Bold ideas for Elon Musk’s $ 100 million carbon sequestration award

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced in a tweet Thursday night that he would receive a $ 100 million award for “best” carbon capture technology. Very exciting!

I’m sure his years of running a Fortune 500 company, abuse workers and be too online Make him highly qualified to, uh, independently determine which technology has the greatest potential to sequester carbon pollution from the atmosphere. Nevertheless, I wanted to suggest some candidates to consider for its price! Please find my investment note for Elon below.

Elon, your automaker spent last year Chop a forest in Germany to free up space for a giant factory until some stupid environmentalists stopped the process. But I did some reading, and it turns out trees are very good at extracting carbon from the air. It is this innovative new technology called photosynthesis.

The most incredible thing is that within this ecosystem – or “sector” if you will – there is work that is already underway. Trees in the Tongass National Forest, the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world, extract around 650 million tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere and store it in their trunks and roots. This is equivalent to half of the carbon dioxide emissions in the United States in 2017. And the Tongass is here in the United States. This is what we in the world call “synergy”.

You might consider handing that $ 100 million back to environmentalists who are working to keep Tongass healthy. A 2011 study by the Ministry of Agriculture found that restoration work on the remaining watersheds in Tongass would cost just over $ 100 million, so your fund could make a huge difference here. You could also consider donating money to indigenous groups who have fought for years to protect the forest from the threat of development.

They are certainly good options. But let’s say you really want to push the boundaries. I know you are a hallucinogenic man, after all. So here’s an idea: plants. No one in the clean energy game is going straight to the source. But you could. Just give the Tongass Rainforest trees the $ 100 million. It would really move the needle.

Forests are not the only option either. There are also wetlands, which are teeming with soil and vegetation that sequester tons of carbon. I’m sure wetland ferns or trees like swamp mahogany and swamp oak would love to get $ 100 million. Or maybe consider donating money to the vegetation that lives in salt marshes, which are even better to suck up carbon than terrestrial ecosystems! There are good candidates in the salt marshes – can you imagine the creeping muck’s reaction to receiving all that money? It would be an amazing way to thank these amazing rhizomatous plants and could really get them to keep working. There’s also the dirt itself, which is frankly underestimated for the role it plays in actual carbon storage.

Perhaps you think that the space of vegetation is a little played. Which one, just. The Salesforce guy wants to plant 1 trillion trees, and do you really want to compete with him for PR? In addition, Republicans are already claiming it. Only losers partner with these insurgents. The point of dropping a $ 100 million prize is to cause a stir.

So how about this: Consider the whale. Large whales accumulate carbon in their bodies over the course of their long lives. The best part is, when they die, they sink to the bottom of the ocean, sequestering all that carbon forever! Sadly, it’s a pretty thankless job right now – despite their incredible contributions to carbon capture technology, whales are under the threat due to habitat degradation and climate change. But if you pick a species of whale and give it $ 100 million, I’m sure it would provide them with much needed confidence (and the money to buy weapons to fend off potential whalers)!

But maybe the whales are too out of sight, out of mind. Moreover, who wants to be associated with dead, am I right?

Well let me offer Migrator birds, ever-present species that play a key role in ensuring that plants are there to sequester carbon. They are unsung heroes of carbon capture. Or if you really want to go wild with this, why not pay the funds to the bees Or other insects? Carbon-sucking ecosystems could not function without insects! And that would show the world that you are willing to go your own way and support the little guy.

Hope this helps, Elon! Again, that’s not it I don’t trust you to do exactly what’s right for the planet on my own or whatever, I just know you’re busy, and I’m really excited about this project, so I wanted to offer my two cents. Oh, and take this as some free advice. Of course, the $ 100 million prize is only 0.05% of your net worth, but I’m sure you’ll put the rest of your $ 185 billion work on other pressing issues every day.