00:00:00.000The silence is broken by somebody crying, trying to be heard, never a word, always the attitude, sort out your own, always alone, wishing for something the world is denying.
00:00:25.000Out in the wilderness somebody's crying
00:00:29.800Somebody wishing for something to happen
00:00:52.220Someone to lean on and someone to trust
00:00:56.860Who needs your assistance and finds your disguise
00:01:00.920Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young.
00:01:14.860Today we are speaking with Dr. Shearer, who is the co-founder and CEO of Full Circle Biochar.
00:01:20.980Prior to launching Full Circle Biochar, Dr. Scherer was Chief Scientist at California Environmental Associates and Principal Environmental Scientist at Aerovironment, Inc., where he worked in the next-generation transportation, energy, carbon mitigation, and information technology space.
00:01:41.740In addition to his private sector activities, Dr. Scherer has directed groundbreaking work in both public policy and philanthropic investment for climate change mitigation.
00:01:53.540Dr. Scherer sits on several nonprofit and educational boards, including Sky Truth and Black Rock Labs.
00:02:00.120He has a Ph.D. and an M.S. in environmental microbiology from the University of California and a B.S. in biology from the University of Oregon.
00:02:09.260well I just want to start off by really feeling into that more and more people are awakening to
00:02:16.520the realities of climate change and the Anthropocene and I really feel this active burning
00:02:22.480in communities to do something to restore renew or to look for solutions and I really feel like
00:02:31.260biochar is one of them I remember when I first learned of biochar I basically wanted to convert
00:02:38.240all of my wood heating and cooking into a biochar machine. Not to mention that biochar
00:02:44.140is so beneficial in forest restoration and biochar cook stoves for communities in rural
00:02:50.240Africa and South America. So I'd love to just jump right into your work that you're doing at
00:02:55.820Full Circle Biochar. And if you could start us off by telling us the basics about biochar.
00:03:01.780What is it? How is it created? And what is the climate mitigating potential for its application?
00:03:08.240So biochar is simply charcoal that's purpose-made not to burn for heat or cooking, but to be used for agriculture.
00:03:19.580Biochar is made by heating up biomass or really anything that has a sugar, a carbon source, and heating it up in the absence of oxygen.
00:03:30.860When we burn wood in a fireplace, we depend on oxygen to oxidize that wood to create heat.
00:03:39.340But there's a small part of that process that creates charcoal that has very low oxygen concentrations.
00:03:47.500The way you produce biochar is you put biomass, whether it's chicken litter, urban tree waste, the waste streams of palm oil production, for example.
00:03:58.540you put that material inside of a chamber and you heat it up without oxygen. You bake it. You don't
00:04:05.440burn it. And the net result is a material that's almost 98% carbon. The value of biochar in the
00:04:12.760context of climate change is actually twofold. The first is that we now recognize that carbon
00:04:20.640mitigation, i.e. stopping new emissions and climate adaptation, adapting to a changing climate,
00:04:28.540will not be enough for us to be able to withstand the impacts of climate change.
00:04:35.060We also need to think about carbon drawdown, which basically means drawing down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and doing something with that,
00:04:45.240whether you are using it to make green plastics, to make green fuels, or in our case, making biochar.
00:04:52.680So we're using plants to draw down the carbon dioxide and converting that biomass into charcoal, which if you make it the right way, it's a very long half-life.
00:05:04.580I mean, once you make charcoal the right way, it's around for thousands of years.
00:05:08.380And so biochar is part of this whole new wave of carbon drawdown technologies where we are literally drawing down the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, stabilizing it in the form of charcoal, and mixing it into soils.
00:05:24.500The reason this is important is because the half-life of carbon dioxide is very long.
00:05:30.400It literally takes thousands of years for the carbon dioxide that's now up in the atmosphere to be fully removed.
00:05:37.640Clearly, we don't have a thousand years to wait, so we really need to do something.
00:05:41.160And one of them is to draw down carbon.
00:05:43.800The other thing that biochar does in the context of climate change is it builds in resilience
00:06:06.000It's called resilience. Plants and soil systems have to create essentially a buffer that allows us to deal with these extremes while at the same time grow food for the planet.
00:06:20.100And also the benefits to the soil, like water retention and areas for fungi and bacterias to live.
00:06:28.620Would you mind speaking a bit of the benefits in this agricultural context?
00:06:33.180so biochar is a remarkable material this is not something new if you think about fires on the
00:06:40.180planet fires are a very well very destructive in terms of their effect on humanity fire is
00:06:47.660built into natural ecosystems it's a natural process that literally creates charcoal creates
00:06:53.140biochar that's used to regenerate soils for a variety of reasons we can't rely on natural fires
00:06:59.460to regenerate soils anymore for all the reasons we understand.
00:07:02.640So what biochar is, it's essentially we're biomimicrating fire that's found in nature.
00:07:07.960And once you actually produce this charcoal, if, again, you produce it the right way,
00:07:16.040Some biochars can be made that are actually toxic to plants,
00:07:19.360while other biochars are incredibly effective at regenerating soils.
00:07:24.600In the near term, what biochar does is it provides a way to optimize the use of water and plant nutrients in ag systems.
00:07:35.440The surface of biochar is very interesting.
00:07:38.620It's chemically active to the extent that it can bind plant nutrients, whether it's the macronutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, or many of the micronutrients, or it can also retain water.
00:07:50.940In many ways, it can be seen as an on-demand system for plant nutrients and water for plants.
00:07:58.320And it allows these materials, whether it's plant nutrients or water, to be retained,
00:08:03.120not run off the field into adjacent waterways, but actually be retained in the soil itself.
00:08:09.440The other thing that biochar does is it provides habitat for microorganisms.
00:08:14.300And it's very, very effective at doing this.
00:08:16.480There's been many studies that compare soils with and without biochar, and you see orders of magnitude more microbiology in biochar soils than soils that don't have charcoal or biochar.
00:08:28.480And we know that soil plant systems, it's really a full circle to the extent that it relies on both microbiology and inorganic nutrients to deliver nutrients to plants.
00:08:41.640and plants in return will exude sugar molecules. They're called exudates that will feed the
00:08:48.920microbiology communities that are embedded in biochar. So there's a very beautiful symbiotic
00:08:54.020relationship between plants feeding microbiology and microbiology mobilizing the nutrients that
00:09:01.380are bound up in biochar and then delivering them back to plants themselves. There's a revolution
00:09:07.000going on right now in agriculture called Precision Ag, where we are now able to measure using remote
00:09:13.420sensing technology, the concentration of plant nutrients and water and carbon in every square
00:09:20.880meter on a field. Business as usual, we have essentially put the same concentration of nitrogen
00:09:26.660across a whole acre. But we know that a field is very heterogeneous in terms of its chemical and
00:09:33.060physical properties. And one meter in a field may be really quite different than another meter in
00:09:38.260the field in terms of its ability to both retain water and retain plant nutrients. So we can bundle
00:09:43.780this data of what's on every square meter on a field with the ability to deliver using robotics
00:09:50.360and the internet of things exactly what's required on that every square meter. So yes,
00:09:55.760then we become much more efficient in terms of how we use nitrogen and phosphorus. People
00:10:01.380forget that one of the other peak issues we care about is peak phosphorus, where phosphorus is one
00:10:09.140of the big three elements we need for aquaculture. And the value chain of phosphorus is very fragile
00:10:14.300because something like 95% of the world's phosphorus comes from just two countries,
00:10:19.400Western Sahara and Morocco. And that makes it very fragile. And we waste most of the other
00:10:25.820phosphorus that's frankly emitted from our feces and from all the other animals. We just let it
00:10:30.840go down the drain and we pollute waterways. So by some estimates, we only have 50 to 60 years
00:10:36.780left of phosphorus in those two dominant countries. But without phosphorus, it's not
00:10:42.020going to happen in terms of ag. So we need to close those loops. We need to close those broken
00:10:47.020nitrogen and phosphorus cycles and begin to extract, not so much extract, but maintain those
00:10:52.760new stream flows back into ag systems. And so back to biochar, the reason that animal manures
00:10:59.180are so interesting as a form of biochar production is because, number one, there's a lot of
00:11:03.680nanomotors out there, but number two, they're high in nitrogen phosphorus, and it just so happens
00:11:09.240that if you make biochar the right way, you can retain those phosphorus and nitrogen molecules
00:11:15.040in the biochar cell. So not only are you creating a carbon material, but you're really playing a
00:11:21.400substitute product for fertilizer, and that's very exciting, and frankly, Big Ag is taking
00:11:27.500notice of this because they recognize now that what they've been doing over the last 150, 200
00:11:32.680years has been the destroying topsoil. We can't keep on doing it business as usual. And so
00:11:38.100recognition that soil health must be part of a business's focus is really going to allow us then
00:11:44.940to recapture and to deploy biochar and biochar with nutrients into big ag. Because number one,
00:11:52.340it's a brand new market around regenerative ag as opposed to extraction ag. But number two,
00:11:56.880it's really helping rebuild soils. It's helping recognize that we can't keep on letting phosphorus
00:12:04.840and nitrogen wash away off-soil systems or wash away animal feces or human feces. That just makes
00:12:12.160no sense at all. You've mentioned a few times there's a right way to make biochar and a wrong
00:12:19.280way. I'm interested in hearing why different methods are beneficial and are not beneficial,
00:12:26.140And I'm wondering, how do the processes you utilize to create biochar differ from the way it forms naturally through vegetation fires or the over 2,500-year-old traditional production methods of the Amazon Basin?
00:12:42.760The way you make biochar, as I said, is you heat up biomass in the absence of oxygen.
00:12:46.640The rate of heating, the amount of heating, the absolute temperature you use, whether it's 450 degrees C or 700 degrees C, and the different rate of heating, the amount of time the biochar is in the kiln itself, will determine whether the resultant biochar that's created is toxic to plants or wildly beneficial to plants.
00:13:11.500When I say toxic, some kilns, because of the way they are operating and because the operating
00:13:17.760conditions, you need to keep in mind that a kiln itself will produce three different types
00:13:23.560of material. There'll be a solid biochar, there'll be a liquid waste stream, which will be essentially
00:13:29.440plant tars, and there will be gases. And the liquid tars, since some of these liquid tars
00:13:37.480and plants are not healthy for plants. If again, the biochar system is not running the correct way,
00:13:43.580these tars will recondense back onto the biochar itself and produce a film on the biochar that is
00:13:50.520toxic to plants. On the other hand, if you have the right heating regimes, if you have the right
00:13:56.040amount of time in the kiln itself, you will produce a biochar that not only is stable, since
00:14:02.720Keep in mind, biochar is a very effective carbon mitigation strategy, and frankly, that's why Full Circle Biochar was initially founded, was to formalize products that stored atmospheric carbon and charcoal that could then be used for agricultural purposes.
00:14:20.100So how you make the charcoal will determine about how resilient it is, whether the carbon itself, the charcoal itself, has half-lives of 200 years versus 1,000 years, and it also will determine what's called the cation exchange capacity of the biochar, the ability of biochar to retain nutrients, and it will also affect the porosity of the biochar itself, how much water can it retain.
00:14:45.900And again, this all is determined by the actual recipes that you make the biochar itself.
00:14:52.300And that's not to suggest that the original ways that the indigenous populations around
00:14:56.860the planet made biochar wasn't helpful because even bad biochar, if it doesn't have recondensed
00:15:03.780tars, is quote unquote bad, is actually useful to plants.
00:15:07.700But if you really are interested in climate and agriculture production, you want to optimize
00:15:14.420the storage capacity of charcoal, i.e. how long will it be around, and ideally we want it to be
00:15:20.720around for centuries to millennia, and then you can affect the pH of the biochar depending on how
00:15:27.140you make it, and you can affect the ability of the biochar to retain nutrients and water. And again,
00:15:33.740that's all in how do you produce the biochar itself. Each feedstock will be different, whether
00:15:38.600you start with chicken litter, whether you start with urban tree waste, whether you start with
00:15:43.220some other form of carbohydrate, the actual process of turning it into very valuable biochar
00:15:49.400for the planet will be determined by the process conditions and the feedstock that you start with.
00:15:55.580You can actually look at it as a platform. There'll be different platforms depending on the
00:16:00.060feedstock you start with, the process conditions, and eventually the end-use markets that you're
00:16:04.920trying to use the biochar in, whether it's high-value crops like vegetables and fruits,
00:16:09.700or whether it's row crops like wheat, etc.
00:17:09.700I want to talk a bit about the markets for biochar because with all of the benefits of
00:17:21.100the water holding and the nutrient enriching and the carbon drawdown, it seems like if
00:17:27.240there is a way to get this biochar into industrial agriculture for the time being, we could see
00:17:34.820major benefits. Even I think about the wine countries of Northern California that take a
00:17:40.820lot of water to produce crops and to be able to cut down on water and even potentially cut down
00:17:47.540on fertilizers because there is more nutrient power in the soil. What do you see the path to
00:17:55.580put biochar into large scale agriculture, thousands of acres? Is it policy? Is it private sector? Is it
00:18:03.460public sector, you know, how has your research directed you to make as big of an impact as
00:18:09.780possible? The next step for biochar is to formalize biochar into reproducible products.
00:18:16.580If you're interested in scaling biochar into big ag, you need to produce a product that is
00:18:22.720replicable. In other words, for every ton of biochar you make, it has the exact same
00:18:27.740physical and chemical characteristics. That's the first thing you need to do. And that's
00:18:32.540really what's starting to happen. We founded Full Circle Biochar in 2008 and it's eight years later
00:18:39.120and we're finally being able to begin the process of formalizing, standardizing
00:18:44.820biochars based on our kiln designs. The second thing that needs to happen, and this is frankly
00:18:52.500been the biggest hurdle, is creating a stable market signal for biochar in big ag. And that
00:18:59.860stable market signal comes with demonstrating the value of biochar in field settings. We need to
00:19:06.980keep in mind that big ag is a relatively conservative market sector. And because once
00:19:12.480you put biochar in the soil, you can't take it out of the soil easily, the farmers need to be
00:19:19.440very assured that they can get the benefits that are advertised by the biochar companies themselves.
00:19:27.800And so there have been a number of trials that have been ongoing over the last four or five years, and they will continue in different ag sectors that demonstrate to farmers that this stuff actually works.
00:19:38.780And these trials tend to take multiple years because in California, we have perhaps three harvests per year in vegetables.
00:19:46.800But farmers will want to see two or three or four years of consistent data before they invest in biochar systems or biochar products.
00:19:56.240And then finally, if we had a price on carbon, that would be a huge accelerator in terms of using agricultural lands to store carbon.
00:20:04.760And we've been talking about putting a price on carbon for years and years and years and years.
00:20:10.360And there still doesn't really exist a stable price on carbon.
00:20:14.480There are a variety of carbon markets around the planet, but the markets themselves are still immature.
00:20:19.340So it's really those three things that will allow us to scale biochar into big ag, a stable price on carbon, a dependable type of biochar that produces the same results over and over again, and very strong field data, evidence that will convince farmers that yes, this is something they should be doing.
00:20:40.340another place that I'm really interested in scaling up biochar is in reforestation of clear
00:20:48.740cut lands specifically in the temperate rainforest region where I'm working in because I'm really
00:20:53.920you know I'm doing this one million redwoods project right now where I'm going into clear
00:20:58.380cuts and planting redwoods their understory species along with their fungal allies and of
00:21:04.720course redwoods sequester the most carbon of any tree in the world and then I would imagine if we
00:21:09.660You're able to really swale these degraded lands, add biochar, and then replant these forest systems.
00:21:17.280We'd have this incredibly charged carbon drawdown forest.
00:21:22.260And I'm wondering, you know, what are your thoughts on biochar being applicable within different restoration areas and not just big ag?
00:21:33.720Well, we know that biochar has the ability to accelerate regeneration.
00:21:38.760Whether it's used in sites that are contaminated with heavy metals, because the biochar can then bind the metals, whether it's regenerating spent agricultural lands, it's not quite as simple as, yes, let's put biochar everywhere.
00:21:53.700Because there is some evidence that in temperate forests, the biochar can actually sequester carbon in itself from the soil systems.
00:22:05.240In other words, there might be a detrimental effect as opposed to beneficial effect.
00:22:11.320And we tend to see this in temperate forests versus tropical forests.
00:22:16.960But there are just a few data points suggesting this is the case.
00:22:20.360So I think, like anything, there isn't any one solution that solves all the problems.
00:22:26.280I think we need to be very smart in terms of how we apply biochar in forest settings.
00:22:30.860So if you think about global agriculture, there's really four big challenges that have to happen over the next few decades.
00:22:38.560Number one is we need to decouple the destruction of tropical rainforest from the expansion of agricultural lands.
00:22:45.980And because if you look at where most of the new lands are coming from for ag production around the planet, it's coming from cutting down tropical rainforest.
00:22:53.420And clearly, for all sorts of reasons, we need to stop doing that.
00:22:56.420The second thing we need to do is we need to be much more efficient in terms of how we use inputs, whether it's nutrients or water, which means we need to find a way for soils to retain these plant nutrients and water in soil systems themselves and make sure they don't run off.
00:23:13.360The third thing is we need to decrease the yield gap, which is a term which means how much you could theoretically grow in an agricultural setting versus what you're growing now.
00:23:24.860And we need to reduce that yield gap to maximize the amount of food that we produce per acre.
00:23:30.000And finally, we need to reduce food waste.
00:23:33.120Something like 40% of the food production that we use never gets to a table.
00:23:38.420And what that means is that not only are we wasting food, but we're wasting water because roughly 70% to 80% of the world's water goes to agriculture.
00:23:48.240So if we're wasting 40% of the food that's grown, that means that 40% of all that water we're using is actually going nowhere.
00:23:57.280So back to your question, biochar is ideal in decoupling tropical rainforests from ag expansion because biochar can regenerate land.
00:24:08.420And as you point out, there are a variety of settings that can be used for regeneration, whether it's in tropical systems or temperate systems.
00:24:15.440But I think, as anything, we just need to be very wise in terms of how we apply this material, making sure that we are not causing more problems and making sure we're solving problems.
00:24:27.480You bring up such a important and deeply felt point that as humans, we're really creative beings. And I think that so many of the decisions we've made over the past, especially hundred and so years with the Industrial Revolution, we've made decisions that aren't so thoughtful into the future of how these decisions can actually affect the climate.
00:24:57.480biodiversity, even other humans. I think also it's easy to get really excited with any solutions
00:25:05.300because there's such a desperation as we are getting closer and closer to immense devastation
00:25:12.720on this earth. You know, so I see biochar as this incredible technology, but as you've said so
00:25:19.420eloquently, use it in the best way possible. And along that same vein, you know, we usually shy
00:25:26.140away from discussing a lot of technology on this podcast. At For the Wild, we really feel that
00:25:32.900emphasizing technological innovations as leading solutions can disregard the root origins of the
00:25:39.940climactic and environmental unravelings we're navigating. That as long as we continue to
00:25:46.140innovate, that we'll be able to maintain or even increase our current levels of consumption.
00:25:52.780But humans have this innate propensity to create, and I'd love to hear about some of the budding technological innovations that excite or worry you the most that are coming out right now.
00:26:06.840We are in a very unique moment in history where many technologies that have been developing over the last 20, 30 years are coming to fruition.
00:26:18.620and the cost of manufacturing these technologies is falling so fast.
00:26:25.340It's exponential in terms of the reduction of cost
00:26:27.840that it's not hard to imagine that over the next 20 to 30 years
00:26:32.440we are going to completely repower the planet from renewables.
00:26:38.320I mean, right now, renewables are relatively cost-competitive with coal,
00:26:44.980especially wind. And you expect solar in the next five years to be, as well, the most inexpensive
00:26:53.700form of power production on the planet. So it's easy to imagine that the market is going to
00:26:59.700really be a very large driver in terms of the adopting of these regenerative solutions,
00:27:06.040whether it's renewables, whether it's next generation cars that are powered from electricity,
00:27:14.980as opposed to fossil fuels, regenerative agriculture.
00:27:18.900I think we can be very excited about the future,
00:27:22.820but I think it's also important to remember that technology itself is neutral.
00:27:28.640And it really depends on the person who applies it,
00:28:12.500smart cars, because we're going to be able to be a lot more efficient in how we use our materials.
00:28:18.780But at the same time, we know that AI itself is a double-edged sword. And while, yes, it would be
00:28:25.060very helpful to be able to deliver exactly what's required on every square meter on a field based on
00:28:31.820remote sensing data, based on robotic tractors that can deliver exactly what's required to that
00:28:37.940one square meter. At the same time, we need to be going with our eyes wide open and recognize that
00:28:43.800smart technologies can, again, have a dark side to them. In terms of other things that I'm excited
00:28:50.880about, oh gosh, you know, advanced materials. We hear an awful lot about graphene, which is a single
00:28:58.780layer, one atom layer material of pure carbon. We know that this is the lightest, strongest
00:29:07.220material known to man. We know that it has very interesting electrochemical properties. It's not
00:29:12.280hard to imagine batteries made from graphene. So imagine drawing down carbon dioxide from the
00:29:17.840atmosphere, using that carbon to make batteries that can then be used to stir power for electric
00:29:24.180cars. I'm excited about genomics. I don't remember the exact data, but 20, 30 years ago, it cost
00:29:31.540a lot of money just to sequence the DNA of one human being. That cost of technology is falling
00:29:38.560so fast that it's not hard to imagine that by within five, six, seven years, you will go into
00:29:44.720your doctor's office and have your DNA sequenced and have the DNA sequence of a pathogen if it's
00:29:50.620an infected disease sequenced as well and have a very specific health solution based on the
00:29:56.800genomics and proteomics of you and the agent that is causing problems for you, the health agent.
00:30:03.020So we are literally on the cusp of massive change in terms of technology, and it's happening
00:30:09.860really fast. I think generally people don't recognize that all this technology is being
00:30:16.160developed at an exponential rate, not only in terms of the cost of production, but because
00:30:20.880these markets are so large, whether it's the health market or the transportation market
00:30:25.360or the power market. These are multi-billion dollar markets. And whenever there's that much
00:30:30.100at stake, the most cost-effective solution will be the solution that wins. And the good news is
00:30:35.860many of the problems we have now based on carbon fuels, based on accidents from cars,
00:30:42.620based on extraction, agriculture practices are going to be displaced, not because they're the
00:30:47.980best solution for the planet, but because they're the most cost-effective solutions.
00:30:51.720But the good news is these cost-effective solutions will also be the best solutions for the planet.
00:30:57.980It's incredible to think about these technologies becoming more efficient, being able to, like you said, heal these viruses and issues in our bodies.
00:31:10.300But I guess part of me is wondering, where does that really get us as a culture, as a species?
00:31:18.140Of course, you know, being more efficient can mean burning of less fossil fuels or not burning fossil fuels at all. If we're healthier, then yes, I can absolutely see benefits from that. But, you know, you'd spoke about how we use these technologies is so important. And I guess I'm just wondering, what would the ripple effect be if we were healthier and more efficient?
00:31:40.560Do you see that transforming the way that we treat people, treat other species, the way that we relate to the earth in a reciprocal way? I mean, do you think it can really touch how we even got into this mess in the first place?
00:31:55.900that's a great question and i don't think there is a answer to it as i said earlier in our
00:32:03.120conversation being mindful and how we use technologies is so important because we're
00:32:09.280trying to bend the arc of change towards good we know that change is rapid and it's happening so
00:32:15.020fast around us and there are folks who want to use this technology to do nefarious things at the
00:32:21.880same time, there's a whole group of planetary citizens that are interested in bending the
00:32:26.300arc of change towards good. So I don't think it's enough just to have great technology.
00:32:32.000We need to be very conscious about how we develop mindfulness in our own life. And then, of course,
00:32:38.780we've seen evidence over the last 50 years that the indigenous populations who practice
00:32:46.580Plant medicines are very powerful tools in terms of creating a worldview that's based on co-creation with nature as opposed to us dominating nature, which has been the predominant worldview for the last hundred years.
00:33:44.240Well, thank you for shedding light that technology is not the end-all be-all fix to all of our
00:34:04.020woes. It is a tool. And like you've been saying, it's really how do we use this technology? Are we
00:34:11.820mindful? Are we using it for the greater good? Or are we using technology to perpetuate disposable
00:34:18.780cultures or lift up our human exceptionalism and separatism from nature? Technology, like you said,
00:34:25.900isn't charged, I think. And maybe you used another description, but I think that's a really
00:34:30.520interesting way of looking at it like money in a way. Money doesn't necessarily have a power in
00:34:36.300and of itself, but how are we placing our own values on money, on technology? What are we using
00:34:41.480it for? Even with biochar, are we putting so much pressure that it is the fix that's going to save
00:34:47.420us all and we can just continue as a culture being destructive and disregarding these intricate
00:34:54.320relationships of nature? Or are we going to use it for a tool for regeneration and reconnection
00:34:59.060with each other and with the earth? And it's just such an important point to understand
00:35:05.080the fullness of how to be in relationship with technology.
00:35:10.260Absolutely. And it's not just in relationship with technology, but it's in relationship with
00:35:14.700each other, with us, you and I, with our kids, and with the animals and plants that surround us.
00:35:22.440I believe strongly that this notion of we dominate nature and nature has no saying,
00:35:30.160not only is that misguided, but that's actually not true, that we have been co-creating with
00:35:34.600nature for millennia. The opportunity here is to recognize that worldview and then to establish a
00:35:43.260set of practices, whether it's food production, whether it's power production, whether it's
00:35:47.920buildings, a set of practices that regenerative, that we're moving away from an extraction worldview
00:35:54.260where one plus one equals 10 to a worldview of co-creation of regeneration where one plus one
00:36:00.720equals 10. That's certainly possible. We see all the First Nations around the planet. They have
00:36:06.480tremendous wisdom that they have used for millennia in terms of their relationships
00:36:10.880with the planet, with other species. They're fabulous in terms of their capacity to engender
00:36:18.240interspecies communication. I think it's fair to say that over the past 50 years, since the 60s,
00:36:24.720when there was the huge revolution that happened on the planet with respect to the youth,
00:36:29.440That we're now recapturing or repurposing or able to use this information from indigenous populations and apply it to how we relate to the world around us, while at the same time recognizing that we do need to innovate.
00:36:44.300We do need to have new technologies in terms of how we produce power for the planet, because we're killing the planet the way we do it right now, and we just can't keep on doing it anymore.
00:36:53.380But the good news is there is a whole new set of technologies that are emerging that are cost competitive that are going to allow us to displace these old extraction technologies with regenerative technologies.
00:37:05.520Speaking of these exciting technologies and collaborating with community and really being able to use these technologies to connect even more deeply with each other, I wanted to bring up the BlackRock Labs, which you are a chair on the board of directors for, which is a nonprofit innovation technology incubator to accelerate regenerative solutions and networked technologies at BlackRock City, the Burning Man regional events and within wider webs throughout the world.
00:37:35.520world. And I read an article recently that mentioned that Black Rock Labs would explore
00:37:40.780the, quote, internet of energy, which it's like a technology that epitomizes the storage
00:37:46.900regeneration and dispatching of renewable energy where it's needed, as well as machine learning
00:37:51.920and innovations in habitat, water, and waste. It sounds so fascinating, and I would love if
00:37:57.700you could elaborate on these efforts and the climate mitigating potential that they do hold.
00:38:05.520BlackRock Labs emerged out of BlackRock Solar, which was an NGO, one of Burning Man's two
00:38:11.540NGOs, that was used to deploy renewable energy systems off playa into disadvantaged communities
00:38:20.520We founded BlackRock Solar in 2007, and over the last, gosh, almost eight years, we deployed
00:38:30.120I think something like 104 systems, 7.5 megawatts of power. It was a wild success in terms of
00:38:37.920championing one of Burning Man's 10 principles, the gifting economy and the leave no trace economy
00:38:43.560and applying it to communities that were adjacent to the Burning Man event in Nevada.
00:38:49.200But what happened over the last eight years is our business model at BlackRock Solar,
00:38:53.240the way we were able to gift these installations was that there was a very aggressive rebate
00:38:58.860program in Nevada for renewable power. And we were able to, if we financed these systems up front,
00:39:05.800we could get the money back from the state to cover the cost of these systems and then apply
00:39:10.600that money to the next system that we deployed. But over the last eight years, the rebate structure
00:39:16.160in Nevada has slowly ratcheted down, as you would expect to happen. The whole point of a rebate
00:39:21.580system is to equalize the playing field and allow solar energy to compete against cold-fired power
00:39:28.940plants. Well, as the cost of solar fell, so did the access to rebates. And so we recognized about
00:39:36.480a year and a half ago, we being the Board of BlackRock Solar, that we really needed to repurpose
00:39:41.440our vision because the way that we were going to deploy renewables didn't exist anymore.
00:39:46.600At the same time, we made the observation that the cost of sensor technology, the cost of computer chips has also fallen exponentially.
00:39:58.400And all the technology that really drives the Internet of Things, IoT as it's called for short, has also fallen dramatically.
00:40:05.780So we realized that we could use the Internet of Things technology to allow us to deploy smart renewable energy, smart water systems at Burning Man itself and at the other regional events around the world.
00:40:21.540So the Internet of Energy really relies on what we call the fog as opposed to the cloud.
00:40:27.640We know about the cloud in terms of storing energy or storing information around the planet, and a variety of tech companies have their cloud-based businesses.
00:40:37.680The fog is really a ground-level system, and it's a system that's short-range.
00:40:42.580So imagine the combination of batteries, solar cells, and end users, and imagine a software solution that's powered by sensors and chips that allow you to be very efficient in terms of how you store the electrons produced from the solar panels on batteries itself.
00:41:07.440And how do you deploy those renewable electrons to the end users, whether it's at a Burning Man event or, frankly, whether it's at a refugee camp on the planet?
00:41:17.340So BlackRock Labs was founded to use the canvas of innovation that Burning Man represents and use it to test new ideas around smart water or smart power to discover these ideas, to validate them, and then promote them beyond the boundaries of Burning Man.
00:41:35.980Because we really see Burning Man as one of many examples of events around the world that are championing new ways of thinking around technology, around how we relate to each other, and how we relate to the planet.
00:41:51.700We, being the BlackRock Labs board, reconverted the corporation from BlackRock Solar to BlackRock Labs about nine months ago.
00:41:59.020Now we're in the process of formalizing what we're going to do and really funding our first projects because just like Burning Man has art grants for the event itself in the desert, we are going to have small tech grants that we will re-grant out to develop these next generation regenerative ideas, test them at the various regional events around the world, including Black Rock City,
00:42:27.960and then deploy them beyond the boundaries of our community into the planet itself.
00:42:33.740That is an incredible way to harness the power of events like Burning Man,
00:42:40.420where there's so much creativity and people power and energy behind it, human energy,
00:42:48.020because I think that to see this melding of so many communities coming together
00:42:54.060and open sourcing and sharing these ideas and really joining together to make this more
00:43:01.140accessible, exciting, feels like really the way of the future.
00:43:06.820I think we're really trying to champion the notion that there is a great deal of positive
00:43:10.760action happening around the planet itself.
00:43:13.540The news media tends to be dominated by negative energy, negative reporting.
00:43:17.960And I understand that we have to do that kind of reporting for transparency in terms of
00:43:22.500what's happening on the planet, but at the same time, oftentimes we fail to report on all the
00:43:27.240amazing, great things that are happening on the planet itself. Now, if I think about Burning Man,
00:43:32.800it's really a combination of art and science, and the interface of art and science is wonder.
00:43:37.760And I think ultimately that's what we're trying to do, is create stories around wonder to create
00:43:43.240excitement around the future of the planet, so people don't feel despair, but they actually
00:43:47.660want to participate in these new technologies, not based on fear, but based on, dare I say, love.
00:43:56.320I feel very resonant with that wonder and that love. And honestly, that's what keeps me going
00:44:01.320with these reforestation projects. That's what wakes me up and pushes me to learn more and to
00:44:07.300listen more and to observe and just to show up day in, day out in the midst of these catastrophes
00:44:13.420that are happening is just the sheer magnitude of how incredible this earth is the wonder that
00:44:20.160comes out of that and really the magic it's interesting we've been talking about a lot of
00:44:24.340these technologies that are seemingly let's say safe in a way or you know they of course probably
00:44:30.160have their dangerous sides to them but there's other forms of technology that are coming out
00:44:35.640which is geoengineering and i must say that geoengineering and techno fixes being proposed
00:44:42.520make me a little uneasy. You know, for instance, cloud seeding, which alters the size of ice
00:44:47.800crystals into serious clouds to restrict the amount of infrared radiation they readmit,
00:44:53.500or stratospheric aerosol injection, which would spray reflective particles in the atmosphere,
00:44:59.780or engineered weathering, where some of the ocean's carbonic acid is replaced with
00:45:04.720hydrochloric acid in order to accelerate underwater storage of CO2. So, you know, I really question
00:45:11.180if many of these proposed innovations, still in theoretical phases, many of them,
00:45:16.540and with potentially grievous ecological and atmospheric consequences,
00:45:21.060are worth all of the effort and billions of dollars.
00:45:25.080I'm wondering, is there not a more righteous path to focus on carbon drawdown,
00:45:29.060like some of the stuff we've been talking about in our own, maybe even local living landscapes?
00:45:36.840If you think about the interface of humanity with the planet,
00:45:41.180We've been terraforming the planet for 5,000 years to the extent that we have been modifying the surface of the planet for agriculture.
00:45:50.920We've been modifying the surface of the planet by harvesting trees for habitats.
00:45:56.340So I think we should recognize right up front that we have been doing this for a long time.
00:46:01.320And granted, it has been geoengineering light, just like, I mean, I think of biochar as a geoengineering light solution compared to sulfate aerosols in the stratosphere.
00:46:12.320On the other hand, as a scientist, I think it would be prudent for us not to put our head in the sands around these technologies, but to at least understand the risks of them, both the positive and negative risks, because we could find ourselves in a box, hypothetically, in 50 years, where we know that, for example, the rate of glacier melt is much faster than we thought it was going to be.
00:46:37.920And we find ourselves where the planet and the climate is changing so fast that we aren't able to mitigate the effect.
00:46:48.560We aren't able to adapt, but we really find ourselves in a very precarious position.
00:46:53.260It would make sense to me to at least understand these technologies, don't pretend like they don't exist, but recognize that, yes, this is one of many things we might have to do.
00:47:06.460And to do the initial testing and initial risk analysis so we understand the costs and benefits of any solution, whether it's putting a giant mirror in space to reflect incoming radiation back into space, whether it's other forms of atmospheric modification.
00:47:23.080Again, I'm not advocating these technologies, but what I'm advocating is an approach to what the potential risks are into the future around the changing climate and what the solutions might be.
00:47:37.080Now, with respect to local solutions, clearly not putting sulfates in the aerosol is not a local solution.
00:47:43.600And so there are technologies that we can use like biochar, which is frankly a very local solution, because if you're interested in the climate benefits of biochar, what that really means is you can't really be you have to draw a circle that has a radius of about 50 miles or 75 miles from where you make the biochar itself.
00:48:03.720If you start trucking biomass hundreds of miles away, you start to lose the carbon benefit because of transportation carbon emissions.
00:48:11.680And so you need to be really smart in how you do this.
00:48:14.460And it's clear that regenerative ag, for example, is a regional and local solution.
00:48:22.820Renewables is a regional local solution under the heading of redistributive generation.
00:48:27.420That doesn't really make sense for many reasons to build gigantic, huge solar farms in the middle of the desert and then transport the power unless you revision in terms of how the transmission system works.
00:48:42.160And so I think there's a balance there between local solutions, think global, act globally, at the same time, making sure that we are really smart in terms of how we evaluate these, quote unquote, emergency solutions that will perhaps help us get out of the climate disaster that we might face in 50, 100 years.
00:49:02.460Wow, I never looked at it that way with the geoengineering, these global solutions, that we should try to understand them in case of 50 years from now being in a place where we are kind of at the end of our plank, so to speak.
00:49:20.960Because when I've been reading about these stratospheric aerosol injections proposed as a climate solution by Harvard physicists, I was reading that earlier this year and, you know, saying it could result in reduction of the ozone layer, decreased rainfall, heightened risk of exposure to UV radiation, increased ocean acidification.
00:49:40.820Sounds like a prescription commercial for prescription pills or something.
00:49:45.900You know, here's all these horrendous side effects.
00:49:48.480And so I'm trying to take in these side effects and then listening to what you said about, well, if we're at a place 50 years from now where the ice has all melted and we're basically in this endgame scenario and we haven't come up with any other solutions or tested anything at that time, you know, what are we left with?
00:50:08.740And it's a really interesting existential question about mortality even. What are we willing to do to keep humanity alive? It's a very deep question. You know, what are we willing to do? What are we, what kind of side effects are we willing to put on ourselves, our own health, on the health of the planet of all the other species to make sure that we survive?
00:50:32.900And then it's like, survive through what? And survive in what type of condition? You know, what are we willing to risk to stay alive? And at what cost? And what would the other end even look like? Would that even be a world that is worth, I mean, it's hard to say worth living in, because it's hard to even understand what that would be like. But I guess these are just some of the thoughts that are coming up for me.
00:50:56.580you know it's a really good question and i don't frankly have an answer you know one man's ceiling
00:51:03.480is another man's floor literally what one person might find to be attractive the other person might
00:51:11.200be horrified by but i do know that we need degrees of freedom we need to keep our options open and
00:51:17.920i fear that if the backlash of bioengineering extends itself to where we aren't prohibited
00:51:25.580to do any of this stuff, I think that's probably a mistake. Because we need to understand how the
00:51:31.600technology works. We need to understand what the risks and benefits are. And keep in mind,
00:51:36.800climate change is a global phenomena. Carbon dioxide is the same concentration anywhere on
00:51:43.320the planet that you measure. And so, frankly, so is stratospheric sulfate release into the
00:51:49.140atmosphere. Should one country be able to do this without having the oversight of another country?
00:51:55.580There's active discussion going on right now in the geoengineering world about even if we were going to do some trial experiments around David Keith's idea out of Harvard around the stratospheric sulfate idea, you know, how are we going to manage this?
00:52:11.200And I suspect that's why organizations like the UN are so important, because climate change is a global existential threat, even though there are some things we can do locally to help mitigate climate change, like reduce local ozone levels, which really comes from reducing transportation emissions, reducing black carbon emissions, which come from burning, for example, ammo manures for power.
00:52:37.300There's all sorts of things that we can do locally that will have a short-term effect for climate change, but the big one is carbon dioxide, and that's a multi-generational century-level problem that we have to solve, and that's my advocating to make sure that we vet all these technologies with a very strong focus on cost-benefit and making sure that we use the precautionary principle in terms of how we do this.
00:53:04.100We need to prove to ourselves that this is going to hurt us, as opposed to focusing on just the benefits themselves.
00:53:12.060Using science, using transparency, and using a global dialogue in terms of how we might want to pursue these technologies.0.98
00:53:34.100It's true that displacing indigenous populations to grow monoculture tree farms to produce biochar,
00:53:56.020And I suspect that there are people who want to do that.
00:53:59.020At the other hand, you know, there are folks who recognize that there are waste streams of biomass that are now being used inefficiently that can be used to produce biochart and regenerate the planet.
00:54:11.800So it's like anything, it's really complicated out there.
00:54:18.340If anything, that would be the one message I would want to communicate to your audience is be mindful. Understand your position in the universe on a planet. Understand your relationship with other people. Understand how you relate to the environment.
00:54:35.780and make decisions based on mindfulness,
00:54:39.800based on an integrative approach where we are all one
00:54:43.500as opposed to making selfish unilateral decisions
00:54:47.020that may benefit you or your corporation
00:54:49.840but will not benefit the rest of the planet.1.00
00:54:52.260There is a way to revision how we relate to women0.87
00:54:55.740and children and animals that doesn't take away
00:54:59.480about who we are but adds to it in an exponential way.
00:55:04.640But it's really about execution at this point. It's about executing around clean energy, regenerative agriculture. And once we show that this stuff is real, then I think people will be a lot more willing to get involved.
00:55:18.800The other thing that we didn't talk about is my work with SkyTruth, which is an NGO based out of BC that uses Earth observation data, satellite imagery, to solve problems on the planet.
00:55:30.040And a great example of this is Weaver, the nonprofit that blew the whistle on BP during the big spell in 2010, by tasking satellites, taking a picture of the slick, and saying to BP, you guys, this is much bigger than you're saying it is.
00:55:45.040And it's really because of the democratization of this space data that we're able to start to solve global problems.
00:55:52.280Our latest win is a platform called Global Fishing Watch, which is a smartphone-based app powered by Google Earth Engine that allows us to track almost real-time every fishing vessel on the planet from space.
00:56:09.880And this is so disruptive because for the first time we can look at the dark oceans and begin to understand who is raping the seas where we can't see and then begin to enforce existing regulations around fishing.
00:56:24.300And also we can validate those fishing vessels that are doing sustainable fishing practices and allow them to sell their fish into sustainable fish markets.
00:56:36.540And it's really this vast democratization of information, whether it's through the internet, whether it's through Earth observation data, that's allowing us to do things that we could never do before.
00:56:48.080And it's frankly only in the last two years that we're able to monitor all these ships because of the advent of a new form factor for satellites.
00:57:00.240And instead of being enormous, they're the size of a bread box.
00:57:03.360Instead of costing $300, $400, $500 million to design, manufacture, and launch, it costs $15,000 to do that.
00:57:11.980And therefore, there's two or three really great startups, one of them is called Planet, that are launching 70, 80, 90 satellites at a time.
00:57:21.600And within six months, they're going to be full coverage of the whole planet 24-7.
00:57:26.740And I understand that this is a double-edged sword to the extent that, hmm, I don't know if I want someone to be watching me all the time, 24-7.
00:57:36.300But the other hand, it means we can begin to solve the global commons problem around forestry, around fisheries, around agriculture, because we can see it.
00:57:46.960You know, our motto at SkyTruth is if you can see it, you can change it.
00:57:50.700And really the same thing applies to everything we've been talking about, Ayanna, where if people can see that regenerative agriculture not only makes money but makes a lot of sense, they're going to do it.
00:58:00.280It's just in the absence of demonstration, in the absence of data, people begin to question what we're saying is true, and they call it fake news.
00:58:09.540The fact of the matter is not only is it real, but it's happening today, and it's going to happen a lot faster over the next five to ten years.
00:58:17.360So you're actually able to, in a sense, be a watchdog for the oceans, for, you know, deep in the Amazon where they might be doing illegal logging and things of that nature.
00:58:28.660You can actually make sure that this stuff is being witnessed so that it can be stopped.
00:58:35.240Exactly. Exactly. And that's really only been possible in the last two or three years.
00:58:41.120I mean, yes, NASA and the defense industry had satellites, but we couldn't access that data.