a new form of agriculture could reverse that trend:
underwater groves of carbon-eating kelp.
— So you can see, it’s way down below the surface.
It’s about eight feet.
Okay! So here’s our kelp.
This, you know, for a fisherman, it’s kind-of weird to grow plants.
But this is the future.
So—fertilizer, fertilizer, food.
— And then you get the good stuff.
— That’s what we should be chanting—
“Fertilizer! Food!”
— A few years ago,
Bren Smith lost his oyster business to Hurricane Sandy.
The storm wiped him out.
So, the lifelong fisherman started looking for a crop that could withstand a storm
and landed on kelp—
a type of seaweed that’s popular in Asia, but that hasn’t caught on in America.
Today, he spends most of his time evangelizing the crop he says could feed the planet and heal our oceans.
— What are the benefits of kelp farming, specifically?
— We soak up five times more carbon than land-based plants.
We filter nitrogen out of the water column.
We function as an artificial reef so all these species can come and hide and thrive.
We’re storm surge protectors for most local communities.
— Does that help prevent ocean acidification,
or help kinda mitigate it?
— Yeah, so too much carbon in our waters is creating acidification.
So we capture that carbon and essentially sell it as food.
— Do you get as much pleasure out of this,
or is it more the figuring out the business from the environmental side that excites you?
— No, this is boring.
This is like arugula farming.
I can’t go to the same bars anywhere when I’m going to tell my story,
like, “I went out and cut off some kelp,” you know?
— A recent World Bank study found
that a network of kelp farms spanning just under 5 percent of the U.S.’ oceans
could remove the carbon equivalent of almost 95 million cars from the ocean each year.
To get that going,
Bren started a nonprofit called Greenwave,
which helps entrepreneurs start their own kelp farm—
using his own as a model.
And according to Bren, there’s money to be made:
in a single season,
a farmer with a 10-acre plot of water can grow 200,000 pounds of kelp,
that can then be sold for $1 a pound.
Even though kelp is good for the environment,
people aren’t rushing to put it on their dinner plate—
and, strangely, that’s something Bren relates to.
— Culturally, I haven’t shifted.
I eat at the gas station most nights.
I’m not a foodie.
I’ll get there, but that cultural piece of a fisherman of, like, hunting, killing,
and eating bad food is still with me.
— But you do eat this?
You eat this on a regular basis?
— Uh… no.
— No?
Why not?
— My wife eats it.
I mean, I’m not a sea-vegetable guy.
— Sure, sure.
You like killing things.
— Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I farm it.
The chefs will figure out how to get people to eat it.
— Alright.
So you’re fighting against yourself—
you’re fighting against people like you.
So how do you do that?
How do you convince yourself to eat this on a regular basis?
— Well, I mean, there is a trajectory, right?
Kale had a trajectory—
where it started, it was sort-of the exclusive, the celebrity chef world,
and then it moved into, really, a middle class mainstay.
I think we’re gonna make kelp the new kale.
I just don’t wanna oversell, saying, “Oh, everyone’s going to eat this tomorrow.”
— High-end restaurants in New York, however, have been serving Bren’s kelp for years now.
And his biggest client, Google,
offers kelp to 6,000 employees at its New York City cafeteria.
— The goal of transitioning to a new economy isn’t just job creation,
isn’t just, like, creating call center jobs.
It’s creating jobs,
creating a life that you can still sing songs about.
— But you think people are still going to sing songs about this?
— It’s gonna move much more into, like,
what the arugula farmers sing—
which I have no idea what they sing, right?
Maybe it’s acapella, I have no idea.
But never underestimate the power of self-direction, of agency.
If I fail out here, it’s okay.
And no one tells me what to do—
I can tell anybody fuck off, and that’s a fisherman.