Transcriber: Melisa Bouza Reviewer: David DeRuwe
Last year, my wife and I woke up one morning in Oregon to a red sun
and the air thick with smoke.
We then drove thousands of miles across several states
to outrun the fires and find clean air to breathe.
At the same time, friends were evacuating their burning homes.
If you live near the coast, you’ve seen stronger storms and coastlines eroding.
Drought has never been more common.
The climate crisis is here.
It’s global, and it’s getting worse at an accelerating pace.
You probably know we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
What you may not know is that reducing emissions
will not be enough to address the crisis.
We also need to take the excess carbon dioxide, CO2, out of the atmosphere
By burning fossil fuels, we have taken over a trillion tons of CO2
out of geologic storage and put it in the atmosphere.
To picture that amount, imagine a 40-story building
covering the whole of India filled with CO2.
We need a way to put it back.
You’ve probably heard about planting trees as a solution,
but there isn’t enough space,
and as I experienced last year, trees can go up in smoke.
That trillion tons of extra CO2 I mentioned isn’t just warming the planet;
it’s made the oceans 30% more acidic.
Some predict that by the end of this century,
we’ll have no coral reefs left at all.
Zero.
Billions of people around the world rely on fish as their key source of protein,
and that’s at risk.
There’s a link between CO2 and ocean acidification.
If we neutralize the extra acidity in the oceans,
we can help them naturally remove CO2
like they’ve been doing for billions of years
to protect our oceans and everything in them.
How do we do this?
It turns out the oceans are smart,
and all we need to do is bring sand to the beach,
a special kind of sand we call “carbon-removing sand.”
This is made of a common natural volcanic rock called olivine.
If we spread this sand in the ocean and coastal areas,
it will gradually dissolve, gently making the oceans less acidic.
When we make the oceans less acidic,
they help reverse climate change by absorbing CO2.
In addition, the sand can be used to provide physical coastal protection
against rising seas.
We call this nature-based solution “coastal carbon capture.”
Coastal communities are on the front lines of our changing climate,
facing sea level rise, stronger storms, and ocean acidification.
Carbon-removing sand can contribute to coastal resilience
while attacking the root cause of the climate crisis.
There is much scientific research ahead of us
before we could ever consider doing this on a large scale.
Scientists around the world are working on various aspects of this.
Right now, we’re doing lab experiments to understand the science
as deeply as possible.
We’re planning one of the first real world pilot projects
right here in India in the state of Maharashtra.
There, we plan to spread a small quantity of carbon-removing sand in coastal waters,
then carefully monitor the project,
measuring the amount of CO2 which is removed.
If trials succeed, this could help India become a global leader in climate action.
And we're working with other forward thinking and innovative governments,
partners, and coastal communities.
We plan to scale up in multiple regions of the world
and start to make a dent in global emissions.
Coastal carbon capture could scale up enough
to help us start emptying that 40-story building.
We face today, perhaps the greatest risk humanity has ever faced.
It is also an unprecedented opportunity.
My team and I wake up each day knowing we are doing everything we can
to help harness the power of the oceans to address this global problem.
Despite the enormity of the task ahead of us,
I am optimistic because many thousands of motivated, smart people
around the world are working urgently on different parts of the solution.
You can help by telling people in your community
and advocating for this solution with your elected representatives.
Many people have started to talk about climate change
as the climate crisis or climate emergency since bold action is needed so urgently.
I urge you, if you think it is a crisis, then ask yourself:
Are you acting like it’s a crisis, or are those just words you use?
Let us rise together to meet this challenge
and leave a world in which everyone has a chance to thrive.