More and More and More
Jean-Baptiste Fressoz (Allen Lane)

The drive towards decarbonisation and the search for alternative, less-polluting sources of energy vex our planet and its politicians and decision-makers. Many wealthy countries are working to strip pollutants and emissions-belching elements out of our industrial processes and individual lives.

This is an age of environmental consciousness. At least that’s the argument. But it is one Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, a historian of science and technology at the French National Centre for Scientific Research,…

The big question, in the mid-21st century, wasn’t how to transition away from fossil fuels – that process became self-propelling as renewable energy became ever cheaper – but how to get carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

In the end, achieving the Great Drawdown, as it became known, required many different approaches, including biological, chemical and technological methods of removal. This dispatch examines two solutions that used the under-appreciated, near-magical power of seaweed: one through robotics and the other through bioengineering. The robot ate vast algal blooms; the genetic engineering approach modified a…