Recently, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez beat an opponent, a former correspondent for CNBC, comfortably in the New York Democratic primary. Her lopsided victory means that when the coronavirus pandemic is a bitter memory and the election between President Trump and Joe Biden is long since settled, we shall hear of her Green New Deal again.
Climate change has not gone away just because we all have to wear face masks when venturing from our homes, nor has Ocasio-Cortez’s and her cohorts’ desire to use climate change to remake American society,
Ocasio-Cortez is advising the Biden campaign on climate policy. One can expect that if current polling holds up and the former vice president is elected president, she will receive a high-level appointment in the new administration.
Those who understand the science of climate change and American politics know that the solution to the phenomenon resides less in upending the world’s economy than in doing a number of simple things, such as using carbon capture power plants, nuclear energy, and planting trees. Add to that solution set a new technique, as reported by MIT Technology Review, involving green sand.
The idea, about to be tested on a pair of Caribbean inlets by a nonprofit group called Project Vesta, involves grinding up a green volcanic rock called olivine and spreading it on convenient beaches. As the ocean waves wash over these beaches of green sand, a series of chemical reactions will occur that will draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequester it in seashells and skeletons of mollusks and corals. The cost per ton of removed carbon dioxide would be about $10 if done at scale.
The process, if it succeeds and can be done economically, could be part of a system in which power companies and other businesses can pay for carbon dioxide removal as an offset for the greenhouse gases that they produce. Some companies will go with carbon capture plants that sequester carbon dioxide for storage or sale to other businesses that use it to create products such as carbon nanotubes. Some will plant forests that would suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and produce oxygen and wood. Others will go with green sand.
The green sand solution may have plenty of characteristics for hardcore environmentalists to hate. Making the stuff will be energy-intensive, which means more carbon dioxide emissions, unless one uses renewable or nuclear energy for the process. The chemical reactions that the green sand would create may have unforeseen effects on the ocean’s ecosystem, such as creating more algae and phytoplankton.
Advocates of green sand as a carbon dioxide removal process suggest that even the extra greenhouse gas produced by creating the stuff would be removed by the chemical processes caused by spreading it on beaches. Algae can be harvested and used as food supplements and a source of biofuel. Phytoplankton would be a source of food for fish.
Besides, who would not want to go down to a beach and cavort on green sand? The novelty would by itself cause a revenue spike in the tourist industry.
Now, imagine a Biden presidency with Ocasio-Cortez being named climate czar. One would like to be in the room when a team of scientists tries to explain to her that green sand could be the solution to climate change. No, we do not have to end the fossil fuel industry by government fiat and ban everything from air travel to eating meat.
Of course, the point of the Green New Deal is not to solve climate change. The real reason for the scheme is to reshape American society to grant central planners in Washington enormous powers over every aspect of individual life. Green sand, tree planting, carbon capture, and nuclear power would prevent all of that and therefore must be rejected.
Mark Whittington, who writes frequently about space and politics, has published a political study of space exploration titled Why Is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.
