KI Introduces the World's First Carbon-Negative Chair Made with AIrCarbon

Two childhood friends spent a decade, beginning in college, figuring out how to cheaply make plastic from carbon that's been captured from the atmosphere.

(Photo: Dan MacMedan, USA TODAY)

Story Highlights
While in college, two friends set out to turn air pollution into plastic
Their decade-long journey has led to an award-winning carbon-based product
They aim to reduce global warming by capturing heat-trapping carbon emissions

A decade ago in his Princeton dorm room, Mark Herrema had an aha moment. He read a newspaper story about the rise in heat-trapping methane emissions from dairy farms and decided to do something about it.

He thought — why not pull the carbon from the air and use it to make stuff? A politics major who also studied chemistry, he teamed up with childhood friend Kenton Kimmel, a biomedical engineering student at Northwestern University. They took odd jobs after graduation to fund their research.

"I was a bellhop and Kenton was a valet," says Herrema, recalling how they worked 14 to 16 hours every day — even holidays — for years to pay their bills and test their ideas in rented lab space.

Industry experts told them it was a fool's errand. For good reason. Scientists had spent decades trying to capture carbon and use it to make plastic but couldn't do it cheaply enough. The two friends cracked the code by developing a ten-times more efficient bio-catalyst, which strips the carbon from a liquefied gas and rearranges it into a long chain plastic molecule.

Mark Herrema shows a container of the plastic pellets that his California-based company, Newlight Technologies, makes from recycled methane gas.(Photo: Dan MacMedan, USA TODAY)

The result? Today, the 31-year-old co-founders of California-based Newlight Technologies have two factories that take methane captured from dairy farms and use it to make AirCarbon — plastic that will soon appear in the form of chairs, food containers and automotive parts. Coming next year: cellphone cases for Virgin Mobile.

"You'll be able to hold carbon in your hand," Herrema says of the products, which an independent lab says remove more carbon from the atmosphere than their manufacturing emits. By replacing oil-based plastics, he says he wants to help reduce global warming: "We actually want to change the world."

"This will be a paradigm shift in our industry," says Dick Resch, CEO of furniture maker KI, saying AirCarbon will produce the first carbon-negative furniture. KI, which has backed Newlight for eight years and holds exclusive industry rights to its product, plans next year to sell AirCarbon chairs and eventually other products.

"I wish I had been smart enough to figure this out," says William Dowd, former global director of industrial biotech research and development at Dow Chemical. He says venture capitalists asked him to look at Newlight's work, but he initially demurred, doubting it would break ground. "I was astounded by what they were able to do."

STORY: How technology can halt climate change

Dowd, who is not a Newlight investor, says AirCarbon closely resembles polypropylene and could be a cheaper alternative. He doubts it will do much to reduce global warming, citing the enormity of greenhouse gas emissions from power plants alone.

"It can't be a significant contributor to solving the (climate) problem," agrees Harvard physicist David Keith, adding the supply chain isn't big enough to absorb the 15-plus tons of carbon dioxide emitted per capita each year in the United States. Keith started Calgary-based Carbon Engineering, co-funded by Bill Gates, to capture carbon at industrial scale and use it to make low-carbon fuel.

Still, "it's a step in the right direction," says Brent Ehrlich, products editor of BuildingGreen, a company that studies the construction industry. Ehrlich says AirCarbon could replace a lot of oil-based plastic, adding: "It could potentially add up."

Herrema says his creation is much more than "a drop in the bucket" and is just starting to take off. AirCarbon was chosen as "bio-material of the year" by the 2013 International Conference on Bio-based Plastics and Composites.

 

The winners of the innovation award have been elected by the participants of the conference.

Though their journey had many "tough" months, Herrema says he and Kimmel had enough naivete to believe they'd succeed. "We always felt," he says, "that a breakthrough was just around the corner." 

KI introduces the world's first carbon-negative chair made with AirCarbon™—a revolutionary, paradigm-shifting thermoplastic developed by California-based Newlight Technologies. Newlight's patented manufacturing technology captures carbon that would otherwise be in the air and converts it into AirCarbon. KI will be the exclusive provider of AirCarbon in the contract furniture industry. "By using carbon that would otherwise be in the air we are breathing right now, AirCarbon turns everyday goods into products that actually improve the environment," said Mark Herrema, CEO, Newlight. "Combined with a cost profile that is more favorable than oil-based plastics, AirCarbon has the potential to change the world." Upon completion of lifecycle analysis and environmental testing in early 2014, KI will begin introducing AirCarbon into some of its most successful product lines, including the Strive and Grazie seating collections.

ORIGINAL: USA Today

Fuel Cells and Solar Photovoltaics: Working Together to Bury Coal

Fuel Cells and Solar Photovoltaics: Working Together to Bury Coal

Joshua M. Pearce Department of Mechanical & Materials Engineering

Applied Sustainability Research Group

Outline

• Motivation 
• Introduction To Photovoltaic Technology 
• PV Penetration Levels 
• Why PV needs Fuel Cells 
• Photovoltaic + Combined Heat and Power Home Design 
• Beating Clouds 
• PV+CCHP – Optimization Simulation 
• Results, Going Big, Future Work

Motivation

J. Pearce and A. Lau, “Net Energy Analysis For Sustainable Energy Production From Silicon Based Solar Cells”, Proceedings of American Society of Mechanical Engineers Solar 2002: Sunrise on the Reliable Energy Economy, editor R. Cambell-Howe, 2002.

Sustainable Electricity: Solar Photovoltaic Technology

PV represents one of the most promising means of maintaining our energy intensive standard of living while not contributing to global warming and pollution.

Residential Rooftops

Built in PV

Solar Shingles

Roof Tiles in Japan

Carports

ORIGINAL: http://www.fcrc.ca/documents/FuelCellsandSolarPhotovolatics.pdf

Carbon Capture: $9 million for pilot plant to trial new carbon capture technology Carbon capture

A new method for permanently and safely storing carbon emissions generated from fossil fuels and other industrial processes will be trialled in a mineral carbonation research pilot plant to be built at the University of Newcastle.


The ultimate goal is to transform the captured CO2 emissions into carbonate rock 'bricks' for use in the construction industry, therefore both dealing with carbon storage needs and introducing new green building materials.

Funding totalling $9m has been secured from the Australian and NSW governments and Orica. The project will be managed by Mineral Carbonation International, a partnership between the University's commercial arm Newcastle Innovation, the GreenMag Group and Orica.

A multidisciplinary research team, including Professors Bodgan Dlugogorski and Eric Kennedy from the University's Priority Research Centre for Energy and Orica Senior Research Associate Dr Geoff Brent, have demonstrated the technology in small scale laboratory settings and led the funding bids.

Professor Dlugogorski said the research pilot plant would allow for larger scale testing and determine cost savings and emission reductions compared to other methods of storing CO2.

"The key difference between geosequestration and ocean storage and our mineral carbonation model is we permanently transform CO2 into a usable product, not simply store it underground," Professor Dlugogorski said.

The mineral carbonation technology replicates the Earth's carbon sink mechanism by combining CO2 with low grade minerals such as magnesium and calcium silicate rock to make inert carbonates. The process transforms the CO2 into a solid product that can be used in many ways, including as new green building materials.

"The Earth's natural mineral carbonation system is very slow," Professor Kennedy said. "Our challenge is to speed up that process to prevent CO2 emissions accumulating in the air in a cost-effective way."

The research pilot plant is the result of six years of R&D undertaken by a team including experts from the University of Newcastle, the GreenMag Group and Orica.

It will be built at the University's Newcastle Institute for Energy and Resources (NIER) and is expected to be operational by 2017.

Contact: Sheena Martin
Contact Phone: +61 2 4921 8714
Contact Email: media@newcastle.edu.au


ORIGINAL: Newcastle U
23 August 2013

Tackling climate change: Carbon capture and storage

ORIGINAL: The Economist

CCS is a proven technology that could help mitigate climate change, but at a steep cost. A new test facility in Norway is working to make it financially viable

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab: Oil from Tobacco Leaves

ORIGINAL: UC ARPA-E

FOLIUM is a collaborative project between LBNL, UC Berkeley, JGI and The Kentucky Tobacco Research & Development Center (KTRDC) at Univ. of Kentucky and is funded by ARPA-E. The FOLIUM team, which consists of a bunch of unusually attractive people, can be viewed on the here. 

Other FOLIUM team members are:

• Ling Meng, Postdoc in the Jansson lab
• Hanwool Park, Research Assistant in the Jansson lab
• Hsu-Ching Winz, Molecualr Biology Specialist in the Melis lab
• Tamara Miller Lab assistant in the Lemaux lab
• Judith Adhiambo-Otwi, Postdoc in the Lemaux lab
• Lauriebeth Leonelli, Postdoc in theNiyogi lab
• Fei Cai, Postdoc in the Kerfeld lab
• Barunava Patra, Postdoc in the Chamber/ Yuan lab
• Yongmei Wu, Visiting Scholar in the Chamber/Yuan lab

The FOLIUM concept is to develop tobacco as a platform for foliar production of advanced hydrocarbon fuels. This involves: 

1. Installing pathways for alkane and isoprenoid biosynthesis and accumulation in tobacco leaves via chloroplast and nuclear transformation. 
2. Optimize carbon flux toward hydrocarbon biosynthesis. 
3. Enhance photosynthetic light efficiency and CO2 uptake. 
4. Improve planting, cultivation and harvesting practices of tobacco. 

In the context of foliar production of oil and oil-based biofuels, tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) emerges as a system of great potential: 

1. Tobacco is an outstanding industrial biomass crop with large leaf surface area, and a high leaf-to-stem ratio. 
2. It can be coppiced to generate multiple harvests per year. 
3. Large-scale agricultural infrastructure for planting, growing, harvesting and handling tobacco leaves is in place. 
4. The tobacco farmers would benefit by using tobacco as a biofuel crop plant. 
5. Tobacco is already cultivated in large land tracts of the US and many countries overseas. It is grown in over 100 countries worldwide, can be cultivated on marginal land unsuitable for food crops, and has a wider geographic geographic range than either corn or sugar cane. 
6. Tobacco is not part of the food supply chain. Thus biosynthesis of oil-based biofuels in tobacco leaves, as opposed to oil seeds in soybean or canola, avoids the potential problem of competition with the food/feed sector. 
7. Tobacco is highly amenable to genetic and molecular manipulations of both the nuclear and plastid genomes. With 500 to 10,000 copies of the plastome per cell in tobacco leaves, the possibility exist for very high overexpression of selected genes. 
8. Sequencing and annotation of the tobacco nuclear genome is currently in progress. The work in my group has a dual focus: 
   1. Introduce the alkane biosynthesis pathway from cyanobacteria into tobacco chloroplasts (Fig. 1). 
   2. Enhance CO2 uptake in tobacco by introduction of bicarbonate transporters from cyanobacteria into tobacco chloroplasts.

Scientists at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's FOLIUM Project, funded by ARPA-E, use light to convert the carbon in tobacco leaves into biofuels.

LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LAB: OIL FROM TOBACCO LEAVES

CRITICAL NEED

Traditional biofuels production is limited by the small amount of solar energy plants convert by photosynthesis into plant material that is readily processed into fuels and by inefficient fuel conversion techniques. New robust, farm-ready crops are needed that produce more easily convertible fuel precursors per acre at dramatically lower costs. If successful, advanced biofuels would offer a renewable alternative to petroleum-based fuels that produces nearly zero net greenhouse gas emissions. Biofuels must be produced at close to half their current cost to make them cost-competitive with petroleum-based fuels.

PROJECT INNOVATION + ADVANTAGES

LBNL is modifying tobacco to enable it to directly produce fuel molecules in its leaves for use as a biofuel. 

Tobacco is a good crop for biofuels production because it is an outstanding biomass crop, has a long history of cultivation, does not compete with the national food supply, and is highly responsive to genetic manipulation. LBNL will incorporate traits for hydrocarbon biosynthesis from cyanobacteria and algae, and enhance light utilization and carbon uptake in tobacco, improving the efficiency of photosynthesis so more fuel can be produced in the leaves. The tobacco-generated biofuels can be processed for gasoline, jet fuel or diesel alternatives. LBNL is also working to optimize methods for planting, cultivating and harvesting tobacco to increase biomass production several-fold over the level of traditional growing techniques.

IMPACT

If successful, LBNL’s project would genetically engineer tobacco to enable it to produce oil directly from its leaves. This could enable large scale production of oils, which could eventually begin to replace petroleum-based fuels.

SECURITY: The transportation sector accounts for nearly all of our petroleum imports. Providing an advanced biofuels alternative to petroleum will allow the U.S. to reduce these imports, improving our energy independence.

ENVIRONMENT: More than 25% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. come from the transportation sector. Because plants naturally absorb carbon dioxide as they grow, the level of greenhouse gas emissions from biofuels is less than half that of petroleum fuels.

ECONOMY: The U.S. imports nearly $1 billion in petroleum each day, accounting for the single largest factor in our trade balance with the rest of the world. Biofuels can be produced domestically, allowing us to keep more dollars at home.

JOBS: A self-sustaining biofuels industry that is cost-competitive with oil is well-positioned to see job growth in the agricultural, engineering, and research sectors.

CONTACTS

ARPA-E Program Director:

Dr. Jonathan Burbaum,

jonathan.burbaum@hq.doe.gov

Project Contact:

Dr. Christer Jansson,

cgjansson@lbl.gov

Solar-Powered Sea Slugs

ORIGINAL: U Maine | Nature

Imagine being able to turn on solar-powered cells whenever food became limiting in your environment to exploit the sun’s energy to produce chemical energy. Further imagine the advantage of being mobile and camouflaged with a green, rippling leaf appearance in a sea filled with predators in search of soft-bodied creatures. The sacoglossan mollusc Elysia chlorotica (Gould) possesses all of these traits. It is a shell-less, green “walking leaf” that will feed on algae when they are available, stealing the chloroplasts, and using them for solar-power when food is scarce.

ORIGINAL: Nature

The slug pictured to the right, Elysia chlorotica, is a symbiont thief.

Elysia chlorotica eats the alga Vaucheria litorea but does not digest it. The slug cuts open algal filaments and sucks out the contents, transferring the living chloroplasts to its own tissue. Chloroplasts are organisms that have lived symbiotically within plant cells for many millions of years. They harness energy from the sun, which they give to the plant or alga cell they live within. Most animals digest the chloroplasts entirely when they eat plants, but not Elysia. By keeping the chloroplasts intact and transferring them to its own tissue, Elysia allows them to continue photosynthesizing, producing energy for the slug. The slug can then live for months without eating as long as sunlight is available, and can maintain the same chloroplasts for its entire adult life. This is an extremely unique relationship between an animal and plant symbionts.

Many other animals form associations with photosynthetic organisms. Corals such as the one depicted below have a symbiosis with multiple single-celled organisms called zooxanthellae. This is a multiple-level symbiosis because corals house the entire chloroplast-containing zooxanthellae cells within their tissue. This is different from Elysia chlorotica, who has cut out the middleman — instead of incorporating entire cells, it only retains the chloroplasts.
The photograph of Elysia chowing down was taken by Nicholas E. Curtis and Ray Martinez. The second photograph of Elysia is courtesy of Mary S. Tyler, and was the cover of PNAS when this paper was published. The lower picture is the coral Porites as photographed by Casey Dunn.

You can watch two amazing videos of the slugs in action, here and here, both of which were included in the PNAS paper.
--Freya Goetz

These sea slugs feed by slicing or puncturing siphonaceous algal cells and sucking out the cell contents. All of the contents, including the algal nucleus, are discarded except the chloroplasts which are engulfed phagocytotically into the digestive cells. (The figure to the right shows the "stolen" chloroplasts, or kleptoplasts, within the cells of the slug's digestive tract.)

By distributing the “photosynthetic factories“ throughout their extensively branched digestive system just one cell layer beneath the epidermis, the sea slugs not only blend into the green algal bed (the figure to the right shows the sea slug on strands of the alga Vaucheria litorea ), they also capture light energy to fuel photoautotrophic CO2 fixation. In some cases, the resulting carbon products can totally sustain the sea slugs for several months in the absence of an algal food source and serve as precursors for synthesis of chemical defense compounds and the copious mucus which bathes and protects the sea slugs.

Symbiosis
Symbiotic associations between organisms, even of different kingdoms, is not that unusual. However, in almost all cases they represent an association between two intact, free-living organisms, both of which have retained their complete cellular genetic make-up. Such associations are typically intercellular and, if intracellular, the symbiont is frequently isolated from the host’s cytosol by sequestration in a vacuole or host-provided membrane. What makes the sea slug/algal chloroplast symbiosis so remarkable is that the symbiont is a “naked,” foreign organelle sustained intracellularly in direct contact with the host sea slug cytosol and the symbiont remains functional for several months despite the absence of any algal nucleo-cytosolic influence.

There is some disagreement on whether an association between an organism and an isolated organelle such as a chloroplast constitutes symbiosis since the symbiont (chloroplast) is not a free-living organism. The term symbiosis was first defined as, “unlike organisms” living together. “Unlike organisms” came to mean different species and symbiosis changed to reflect, “prolonged physical associations without respect to outcome.” In the early 1900's, the Russian scientist K.S. Mereschkovsky proposed that chloroplasts originated from blue-green algae (cyanobacteria), a process he named symbiogenesis or “the origin of evolutionary novelty via symbiosis.”

In 1975, Robert Trench defined intracellular symbiosis as, “the coexistence of at least two genomes of divergent evolutionary origins occupying the same cytoplasmic environment.”

In her book on “Symbiotic Interactions,” Angela Douglas (1994) emphasizes that symbiosis is not dependent on mutual benefit to the partners, rather that at least one of the partners acquires a new metabolic property. Considering both Trench’s and Douglas’ definitions, we conclude that the intracellular association of algal chloroplasts with molluscan cells can be considered a unique symbiotic association. The chloroplast represents a symbiont genome and the host mollusc acquires a new metabolic capability, photosynthesis. Still, others prefer to use the term kleptoplasty or “something borrowed” to describe the chloroplast symbiosis. Regardless of definition or term used, today it is universally recognized that great biological novelty and diversity come from symbiotic associations and symbiosis is a widespread biological phenomenon.

PRIMARY, SECONDARY AND TERTIARY ENDOSYMBIOSIS

The endosymbiotic events leading to a solar-powered sea slug.

The endosymbiont theory traces the origin of the chloroplast to a free-living cyanobacterium that was engulfed by a eukaryote giving rise to the primary lineages of glaucophytes, red algae (rhodophytes), and the green plants and algae (the viridiplantae or streptophytes and chlorophytes, respectively).

Subsequently, secondary endosymbiosis, the uptake of a eukaryotic alga (green or red lineage) by another heterotrophic eukaryotic host, gave rise to a diverse group of secondary or complex algae, including the heterokont Vaucheria litorea.

Tertiary symbiosis is most commonly associated with dinoflagellates and the replacement of their endosymbiont with a new secondary endosymbiont. Here, we propose that the engulfment of secondary chloroplasts by a sea slug also represents a tertiary endosymbiotic association.

Kleptoplasty by Elysia chlorotica.
History
The first reports of "green bodies" within molluscs were made in 1904 by Brüel. However, it was not until the mid 1960's that these "green bodies" were studied and seen to be functional chloroplasts. From this time on, there has been much interest in the phenomenon by which sea slugs find, acquire, and maintain chloroplasts as an essential component of their life-cycle.

Kleptoplasty (“stealing” of chloroplasts) by Elysia chlorotica is remarkable for at least three reasons.

1. First, the “symbiont” in this case is not another autonomous organism with an intact genome, but rather a “naked,” foreign organelle (chloroplast).
2. Second, the symbiont is housed intracellularly and not sequestered between cells or within a vacuolar membrane.
3. Third, and perhaps most remarkable, the semi-autonomous kleptoplasts remain functional for as long as ten months within the foreign host cytosol despite the absence of any of its own algal nucleo-cytosolic components.

This type of long-term activity by isolated plastids is unprecedented and astounding considering that chloroplasts are derived from once free-living cyanobacteria and have lost the majority of their genes. Hence, they are dependent on their own nucleo-cytosol for protein synthesis, targeting, and regulation of just about every function of the organelle. In turn, chloroplasts are fragile organelles and very sensitive to physical and chemical changes in their environment, including osmotic stress. Evidently, the advantages of photoautotrophy have provided a strong selective pressure for the evolution of this association.

Whether the establishment of this symbiotic association is fueled by photoautotrophy pressure to sustain energy production for the sea slug when food is scarce or the need for camouflage protection when facing life without a protective shell in a predatory environment, or both, the association has not progressed to a hereditary one where the plastids are passed from one generation of slugs to the next. Instead, the association must be established anew each year and is required for the slug to develop into a mature adult sea slug, at least in laboratory experiments.

Establishment of the Kleptoplastic Association
We have now succeeded in culturing Elysia chlorotica in the laboratory including establishing the symbiotic or kleptoplastic association with Vaucheria litorea chloroplasts. Adult E. chloroticaproduce eggs, devoid of plastids, typically in late spring and planktonic veligers hatch within 4 to 5 d and then spend about 5 d feeding on unicellular algae (Rhodomonas or Isochrysis in the lab). When subsequently provided with filaments of V. litorea, metamorphosis of the veligers into juvenile sea slugs occurs within 1 to 2 d.

The endosymbiosis is established when young juvenile sea slugs grasp and then puncture the siphonaceous algal cells and suck out the cell contents. All of the algal contents are “discarded” except the chloroplasts, which are engulfed phagocytotically into the digestive cells. The captured chloroplasts fill the growing, extensively branched digestive tubules that lie just one cell layer beneath the epidermis.

Over the next several months the sea slugs may continue to feed onVaucheria if it is available and/or sustain themselves by photoautotrophic CO2 fixation using their newly acquired chloroplasts.

In laboratory culture, the sea slugs are kept apart from the algae, thus sustaining themselves totally by photosynthesis for up to ten months. Interestingly, death of the adults occurs almost synchronously late each spring in the lab and field (Pierce et al. 1999 Biol. Bulletin on virus).

The alga vaucheria
Vaucheria: Synonyms = water felt
Reproduction = asexual by fragmentation of filaments or zoospores and sexual by oogamy.

Vaucheria is a salt-water, yellow-green alga (Xanthophyte), in the Heterokont Kingdom.

Xanthophytes (yellow-green algae): >600 species, PS, fresh and marine waters, Chl a and c1 and c2 and NO fucoxanthin or Chl b. Cell wall, but not of cellulose or chitin. Food reserve = oil or fat, not starch typically. Haploid nucleus with outer membrane continuous with ctER. Sessile or free-living; motile flatellated unicells to colonies to siphonaceous (coenocytic) multinucleated filaments, to multicellular filaments.

Heterokont (=stramenopile = chromista)
description: Members of the Kingdom Chromista or Heterokontae exhibit the following characteristics: tubular mitochondria, motile cell with two different flagella. They vary from unicellular flagellates to large, siphonaceous filaments. They include diatoms, raphidiophytes, chrysophytes (golden algae), oomycota (water molds), phaeophytes (brown algae and kelps), haptophytes, silicoflagellata, and the xanthophyta (yellow-green algae including Vaucheria).

Vaucheria exhibits a siphonaceous morphology with a large vacuole and a thin layer of multinucleate cytoplasm containing numerous chloroplasts.

Chloroplasts

The chloroplasts ofVaucheria litorea have the standard four membranes surrounding them when seen within the algal cytoplasm. When isolated, they have only the standard double envelope.

Vaucheria litorea.
Taxonomy:

Kingdom Chromista (=Heterokontae)

Division (Phylum): Ochrophyta

Class: Xanthophyceae

Order: Vaucheriales

Family: Vaucheriaceae

Genus: Vaucheria (De Candolle, 1801)

Species: Vaucheria litorea Hofman ex C. Agardh, 1823

Culturing the alga vaucheria

The heterokont alga (= chromophytes [chl a and c], autotrophic stramenopiles), Vaucheria litorea, is maintained in culture in enriched quarter-strength (tolerates ¼ to full-strength sea water) Instant Ocean and a modified f/2 medium with natural lighting and daily manual swirling.

about elysia chlorotica

Found in saltwater marshes along the east coast of the US as far north as Nova Scotia to NC in the south and some times down to FL; waters of widely varying salinity, but usually brackish salt marshes. Our specimens are routinely collected from an intertidal marsh on Martha’s Vineyard Island, MA.

Synonyms = “leaves that crawl,” “solar-powered sea slugs,” “walking leaf,” “eastern emerald elysia,”

Reproduction = hermaphroditic, but self-fertilization is not common, shed fertilized eggs

Size = 2 to 3 cm common; some up to 6cm

Engineering Humans: A New Solution to Climate Change?

ORIGINAL: LiveScience

Wynne Parry, LiveScience Senior Writer

29 March 2012

Some have proposed we engineer ourselves to address climate change. CREDIT: ARCHITECTE® | shutterstock

So far, conventional solutions to global warming — new government policies and changes in individual behavior — haven't delivered. And more radical options, such as pumping sulfur into the atmosphere to counteract warming, pose a great deal of risk.

There may be another route to avoid the potentially disastrous effects of climate change: We can deliberately alter ourselves, three researchers suggest.

Human engineering, as they call it, poses less danger than altering our planet through geoengineering, and it could augment changes to personal behavior or policies to mitigate climate change, they write in an article to be published in the journal Ethics, Policy and the Environment.

"We are serious philosophers, but we might not be entirely serious that people should be doing this," said Anders Sandberg, one of the authors and an ethicist at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. "What we are arguing is we should be taking a look at this, at the very least."

In their article, they put forward a series of suggestions, intended as examples of the sorts of human engineering measures that people could voluntarily adopt. These include:

-Induce intolerance to red meat (think lactose intolerance), since livestock farming accounts for a significant portion of greenhouse gas emissions.

• Make humans smaller to reduce the amount of energy we each need to consume. This could be done by selecting smaller embryos through preimplantation genetic diagnosis, a technique already in use to screen for genetic diseases. "Human engineering could therefore give people the choice between having a greater number of smaller children or a smaller number of larger children," they write.
• Reduce birthrates by making people smarter, since higher cognitive ability appears linked to lower birthrates. This could be achieved through a variety of means, including better schooling,electrical stimulation of the brain and drugs designed to improve cognitive ability, they propose.
• Treat people with hormones, such as oxytocin, to make us more altruistic and empathetic. As a result, people would be more willing to act as a group and more sensitive to the suffering of animals and other people caused by climate change.

Engineering the Earth

Frustration with the gap between measures to address climate change and rising greenhouse gas emissions has prompted a colorful array of geoengineering, or planet-altering, solutions. These include 

• pumping sulfur particles or other aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect the sun's warmth back out into space; 
• seeding the oceans with iron to prompt algal blooms that would, in theory, suck carbon out of the atmosphere and eventually tuck it away in the seafloor; and perhaps most realistically, 
• pumping the excess carbon into reservoirs and storing it there.

In general, these solutions are problematic because they cannot be ground-tested before being implemented, and once implemented, the effects would be global, according to Sandberg.

"If I want to test out one of those brain-enhancing devices, I can test it on medical students. If something goes wrong, I might get a lawsuit, but it is a localized problem. How do you test geoengineering?" Sandberg said. "How many Earths do we have to test on?"

What's more, a change that benefits one country may hurt another, he said.

Changing ourselves

The concept of human engineering isn't new. Sandberg studies the ethics of human enhancement, or "all the tools we have to mess with ourselves to improve our performance," as he puts it. "A lot of them are quite controversial, except the ones we don't recognize," he told LiveScience.

Someone will tell you, "'I think it's horrible people take pills to become smarter,' but they are saying it over coffee," he said alluding to the alertness-enhancing effects of caffeine in the coffee. Supplementing salt with iodine is credited with preventing brain damage in infants, and as a result, boosting intelligence around the world.

Fluoride is put into water systems to protect our teeth, and we receive vaccines to protect against disease. Both measures — just like human engineering measures that could address climate change — carry risk, but they have been widely adopted, Sandberg and his colleagues point out.

"Now, we are not that interested in saying the government should impose any of this stuff. … It is more interesting to think about what can people actually do to modify themselves that might be green," he said. "I am mildly skeptical if anything we propose is going to happen. I think it's most likely green changes to human nature aren't anything we have thought of."

You can follow LiveScience senior writer Wynne Parry on Twitter @Wynne_Parry. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and onFacebook.