I subscribe to Callaway Climate Insights, because of course I do. I don’t have much money to invest (read: hardly any), but I want what I do have to be used for good, not e-vil. And the greening of blue investments is really starting to rake in the … well … gold. It’s early days, though.
Like the plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, there is a lot of money starting to swirl around in blue investing, particularly in the blue bonds arena. The number of $2.5 trillion is loosely tied to economic value of the world’s oceans, and we can expect to see more investment firms hiving off ocean products from their ESG platforms.
David Callaway, Ocean investing so far more promise than profit
GreenBiz is kind of excited about seaweed farming. I’m concerned about the environmental impact of commercial-level seeding and harvesting, but I seem to be alone in that. And the benefits do seem attractive — except the part about humans eating it. I’ve eaten it. Me no like. Me VERY no like.
A type of seaweed known as kelp is being developed for its nutritional value and its ability to absorb and lock away huge quantities of carbon dioxide. Seaweed absorbs CO2 more effectively than trees. It also improves water quality by extracting harmful nutrients such as nitrogen from the sea.
Walé Azeez, 4 seaweed startups combating food insecurity and climate change
So, all-in-all, it looks as if seaweed farming — putting more seaweed into the water rather than just extracting it — could be good for coral reefs, water quality, and the entire ecosystem, as well as increasing job opportunities and food security and helping to mitigate climate disaster. It could be a win-win-win-win-win.
Plus: Cows fed small amount of seaweed burp 86 per cent less methane in trial. The article specifies that an element in red seaweed counteracts the microbes that, “create methane as a by-product, which is mostly burped out the cow’s mouth and not farted out, as is commonly thought.” ‘Cause you had to know I would look for that.
A WRITING PROMPT FROM ME TO YOU: Write about burping.
MA
acflory
June 11, 2021 at 7:29am-giggles- you just had to do the cow thing didn’t you? I’m glad though coz I thought it came out the other end too.
I have a real fear of corporations, green, blue or otherwise. It seems as if every time a company gets to be a certain [mammoth] size, the founding principles get forgotten, money becomes and end in itself, and whatever the original product was, it’s now just a token in the big game of moving money and power around. Sorry. I’m still bitter about Google. It was once a brilliant company with principles. Now? It’s a corporate thief, just like Facebook and most of the other big tech corporations. 🙁
Marian Allen
June 11, 2021 at 9:47amI’m with you on corporations. There’s all this happy talk about scaling up lab-grown meat, and I’m happy for the animals who wouldn’t be killed if it caught on, and then I think, “They have to get the original tissue from somewhere. And: Factory-grown meat — what could possibly go wrong.” Right?
acflory
June 12, 2021 at 1:03amYeah, what could go wrong? -shudders- I’m happy to write about tech like that but I feel sick thinking about the genetic modifications that lead to such ‘meat’. Like you I’d rather make the cows burp less.