🌳Tree, I am no tree: The best carbon capture technology on the planet.
I just saw this tweet from Elon Musk:
I shared my first reaction with many others on the twitter thread who also thought “Trees!
Tree? I am no tree. I am the best carbon capture technology on the planet.
It’s not wise to bet against the real life Tony Stark, but it seems to me that trees are already, pound for pound, pretty much agreed as the best magical technology for carbon capture — but don’t take my word for it. See wired | bloomberg | guardian.
There’s startups out there like SilviaTerra and Pachama working on planting trees and building carbon offset marketplaces with artificial intelligence — verification via satellite imagery and machine learning to verify the forest wasn’t cut down — so that it becomes more economical for land owners to keep forests.
But I think the real problem is much deeper and more systemic. The real problem is our money system. Here’s an excerpt from a book I’m halfway through called, Sacred Economics by @ceisenstein.
Whereas interest promotes the discounting of future cash flows, demurrage encourages long-term thinking. In present-day accounting, a forest that has the capacity to generate one million dollars a year every year into the foreseeable future is considered more valuable if immediately cut down for a profit of 50 million dollars. (The net present value of the sustainable forest calculated at a discount rate of 5% is only $20 million.) This state of affairs results in the infamously short-sighted behavior of corporations that sacrifice (even their own) long-term well-being for the short-term results of the fiscal quarter. Such behavior is perfectly rational in an interest-based economy, but in a demurrage system, pure self-interest would dictate that the forest be preserved. No longer would greed motivate the robbing of the future for the benefit of the present. The exponential discounting of future cash flows implies the "cashing in" of the entire earth as opposed to an immediate wholesale “liquidation” of our remaining resources.
Perhaps the answer to carbon capture isn’t fancy new hardware but a change in society and our monetary system.
Currency Demurrage might actually be the answer to solving many of our environmental problems.
I’m currently about 50% through the book Sacred Economics. It’s fantastic. The author summarizes the highlights in this 12 minute video.