The solemn monkey

Money talks, bullshit walk. Let’s use it to our advantage (If we have it in the first place).

There’s nothing like a prize to get people going. Entrepreneur Richard Branson’s offer last week of $25 million for a cost-effective technology to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere already has its first claimant. Hotfooting it from Australia, Ian Jones of the Ocean Technology Group at the University of Sydney is headed for London to make his pitch.

Jones’s claim to the prize is his “ocean nourishment” project, which is a land-based fertiliser factory attached to a marine pipeline. It will make urea and feed it into the ocean to boost the growth of photosynthetic plankton. The growing plankton will absorb CO2 from the water, ultimately drawing it out of the atmosphere. The CO2 generated in manufacturing urea will be more than offset by that assimilated by the plankton. “Eventually the plankton are either eaten by fish or fall to the ocean floor,” Jones says.

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