Carbon Remediation with Creative Eco-Restoration
If 50% more of the world's forests were still standing or half the Pacific marine life that has died out in the last 50 years was still swimming around, the CO2 greenhouse effect and the spectre of global warming would be the least of our worries today. Returning even a fraction of these populations to their original health would lock away billions of tons of atmospheric carbon and buy us the time we need to create a saner energy economy.
Just restoring 10% the productivity our oceans have lost since 1950, for example, would sequester more carbon than is released annually in all of Europe and Asia today. It would also greatly help revive our dying fisheries and life in a thousand fishing communities. The tech to accomplish this is as simple and safe as the great dust clouds that richly fertilized the seas until the birth of the Green Revolution.
Similarly restoring historic forests to thirsty southern lands not only sequesters mountains of carbon, it summons rain, fertility, and rich forest produce to feed local village economies.
In other words, Planktos believes that back-to-the-future is a far safer, more proven and cost-effective path to the massive carbon reduction we require than untested new eco-engineering technology, and restoration is blessed with many more ancillary benefits.
Planktos Bio-Remedial Carbon Credits: Low-Tech Genesis, High-Tech Verification
As any glance at ocean carbon science will show, marine photosynthesis, productivity and CO2 absorption have fallen steeply in recent decades, largely from iron deficiency. With the spread of modern agriculture and silica sand desertification, the oceans now enjoy far fewer iron-rich dust storms from arid plains. The rapid fall off in the rain of this vital micro-nutrient has led to plankton droughts across thousands of blue water miles and the alarming drop in marine productivity.
Reseeding a stretch of this sea with a single ton of fine iron particles generates dramatic blooms which can inhale thousands of tons of carbon. It can also nourish an equivalent tonnage of zooplankton, diatoms, and krill, replenishing the food chain from the bottom up for months at a time.
Marine Snow
- organic detritus, diatoms, fecal pellets, etc.
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A significant percentage of this bounty sinks to depths of one hundred meters or more in the form of dead organic matter that is captured in deep ocean currents or settles to the bottom as "marine snow." Now isolated from the atmosphere for centuries, this "lost" carbon not only nurtures benthic life, it becomes a negotiable commodity in today's global carbon credit bazaar.
Long-term investment grade yields are quantified for certification with satellite mapping, deep water filter traps and spectrographic tracking buoys.
Likewise the carbon credit value of CDM nation forest restoration projects can often be doubled or trebled with sound scientific management and long-term stakeholder contract guarantees. These so-called "joint forest management" projects not only restore indigenous woodlands, increase rainfall, and yield investment grade carbon credits, they also sustainably enrich local populations with generations of forest produce, recharged aquifers, maintenance jobs, and eco-tourism opportunities.
The Planktos Carbon Credit Development and Investment Model
Planktos will offer premioum grade carbon credits in several categories, including swiftly maturing marine credits, long term forest-based credits and "blended" credit pools that diversify sources and minimize risk. Marine credits will be generated in collaboration with internationally recognized ocean science institutions that will manage distribution regimes and quantification analyses. Arboreal credits will be generated in cooperation with community, state and federal agencies with the power to maintain and ensure the protected status of restored areas for 60 to 100 years.
