“Today, seaweed is suddenly a hot global commodity. It’s attracting new money and new purpose in all kinds of new places because of its potential to help tame some of the hazards of the modern age, not least climate change.
In London, a start-up is making a plastic substitute out of seaweed. In Australia and Hawaii, others are racing to grow seaweed that, when fed to livestock, can cut methane from cow burps. Researchers are studying just how much carbon dioxide can be sequestered by seaweed farms, as investors eye them as a new source of carbon credits for polluters to offset their greenhouse gas emissions.”
Source
Sengupta, S., & Lee, C. W. (2023, March 15). Seaweed is having its moment in the sun. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/15/climate/seaweed-plastic-climate-change.html
Analysis
People are starting to look into seaweed as a potential solution to our over pollution. Farming seaweed has the potential to process carbon-dioxide and return some breathable oxygen into the atmosphere. The issue presented is that we may not have the knowledge or knowhow to responsibly farm seaweed. Early in the industrial revolution we did not properly rotate our crops destroying the soil in the American plains and thus began the dustbowl. It is interesting that we are convinced that we can fix the Earth’s natural balance by having more industrialized influence over it when we have already proven time and time again that we usually cause more destruction. I think we need more solutions ending our current level of destruction before we start trying to influence new domains like our oceans.
