Full Title: Whales! A Climate Solution No One Is Talking About
Highlights
What we’re saying is that we could extract $2 million worth of value if we save these whales! (View Highlight)
Whales can absorb and store carbon dioxide. (View Highlight)
You see, whale poop is rich in nutrients like iron, phosphorus and nitrogen. And these are exactly the kind of nutrients that phytoplankton such as ocean algae need to spur growth. Now guess who produces more than half of the world’s oxygen? Phytoplankton, of course! And they’re not just great at producing all this O2, they’re also quite brilliant at absorbing CO2. Yup, it’s equivalent to having 4 Amazon rainforests for this very reason. (View Highlight)
It’s not just that. These massive whales also store carbon dioxide in their bodies. As much as 1,000 trees can hold. And when they die, they sink and take all this carbon to the bottom of the ocean floor where they remain for many, many years. (View Highlight)
And now we’ve reduced the whale population by 65–90% in the past couple of centuries and we’re just left with 1.5 million whales . It’s a sorry state of affairs. (View Highlight)
This isn’t some whimsical idea we thought of. Something of this sort is already happening. Last year, a group of organizations banded together and took matters into their own hands. They kick-started something called the ‘ Whale Carbon Plus Project ’. It would bring finance and AI (artificial intelligence) — two things which everyone loves today — together to work their magic to save whales. (View Highlight)
For starters, the project would use AI to track the whales’ movements. And then issue a bond against it. A company could buy that bond and instead of an interest on the investment, they’d get a carbon credit. Maybe to the tune of how much carbon the whale helps us save. They can then use that carbon credit to offset their own emissions. Or even sell it to someone else who needs it to show they’re trying to at least solve their carbon footprint. All this money can then be put towards conserving whales. (View Highlight)
For one, as Anjana Ahuja pointed out in the Financial Times, it means we’re basically handing over whale ownership to a company. It doesn’t seem like quite a nice thing to do. And second, quantifying the impact of a financial system like this could be a tricky affair. Putting the exact carbon savings per whale for issuing the requisite credits will be hard and then having a third-party vet and audit these numbers will be harder still. (View Highlight)
