Should we genetically engineer carbon-hungry trees? Can metal-eating trees clean up abandoned mines? Does seaweed have the potential to save the planet? While these ideas might seem outlandish, they are all examples of actual solutions to our environmental issues people are working on right now.
Teresa Carey is a senior staff writer at Freethink, a platform that features the passionate innovators working to solve humanity’s greatest challenges. Prior to becoming a journalist, Teresa was a professional mariner and USCG licensed captain. On this episode of the Reversing Climate Change podcast, Teresa joins Ross to discuss the outside-the-box solutions to climate change she has written about, sharing her particular interest in covering the environment, genetics, climate technology, and carbon removal.
She explains how innovators are genetically engineering trees to suck more CO2 out of the atmosphere, offering her take on the debate around GMOs and the impact hybrid breeding might have on local ecosystems. Listen in for Teresa’s insight on the potential dangers of consumer genetic tests and find out what she learned about the process of sequestering carbon in seaweed to generate carbon offsets.
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Resources
John Kretschmer on Reversing Climate Change S2EP33
‘Metal Eating Trees Could Clean Up Abandoned Mines’ in Freethink
‘A Seaweed Diet Could Eliminate Most of Cows’ Greenhouse Emissions’ in Freethink
‘Can Seaweed Save the Planet?’ in Freethink
‘Autonomous Trash-Eating Boats Clean Up Water Pollution’ in Freethink
Project Vesta on Reversing Climate Change S2EP23
Dr. Greg Dipple on Reversing Climate Change EP009
‘Should We Genetically Engineer Carbon-Hungry Trees?’ in Freethink
Paul Greenberg on Reversing Climate Change S2EP61
The Salk Institute’s Harnessing Plants Initiative
‘First Study of All Amazon Greenhouse Gases Suggests the Damaged Forest Is Now Worsening Climate Change’ in National Geographic
‘This Spit Test Will Help Couples Know Their Baby’s Risk of Genetic Disease’ in Freethink
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast. I’m Ross Kenyon. I’m the creative editor at Nori’s Carbon Removal Marketplace. Today I have with me Teresa Carey. Teresa, you’re a senior staff writer at Freethink. And before becoming a journalist, I saw that you have a former career, a previous career as a professional mariner. And U.S. Coast Guard Licensed Captain. That’s a cool sentence to say.
Teresa Carey: Yes. Yep, that’s right. That’s what I used to do. I feel like being out on the water, on the ocean so much is really what motivated me to become a science journalist and take an interest in learning more about our planet.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I can see some of the ways that would naturally occur. And we’re going to talk about your articles. You’ve written a number of things for Freethink that relate to climate change, relate to carbon removal. And I want to dig into that. But I want to unpack a little bit of what you just said. How did being a professional mariner lead you to science communication, to journalism, to your current career?
Teresa Carey: Well, My bachelor’s degree is in environmental science. So that’s where I started. And I think at the time, though, I chose it because I was doing well in those classes and I enjoyed it. But then I went on to become a captain and I did that for quite a long time. It’s really challenging for women to be captains. And I worked really hard at it and I made a lot of progress in that industry. And I’m still doing a little bit with that industry and I still really enjoy it very much.
But it was actually a trip. A sailing expedition that I did, the goal of the whole trip was to sail as far north as we could to see an iceberg. It turns out you don’t have to sail very far north to see an iceberg. But what happened that year, two things happened. One was a production company wanted to make a film about this journey. And so suddenly I was this odd reality movie personality, which was very uncomfortable. But the other thing that happened was The Peterman Ice Island, which was the largest Greenland iceberg on record, broke from Greenland and was set adrift in the currents.
And so suddenly our goal was to see the Peterman Ice Island, this historic iceberg. And we did get to see it or at least fragments of it. It was massive. And just along the way, I talked to scientists. I talked to fishermen. I talked to people in local communities and small Nova Scotia towns and Newfoundland towns and just learned more about their connection to the environment and to the ice and all of that. And it was very that part of the journey was really exciting for me.
Sorry, I’m just stung with envy. How did I end up a horrible landlubber career? No, no, don’t be that way. I mean, it’s definitely, it was a different life. You know, I lived on boats for a long time. And now I have my first house, my first couch, my first readily available everyday hot shower if I want. And it’s just a different life. And it’s, you know, there’s a give and take to everything. Yeah. How long were you sailing? Well, a lady never reveals her age.
And so that’s not exactly what I’m asking. I mean, but you know my age if I told you how I’ve been sailing actually since I was eight years old. I’ll say that since I was eight years old and I became a captain when I was 21. So I’ve been sailing a long time and I’ve been working my very first job. Well, my first job was as a florist, but my first job when I graduated high school was as a sailor. And every job after that, pretty much when I was in college in the summer, I would sail for work.
And then after I graduated, I just went into boats. So a long time, all sorts of boats.
Ross Kenyon: The reason I ask is, have you been sailing long enough to notice climate changes with how you’ve interacted with your sailing work? We had John Kretschmer on. Oh, he’s fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. I love John’s books and I loved having him on, but we talked a lot about that, about the process of going to Bermuda and the window shrinking, hurricane season, concerns about trade winds, maybe weakening or changing in some ways. Have you noticed anything like that on your end?
Teresa Carey: I haven’t sailed as much as John. I have not noticed things like that. I guess I’ve been sailing in Maine a lot and I’m oddly starting to see sharks. I’d never seen them before until like two years ago. And Maine also had recently a shark attack, which is very, I mean, I’ve never heard of that happening. And when I kind of came up as a sailor in Maine, Yeah. Sharks in Maine.
Ross Kenyon: It’s being unusual. I imagine there’s probably more people in Maine than previously. I know people who are not Mainers who have yet moved to Maine, and I can only imagine Mainers do not like this very much. But is it possible it’s more people in the water or do you actually think it is a temperature thing?
Teresa Carey: Even if the water is a little bit warmer from climate change, it’s still wicked cold and people don’t spend a lot of time in the water up here. We go for a dip. We don’t go for a swim. Okay. It’s really cold.
Ross Kenyon: That’s a fun piece of anecdotal evidence, though, that now there’s shark attacks and there’s being able to see sharks. Do you mean like they’re able to see their dorsal fins poking out or?
Teresa Carey: Yes, right at the surface. I mean, I don’t scuba dive very often. And so the only time I see them here in Maine is at the surface. I’m trying to think if there’s other examples. I mean, there must be other changes. The Northwest Passage is sailable now, right? Oh, yeah. Boats are going through there a lot now, and you couldn’t get through there before. Have you ever made it up that far, Baffin Bay, and heading up, or not yet? Not that far.
No, Newfoundland. The top of Newfoundland is pretty much how far I’ve gone.
Ross Kenyon: Cool. Okay. Well, I’m always interested because I’m just a wannabe sailor sitting here reading John’s books, reading Paul Theroux, you know, living that quarantine travel fantasy life. So let me know if you hear of any other things like that. I find that to be really fascinating. Mm-hmm. In any case, we can get into the meat of what you’re covering here. So you ended up at Freethink. Freethink has a really distinct editorial voice and vibe about it. How would you describe Freethink and your beat there?
Teresa Carey: Freethink, everything we strive to tell stories that have a solution or someone working on a solution. It doesn’t necessarily even have to be a proven solution. Very often it’s not, but just instead of focusing on the doom and gloom and the problems that are happening in the world, we try to focus on the solution. Now, of course, any solution is going to be to a problem, so therefore we’re In a story I would write, I would also talk about the problem, but every story we aim to tell a solution.
And generally speaking, it’s very focused, very interested in technology, not exclusively though.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. So here’s some of the articles that I see that you’ve written recently. And I think a listener should get a strong sense of both of Freethink and also you, Teresa. So here they go. Metal-eating trees could clean up abandoned mines. A seaweed diet could eliminate most of cows' greenhouse emissions. Can seaweed save the planet? Autonomous trash-eating boats clean up water pollution. So... There’s a theme running through that. And it sounds like you’ve identified solutions to problems or, you know, sort of outlandish solutions that people are working on to gigantic problems.
Teresa Carey: I would say outlandish is interesting because it depends on perspective. When I first If I had never worked at Freethink and I was reading these articles, I would say, wow, that’s pretty crazy and these far-fetched wild ideas. But having worked at Freethink and having to tell a news story every day and talk to the people that are doing this, there’s just a lot of amazing stuff going on in this world. And it doesn’t seem too far-fetched now. It’s really interesting what people can do and what people are coming up with and how outside of the box people are thinking.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I suppose, you know, since these are in like bench scale and being tested, people trying to figure this out, it sounds magical and kind of strange. But I suppose if we did this 10 years from now, many of these things would be, you know, at industrial scale deployment and you’d have other things you’d be covering, which would sound outlandish. So it sounds like maybe...
Teresa Carey: If we ask the people... In the past, are we going to be able to put satellites in orbit or are we going to be able to genetically modify things or change the planet so much that it warms it up a little bit? People will be like, no, that’s crazy. It’s impossible. And now we’re doing it.
Ross Kenyon: How do you deal with the risk of false positives and covering a story where you’re like, oh, that was too exuberant. There’s nothing behind it. It was a bit flashy and caught our eye, but it looks like there’s not a lot of meat on those bones.
Teresa Carey: So I sometimes have a hard time spotting stories like that. If it’s too... If it hasn’t really been tested or studied and knowing that, yes, this is working how it’s intended to, I mean, I try to say that in the article. Like, here are... Here are the risks or here are the challenges they’re still working with or here’s the unknowns. But sometimes that’s hard to identify. I got a great editor, Dan, who helps out a lot with that. And just I try to ask a lot of questions from other people in that field of study to see what their perspectives are.
And, you know, I learn a lot from people that way. You’re talking about Dan Beer? Yeah.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I’ve done Dan for a long time. That guy... He’s a very sophisticated BS detector. I would not want to try to sneak something by that guy.
Teresa Carey: Yeah, I would agree. We don’t always agree on things, but I would say that every time he edits one of my articles, it poses a challenge for me. It always improves the article in the end.
Ross Kenyon: That’s good. It’s good to have a relationship with an editor like that. I’ve heard less happy relationships with editors. I’ve had those too. Everybody has that. Yeah. You’ve written for a number of other publications too. Do you think that the beat you’re covering now has continuity with those other publications or do you like to write about other things too?
Teresa Carey: So my training is in science journalism. So that’s a pretty broad beat. But I think I’ve written like two politics stories and two art stories and hundreds of science ones. And then my personal interest is in environment. And then recently because of my bachelor’s degree and then recently genetics. And so if I’m trying to focus my beat down from this broad science beat to something more specific, it’s now honing in on Environment and genetics. And then even more recently, I’ve become more interested in climate and carbon and climate technology and solutions in that respect.
Ross Kenyon: There’s an entire beat just for carbon removal and the amount of startups coming out. I can’t even keep up with them anymore. I need your help, Teresa. Please start covering them.
Teresa Carey: I know I need help. I need your help, too, to tell me ideas of look into because, you know, every time I hear One of these ideas, like you mentioned, the two articles I wrote, the kelp forest and the genetically modified trees. And I’m working on a story now about sand and mineral erosion that could lead to carbon sequestration. It’s just pretty wild. It’s pretty amazing. And so it’s exciting to learn about. I think that’s one of my favorite things about this job is that I get to learn all these cool things.
Ross Kenyon: That is cool. You’re working on a story about olivine? Yes. Okay.
Teresa Carey: See? See? I just need to listen to more of your podcasts, I guess. Did you do a podcast on it, actually? I should find that one if you did.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, we’ve done some. We’ve had Project Vesta on a few times. I know there’s other folks working on enhanced weathering. We’ve had Greg Dippel on from University of British Columbia. Who does a lot of the science behind it. So yeah, on both the science and the deployment side, we’ve done episodes. There’s a lot to cover though. It’s actually really hard to know. And I also have a hard time sometimes sniffing out exactly what is legit versus what sounds good. I always feel like I need people on my team with better chops on that.
I don’t want to be overly exuberant either. I need a Dan Beer basically. Should I run everything by Dan Beer? I think he’s pretty busy. Okay. Sorry. I’m not sure how much of this I’m going to have to edit out without embarrassing Dan. I think we can embarrass him a little bit more and it’d still be okay. Okay. Okay. That’s good. Yeah, I saw this article. Actually, we talked about it a lot when it came out, your article, Should We Genetically Engineer Carbon Hungry Trees?
Definitely a captivating title. Why don’t we dig into this a little bit and talk about some of the details here? What is happening in this story?
Teresa Carey: Well, I think I just started with that question. Should we, could we genetically engineer trees that soak up more carbon? And just started emailing people who are looking into this and asking them how it works. One of the consistent things that everybody says is that, you know, when we first learned about climate change, I remember that John Denver song, Plant a Tree and You’ll Save for Your Tomorrow or something like that to clean the air. That kind of rings in my head all the time because it all comes back to the forest and the rainforest and how it sequesters so much carbon.
And it does that because it’s an old growth forest. The old growth forest sequesters way more carbon than a new tree. I think it’s something like it’s in that article, but I think it’s about 50 percent of all the carbon that’s sequestered in trees is in one percent of the of the trees, which is old growth. And so it takes a really long time for a tree to become an old growth tree. The idea with these genetically modified trees is that they’ll grow faster. They’ll become like an old growth tree in 20 years or 50 years and sequester just a ton of carbon.
So that’s one way that they’re trying to store more carbon in trees. But they’re also trying other things too, like deeper roots. Because if a tree gets chopped down or it burns in a fire or dies from an insect infestation and it falls to the ground and rots, Then all that carbon is released back into the atmosphere. So all the sequestering that had happened is now back in the atmosphere, all the carbon. But the roots will stay buried. Even with a forest fire, even with insect infestation, the roots will stay buried.
And so another thing that they’re looking into is making the roots go deeper and longer. And by doing so, they can sequester more carbon deep in the ground. And they’re doing that with trees and crops. So I thought that was interesting. And then there’s actually a third way, which really seems very futuristic to me, that the idea that these trees could, they modify the trees to make the carbon stored in the wood and the wood is harder and stronger. So it’s very good for building material.
Ultra strong wood. And then the other one is that it can it can transfer like the biological pathways from corals into the trees and then the trees will form like a calcium carbonate, which they can harvest from the trees and use as a feedstock for plastic, which that seems pretty wild to me. I imagine like a tree, you know, the money trees, dollar bills grow on trees. I imagine like bricks of plastic growing on trees, which I know is not how it looks. But in my head, that’s how it looks.
Ross Kenyon: I read this. I had to reread this sentence or paragraph a couple of times. Where does the calcium carbonate come from? How do they harvest it? Do they know yet?
Teresa Carey: So I got two answers to that question, and it’s not entirely clear for me. But one answer was it forms like a powder and it falls to the ground and they can collect it. Actually, that’s the only answer I got. A powder or a larger material that falls to the ground and they can collect it.
Ross Kenyon: Okay. That one sounds so remarkably good. You have to admit that’s outlandish.
Teresa Carey: Yes, I do. I’m skeptical about that one. Like the making trees grow faster. I really believe science is capable of doing that and deeper roots. Yes, yes. But the other one, I’m not betting on it yet. But it also, you know, in some ways makes sense because the person I spoke to, Charles DeLisi, he said that corals are capable of doing this. They make a calcium carbonate. So if they can transfer the biological pathways from the corals, then the trees should be able to do this too.
Ross Kenyon: This is where I wanted this to go as well. So with CRISPR transgenic modification, you’re oftentimes taking a gene from an unrelated or very loosely related organism and injecting it into a new genome. So a coral gene into a tree genome. Actually, one of the claims in here that maybe is a good place to start is that some of the scientists you were speaking with were saying that conventional hybridization and plant breeding actually can be riskier in some ways than transgenic modification. I find that sort of a strange thought, but there’s probably a logic to it.
Why do you think that is?
Teresa Carey: I think that there’s a lot of resistance to genetically modified, especially genetically modified crops As being unhealthy or these alien crops that we shouldn’t be eating. And so there’s this public perception of genetically modified plants. And it doesn’t entirely match the scientific consensus about these plants, which most scientists would say, no, they’re safe. It’s fine if you eat them. It’s not what you think. They’re not alien plants. And I talked to a scientist who was working with the American, or still is working with the American chestnut William Powell, and he was working to genetically modify the chestnut to basically bring it back, not for carbon sequestration, but his work was it was the chestnut was basically wiped out from this fungus, but a lot of the roots remained.
And if they tried to sprout a new tree, they would be wiped out by the fungus again. So he’s creating this genetically modified American chestnut that is resistant to this fungus so it can grow and survive. And doing that with genetic engineering He explained to me that the old-fashioned way, the hybrid breeding or the interbreeding has more unintended consequences. It has more things that you can’t control versus using CRISPR. You can change tiny things at a time. You can change one gene at a time and see what happens.
The hybrid breeding, there’s all these other genes that are being changed that are out of their control just by chance. And so that’s why there’s less risk with the high-tech solution. It’s not as alien, even though the hybrid breeding seems like a natural process, and it is, but it has more unintended consequences. Is that how he explained it to me? And I really appreciated his explanation just because I’m really aware of the genetically modified The public perception, the resistance to it. And so I liked his explanation because now it gives me a way to understand it and explain it to other people, I think.
Ross Kenyon: That is a really fascinating point. I think some of the concerns about GMOs, I think, are a bit not science based, but there’s a concern about Like an influence on one’s body, an alien organism that we don’t know a lot about. It’s unnatural and therefore bad. And you might say, well, those concerns are overblown. Some of the more sophisticated concerns I see about GMOs are things like they’re bred to resist certain types of pesticides and they’re used to scale monoculture agriculture, which is not really good for the planet, not good for the environment.
The pesticides aren’t really good for us to consume in many cases either. So I don’t know. Is there a distinction being made there or is it more on that first concern where much of the debate is happening?
Teresa Carey: No, I think that’s good. I feel like The debate isn’t as strong of a debate in the scientific community as it is amongst the public. And so I think that when people talk about it, they say, oh, it needs to be, I need to eat plants that are not genetically modified. And you ask them why. And I’ve never really heard a good understanding or explanation of why. Just like people say, I need to eat plants that are only organic because it’s healthier and Okay, well, why?
I mean, when it comes down to it, what pesticides are being sprayed on that crop? Like, yes, certainly there are a lot of pesticides that are not healthy for us to eat, but there are some that are also harmless. That’s not that big a deal. And some plants use less pesticides than others to grow. And so when you really dig down into it, there’s a depth of understanding that I just don’t think has quite reached the public yet. And that kind of sounds mean, but I feel like I’m just coming into this understanding, too, and I read about this every day, so I need to be humble about it as well.
I just think that, yeah, the public perception is exactly like you said, it’s this alien plant. It’s not how it’s supposed to be, therefore it’s not good. But I’m sure that can happen, but I’m sure there’s a lot of GMO plants that are just fine.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I think some of it, insofar as we’re talking about pesticide and its relation to GMOs, I know some plants are relatively fine to eat conventional agriculture. Bananas have a pretty thick skin. I’m told that’s pretty safe. You don’t want to do that with strawberries. You want organic strawberries, in my understanding.
Teresa Carey: I heard the same thing about grapes. Either wash them really, really well or always buy the organic, which organic grapes are wicked expensive.
Ross Kenyon: We had Paul Greenberg on recently and one of his lines from one of his fish books is that the story around tuna and mercury became so simplified. It was just tuna bad, mercury bad because the American buying public can only hold like one simple piece of advice in their head at a given moment. And even what we just talked about with regard to pesticides or GMOs, I think is already like beyond the nuance threshold that is available.
Teresa Carey: Mm-hmm. Yeah, we’re all like that, though. And I’m a science journalist and I feel like, like I said, I’m in this, I’m reading this all the time. But I have these habits that I follow that make no logical sense to me anymore. Like I read something somewhere about tomatoes in cans reacting with the can. And so I only buy boxed tomatoes or fresh tomatoes, obviously, but boxed tomatoes. And now it’s just become a habit and I couldn’t tell you at all why. Although I hope there’s a very good reason for it, but I don’t remember what it was.
Ross Kenyon: I have so often started stories in my personal life and probably on the podcast too. It’s like, I read something. And when I say I read something, I’m like, I saw a headline that I didn’t further investigate, but I’m going to repeat now.
Teresa Carey: Yes. And you know, my goal was to come on this podcast and not make a fool of myself. I probably shouldn’t have said the tomato story, but we all have a tomato story. So yeah.
Ross Kenyon: That’s okay. I doubled down on it for you. So it’s okay. Yeah. So one other question I had about this too, that I’d be curious to ask, maybe you don’t have the answer to this and maybe this is a future podcast, but I know that the microbiome that interact with flora, for instance, I know for oaks and truffles, the relationship between these two organisms, I don’t know that it’s super well understood. It seems very specific when truffles don’t appear. I think sometimes it’s puzzling to people who are even experts being like, Why didn’t it work here?
It works 50 feet over there. And I wonder about making these small transgenic changes. Is it possible it alters some of these more less understood microbiotic relationships that we’re just barely starting to dive into?
Teresa Carey: I think that’s totally possible. And I actually talked to some of the scientists about this. They called those unknown knock-on consequences. So, you know, you change the tree and then by accident also the local ecosystem and the truffles then therefore are impacted somehow. And that’s totally possible. And so in order for these trees, these genetically modified trees to be approved, to be in the wild, they have to look into all of that and they have to study how the tree impacts the ecosystem. And for trees, that’s really challenging because the life cycle of a tree is very, very long, decades.
And so I did speak to one person who said that he was not in favor of genetically modified trees, but is in favor of genetically modified crops because the life cycle is much shorter a year. You know, you plant a crop, it grows, you harvest it, and that all happens in a year. And so therefore, it’s a lot easier to study the local ecosystem and how it’s impacting, what those knock-on consequences are. You could do several cycles of a study, like multiple years in a row, whereas if you were trying to study a tree, you wouldn’t be able to do that.
You’d have to find other ways to get results to your study much quicker. There’s the Sulk Institute Harnessing Plant Initiative. They are working on genetically modified plants for carbon sequestration, again, with deeper roots, faster growth rates, but they’re plants and crops as opposed to trees. So, yeah, it is certainly possible and a concern about the effects on the ecosystem.
Ross Kenyon: Yes. And one other concern, not to pile on because I think it’s a cool idea, but I want to pile on a tiny bit more. And then we can go into being wizardly and optimistic about technology in the future. Will you cut that deal with me? Is that okay?
Teresa Carey: I mean, it’s not just because there’s these possible consequences. It doesn’t mean I’m not optimistic. They’re looking into it. It’s a good thing.
Ross Kenyon: I think so. I think that’s the right angle. I worry about stuff like this just because it lends itself so naturally to this desire for a single solution. So I could see, say for instance, that deep rooted hardwood trees that are easy to grow and store a ton of carbon. Like a figurative ton. A lot of carbon is stored by them. I could see them, timber companies deciding that, oh, actually, we’re going to plant enormous plantations of trees and straight lines that are all the same.
And we’re going to do this. And it might be good for the sake of carbon, but that is not really an ecosystem. It’s sort of a simplified simulacrum of nature. Yeah. And I worry that’s, I don’t know that this would find its way into a diverse ecology so much as be a new plantation crop. Is that something that might happen?
Teresa Carey: I think that could totally happen. And I think also the other appeal, they might plant them in rows, like you said, but they also, if they have stronger wood, they might more readily chop them down, which a little bit defeats the purpose of sequestering the carbon. Unless they’re chopping it down for building material, then it’s still trapped in that wood. But if they’re chopping it down For something that’s ultimately going to go in a landfill, like making paper or something like that, then it would release that carbon back.
So yeah, that could happen. But I don’t think that would be a reason to not do this plan, like genetically modify trees to sequester carbon, because there will also be people that will plant the trees and keep them planted. It might be used for both purposes. I don’t know. But We’re going to be planting trees in rows and chopping down trees regardless. I think we need to try slowing down. That’s obviously what got us in this problem. But people want their things. They want their space.
And so that’s going to happen regardless.
Ross Kenyon: I think that’s a really good point. On the margin, what is happening here is that we’re cutting down old growth forests and replacing it with a genetically modified tree plantation. I hope that’s not the case because that would be... I hope we keep the old growth. I hope we protect the old growth and plant these new trees. And plant the new trees. And so maybe this would be replacing some of the less sophisticated tree plantations. Something like that. Okay. That sounds more reasonable.
We’ll have to see. I think... So I’m sort of echoing some... We talked about this ahead of time, actually. The Wizard Prophet dichotomy. Charles C. Mann, Freethink, super wizardly, right? So I’m playing against you today. I’m playing, I have to fill in for the role of the prophet.
Teresa Carey: And the prophet would say, we should keep things natural. We should have never chopped down the trees. And I mean, obviously, right? Like that’s the ideal. We’re here in this situation already. It’s been done. So that’s no longer an option, I think.
Ross Kenyon: I wonder about that. I think that’s a really good concern. I see lots of articles getting written, although my science chops aren’t strong enough to say one way or the other which way the evidence points. But I see a lot of concern about as the world heats, the ecosphere will have less and less ability to retain carbon, which is really concerning if you care about soil, forests, etc. That’s A major problem. And in fact, I just saw an article this morning about the Amazon becoming a net emitter rather than a net sink.
That is enormously concerning. So if that were to happen globally, we would have to find ways to make the ecosphere adapt and adapt quickly. And if we were to just lean into our profit instincts and say, well, it’s not natural, it’s bad. Does that just mean that the world burns? Is that what happens?
Teresa Carey: I mean, we already had all these goals for planting more trees by 2020 and we didn’t reach those goals. We saved the rainforest. Remember that? Everybody had that bumper sticker and now look what’s happened to our rainforest. Like you said, it’s emitting more carbon and that’s because it’s being chopped down or it’s on fire or things like that. And so I really think we need to do both. We need to protect what we have. Yeah, I think that’s right.
Ross Kenyon: Do any of the solutions you come across, given you’re in Freethink’s wizardly bent, spook you? Have you ever come across something where you’re like, all right, that’s a bridge too far. No, thank you.
Teresa Carey: I think in genetics more so than in the environment. I think sometimes what concerns me in genetics is all these consumer genetic tests that promise to tell you about this risk or that risk. I think that they’re To me, that’s concerning because it’s really hard to understand risk. I just did a story that kind of touched a little bit on the difference between absolute and relative risk, which is depending on what test you get, you’re getting different types of risk. And it’s hard to understand all of that.
That’s like statistics at a higher level than I learned in high school. So I’m concerned about that. And then also just massive amounts of people donating their DNA to these open databases. It’s concerning because we’re all connected. And so eventually they’ll be able to track everybody somehow. Maybe I’m just still thinking about like Gattaca or those movies that do that. But yeah, I have concerns about those databases.
Ross Kenyon: So you’re saying that in the future, enough people will do 23andMe, or your siblings will have done it even though you haven’t, and they’ll be able to map all the genetic predispositions for various illnesses, et cetera, ethnically map basically everyone who has had a close relative take the test, something like that?
Teresa Carey: Yeah, not even necessarily too close, but yeah, definitely. If your sibling’s done it, then anybody who has their hands on that database can find out a lot about you too. My mom actually got one of those tests as a gift to my husband for Christmas one year. And we saved that box for months. And I and I was like and I actually I worked at the National Human Genome Research Institute as a science writer on genetics at the time. And I was learning for the first time about in depth about this kind of stuff.
And I remember saying, OK, I support you if you want to do this, but you’re also making a decision for our unborn child. And our whole family and I would rather he didn’t do it. And we ended up we couldn’t give it away. I couldn’t like bring myself to give it to someone who might want it. Instead, we just threw it out.
Ross Kenyon: Wow. Are you concerned for genetic discrimination or eugenics or something scarier than those things? What are you worried about?
Teresa Carey: All those things are possible. These consumer tests aren’t there’s not a lot of oversight from the government for those consumer tests. So I think that there’s, I don’t know what they’re going to do with the data in the future, but they’ve got it. And then it’s just like, okay, what can we find out about from this test that we really actually need to know that’s going to change our life in a positive way? Nothing. Nothing. So it’s supposed to tell you your ancestry, but it’s only as good as the number of people who have already given their data because they compare it to a reference database.
It’s only as good as the reference database. Which is pretty biased. And so it’s like, well, this isn’t going to tell you much anyways. Or even if it did, if you have European ancestry or this, if it says this or that, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change our life in any way. But they caught the Golden State Killer. That’s kind of cool, right? Yeah. For everybody else, but not for the Golden State Killer. I don’t know that I want to make policy based upon what’s good for the Golden State Killer, though.
No. But what about what’s just good for people? Like the Golden State Killer was a killer, but they can catch other people like they could catch a person who had a child and gave the child away and moved on with their life and they don’t want to be found. That’s kind of a tough situation to be in. They’ve done no crime and then they’re suddenly found and sought out. I don’t know. I just think that’s really interesting and I am interested to see where this goes from here, you know.
I am certain that people have been found that didn’t want to be found or things like the connections have been made for not for killers or for criminals, but for people who have done no crime that have made their lives a little uncomfortable. I’m certain that’s happened. Now, certainly it’s made people’s lives more positive. They found people and reunited and in a good way, too. But you just never know. And I’m just really curious to see where it goes from here and how this evolves and grows and changes.
Yeah, you got my gears turning here. Yeah. You know, I’m a science writer and I’m supposed to be a journalist. I’m supposed to be unbiased. And I am when I write. I’m really open to learning from a lot of people. But as a human, I have these I have opinions and I have ones that aren’t necessarily rational. But that’s just the human brain. That’s just how we are. And so, yeah, I’m leery about the consumer genetic tests. Maybe I can’t pin it down exactly why, but these are the things I’m thinking about.
Ross Kenyon: No, I think it’s fine to admit that. I think it’s really strange to think that journalists don’t have their own opinions and it’s just the facts, ma’am. That doesn’t really exist to the extent that we think. I think if you’re able to acknowledge your biases and try to be fair, I think that’s sort of the best you can hope for, right? Is there much more than that?
Teresa Carey: Well, yeah. And I feel like I’m pretty fair in journalism. I’ve been swayed back and forth many times about things. Where I go into a story and I think I personally have an opinion about something and then I talk to someone and I’ve totally flipped. And then I talk to another person and I’ve totally flipped. That’s happened to me quite a bit. And so that’s also another reason I love this job. I can’t help but grow and evolve. And so it’s really exciting.
Ross Kenyon: Let me feel out for one second and I’d love to get you to weigh in on this with regard to genetics. So I used to be pretty... Lucy goosey on bioethics. I think I’ve become more conservative as I’ve gotten older in the sense where previously the idea of having designer children where you could select basically all of their genes and their expressions. And sort of like customize a child almost like you would a character in a video game. That’s too much power for humans to have, I think.
I don’t think that level of, I can imagine status obsessed parent, tiger mom people doing this and it being just horribly oppressive and disastrous and they should not actually have that ability. I know that’s coming. I’ve seen stuff coming out of China about them making progress on various things like this.
Teresa Carey: There’s just a company that came out just this year. I did a story on that, a brief story. I can’t remember. Orchid, I think. I’d have to look that up. I think it was called Orchid. But they’re doing consumer genetic tests, preconception, so two parents before they have a child can send in their spit. They’ll get a report on their genetic risk for common disease. Common diseases like heart disease or schizophrenia or schizophrenia is not that common, but more common than like, I mean, pregnant women can get tested right now already for certain genetic diseases, but they’re usually ones that, and now we’re getting into the nitty gritty of genetics, but the tests that we have now are for diseases and conditions that the genes have been identified for.
And so they could tell the mother, your child has a 50% chance of having this disease or your child has 100% chance or no chance. And then this new test that came out where you can send your spit in before you have a child, they’ll say, The relative risk based on this reference database that they’re comparing that your child might at some point in the future develop heart disease, which involves many genes, not just one, and then also your environment, what you eat and how you live. And so I think that’s really interesting to say, okay, I’m going to now choose an embryo.
They can do this too. They’re promoting this with this test that people can opt for an IVF and send these embryos to be tested and then choose the healthiest embryo. To have a baby. And so to have the highest likelihood of having a healthy baby. I find that very interesting, just like you’re talking about. And I find it very concerning that this is a privilege afforded only to the wealthier people because IVF is really difficult and very expensive. So if I wanted to have another child, you know, people around me are choosing the healthiest babies.
I don’t think I’d have that option for me. It’s kind of weird too. Then it would just like make this gap, you know, I don’t know what I’m trying to say. Now I’m just stuttering, but I found that story very interesting, concerning, but also optimistic too, that you could have a healthier baby.
Ross Kenyon: I think it’d be if you knew that you could easily prevent your child from inheriting Huntington’s or something like that, like you would of course want to do that. But I also...
Teresa Carey: But Huntington’s is different because that’s pinpointed to a specific gene. And if one parent has it, the child has a 50% chance of getting it. You can do a test on the embryo and you can say, yes, this child will develop Huntington’s at some point in their life. Unless they die first from a car accident or something. But the inheritance pattern is very easily understood. The genetics are absolute. Your child has a 50 percent chance of getting this, whereas heart disease is not the same.
It’s a whole bunch of or diabetes. It’s a whole bunch of genes involved in creating that disease in the environment. And so it’s like it’s a risk that’s like, well. Your child might be 50% more likely to get this than these other people, this other group of people. And that’s hard to understand. That kind of risk is hard to understand.
Ross Kenyon: No, thanks for clarifying that. I only bring that up as an example to say that For instance, I have a friend who only wants to buy a house when he is able to design it himself. I’m like, but you’re going to design things wrong and you won’t know about it until it’s built. And then you’ll have no one to blame but yourself. And that’s how I feel about choosing too much about What if you opt for all these things and somehow they still, something’s just not right.
I almost like the randomness protects you against this bad choosing that you did. And isn’t it our flaws that make us interesting and our life challenges that make us grow? Yes. I think if you could have, well, I think everyone points to Bioshock, right? Did you ever play those games? No, I don’t even know what that is. Oh, if you’re interested in genetics, this is like one of the main, I don’t know if it counts as a satire. It’s more of like a giant morality play that’s based on a colony at the bottom of the ocean that is based on a sort of looser reading of Ayn Rand and Nietzsche’s Ubermensch.
And it’s all done through genetic engineering and you create this race of supermen and women. And of course it doesn’t go very well. Mm-hmm. Actually, I don’t know as much about those games as I probably should. But I wanted to also talk about Running Tide since you’re a Mainer. They’re either Mainers or New Mainers or some mix. Why did you decide to cover this story about seaweed and Running Tide?
Teresa Carey: Well, I love seaweed. This is like another irrational thing of mine. I can’t explain why, but I find seaweed so interesting. And so when I learned that there was a group working on Sequestering carbon with seaweed I had to find. And they were so close to me. I had to find out more. That’s the only reason why. I love any seaweed story. Yeah, they’re definitely doing something really interesting and far-fetched. You know, we were talking earlier about things that seem so far-fetched.
This one also, to me, seems really far-fetched, but also really possible.
Ross Kenyon: How’s it work? I mean, we’re called Nori. We’re looking forward to a future of things like this.
Teresa Carey: Mm-hmm. Seaweed can sequester carbon, just like any plant, just like the tropical rainforests, only this is an ocean forest. And it needs sunlight to grow, but it needs depth to sequester the carbon. So it grows really well near the shore where the sunlight penetrates the water. But then if it were to die there and decompose, there might be fish that eat it, it would decompose and it would release that carbon. And so it needs to be in really, really deep water in order to lock that carbon in where the environment limits decomposition.
And so that’s kind of the catch. That’s what makes it so tricky to use seaweed to sequester carbon because it only grows in shallow water and you want it to end up dying in deep water. And so that’s what they’re figuring out how to do at Running Tide. They are growing offshore kelp forests at the surface of the water by floating them on biodegradable buoys. And then when the kelp frond gets big enough, really long and heavy, then the whole thing sinks. They’re setting them adrift out in the deep water.
When it gets big enough, the whole thing sinks, the buoy sinks, the little miniature kelp forest sinks. And the idea is that it sinks all the way to the seafloor and just kind of stays there forever, sequestering the carbon where it can’t decompose. There’s a mystery here, though. In between the surface and the depth, There’s a chance that a fish might eat it or it might start to decompose. And so my question that kind of was left a little bit unanswered during the story is how can they measure how much of it reaches the deepest part and does actually get sequestered?
They need to know that if they’re going to be marketable as a carbon offset, they need to know exactly how much is being sequestered. And I didn’t understand how they’re measuring that, but that’s what they’re working on this year is Studying the feasibility and how to measure what’s being sequestered.
Ross Kenyon: I’m told it’s relatively easy. Oh. Maybe it’s not. Do you know how they do it? No, I’m sort of biased isn’t the right word, but the ocean strikes me as incredibly dynamic and hard to measure what’s happening inside of it. Mm-hmm. That isn’t to say soil is easy. In fact, it is not. But oceans strike me as being really changeable and fluid, if you’ll excuse the pun. But I think once you go into deeper water, I think it’s relatively stable. There’s less impact from currents and things like that.
But it doesn’t make sense in my head. How could this be? Measured accurate. But I’m always told that it’s easier than I think in soils. In fact, in some cases more difficult. But now that I’m on the spot, I can’t remember who told me. This might just be like a headline I read and now I’m just making stuff up.
Teresa Carey: Totally. That’s how we learn things. That’s also how we learn the wrong things sometimes.
Ross Kenyon: Someone said something in air miners once and I was like, that sounds good. I’m going to parrot this back for the next three years. Anyways, they’re trying to figure it out though.
Teresa Carey: Yeah, they do. He did say they’re putting trackers on these buoys so they’ll know where they go at the surface. But I would imagine once they reach a certain depth, those trackers are no longer giving them any information.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I think as long as maybe there’s a big enough buffer and maybe they’re conservative with how many tonnes are actually being sunk. Maybe it just works with having a Conservative estimate. I don’t know. I should have them on then. They should come talk to us. I think it’s really cool. I love that people are now thinking about blue carbon in really creative ways. I think the potential there is enormous. And you’re a sailor. So clearly, this gets your hackles up.
Teresa Carey: I spoke to Adam Bask at Running Tide, and he was fantastic. And you could tell he was just super passionate about doing this as a service to our world. He was Really enthusiastic about it and really optimistic about it too. And I don’t think he was just feeding me any lines. I really think he was excited about it. It made me excited about it. That’s good. One thing though that’s interesting that Adam said and then also some of the people I talked to who were working on the genetically modified trees, Bale Giddings, he works at a think tank.
A theme that kept coming up was this idea that these things are buying us time and They’re locking in carbon to buy us time. And I’m just like, buying time for what? For the real solutions? I want to know what those are. What’s coming after these carbon sequestering solutions that are just exploding right now? What are we buying time for? I don’t know.
Ross Kenyon: I think it gets pretty speculative the farther out you go. I’m also curious how many new categories will be created beyond enhanced weathering or Or kelp or soil or trees. What are the things we don’t even know about yet? Is that sort of where you’re going with this?
Teresa Carey: I mean, I think it’s endless. And maybe it’s just because I started this beat recently. But I just see this more and more often in the news and more and more new things popping up. I actually do think it’s not just my perception. I think that it actually is growing because I also read that The number of companies who are committing to net zero goals tripled in the last year. And so there’s a huge demand for the carbon sequestering, carbon offset, purchasable carbon offsets. So people are going to be trying to find a way to meet that demand.
Ross Kenyon: I think so. I think that’s going to happen. And I think net zero inherently favors carbon removal too. Relative to previous offset iterations. So I think there’s a bright future for carbon removal. I think we’re going to see a lot of it. I also love seeing new projects pop up. I think this week I saw, we’re recording this in the beginning of May. So I saw Heirloom just came out. Did you see that? No. No. Some new direct air capture initiative.
Oh yes, where they float the balloons up into the air and they cool where it’s cool and they can collect the carbon up there and ice crystals. I think that’s a different one actually. So you’re proving the point though. I saw that one too. There’s just a huge amount of brain power and money that’s going towards this. So yeah, I’m looking forward to it too. I hope, will you keep covering this beat and Digging into these solutions?
Teresa Carey: Yes, I hope so. I also want to, some of the questions that I have about this, the more I learn about it, is this idea of net zero. We have these goals of net zero by 2050 or 2030. There’s different benchmarks. I want to know, are these companies also outlining a plan to get to that benchmark? Or do they say, we’re going to be there by 2050 and then do nothing for the next five years because they’ve got plenty of time? And so I’m curious, there has to be You could say, oh, we’ll be there by 2050.
And then you can make your buck now because people want to buy from these companies that are making these promises. They want to invest in them. And then they may never reach them or maybe only get started on it at 2045 and not have time to reach the goal. We’ve made a lot of environment goals that we never met. And the other thing that I have a question about is what does net zero even mean? Because I think of Microsoft, which has a I believe they have their goals to become carbon negative, which is even better than net zero.
And then there’s BP, which wants to be net zero. Are they also including the downstream emissions from the products that they sell? Are they responsible for accounting for that, too? So these are just questions that I have. It’s like I said, I’m still learning about it. So it’s really interesting. Maybe you know the answer to those.
Ross Kenyon: No, I don’t. They’re good questions, though. And people are still trying to figure out what exactly it means to be net zero. Although I think that’s in the process of being much more codified now. For instance, one thing I know that pertains to what we do at Nori is that to count as net zero, their carbon removal has to be practiced with at least 100 years of permanence, which is new. We’ll see, though. I don’t know about which scopes need to be included. That’s always an active area for lifecycle assessment fights.
I don’t know, but we will see. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of cool companies doing amazing things. I’m sure there’ll be some shell game activity. Pretty much exactly what you’d expect. Basically, you have job security is what I’m trying to say. There’s a lot to cover, so you’re okay. Good. Yeah. Well, Teresa, if someone wanted to follow the work of you and your colleagues, where would you direct them?
Teresa Carey: The website freethink.com. And then mine is, well, my name is Teresa Carey and my website is teresacarey.com. I put my favorite articles there. But freethink.com is a place to go. It’s not just environment that we write about or carbon. There’s several great writers on the writing team. The topics are super diverse and the videos are stunning.
Ross Kenyon: The videos are indeed very beautiful too. Links to all those things are in the show notes. And thanks so much for being here, Teresa. Thank you. It’s been fun. Well, thanks so much for listening. If you like what we do, please give us a great rating and review on iTunes or Apple Podcasts. Tell your friends and thanks for listening. Have a lovely day. Well, thank you so much for listening. If you like the show, please rate and review it in Apple Podcasts and or Stitcher.
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