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What’s your Keeling Curve birthdate CO2 measurement?

Do you know where on the Keeling Curve your birthdate lies? Better Worlds guest Brian Von Herzen, Ph.D., does and has watched it rise over the decades of his life from 315 parts per million (PPM) of CO2 to more than 420 ppm today.

The founder and executive director of the Climate Foundation,  Brian’s love of the sea started at the age of two on a boogie board. An avid diver, Brian remembers watching favorite dive spots change from vibrant underwater communities to  a mostly empty ocean. That helps drive his current work on large scale seaweed mariculture programs that can provide food and fertilizer as well as supporting ocean ecosystems and acting as blue carbon sinks.

Brian talks with Better Worlds Ocean Host Kate Wing about watching Greenland ice melt into 100-foot-deep blue water pools and learning how to protect seaweed farms from local communities. He describes the Climate Foundation’s technology for mimicking natural upwelling processes -- bringing cold, nutrient rich up from deeper water to nourish ocean plant life -- as a game-changer for scaling the carbon sequestration needed to meet global climate goals.

Tune in to learn more about Brian’s innovation journey, and what’s next for the forests of the sea.

#about

Brian Von Herzen Ph.D. graduated magna cum laude in three years from Princeton University with a degree in Physics. He holds a Ph.D. in planetary science from California Institute of Technology where he was awarded the prestigious Hertz Fellowship, and has been awarded numerous patents. After two decades developing system solutions for companies such as Intel, Disney, Pixar, Microsoft, HP, and Dolby, Brian launched the Climate Foundation in order to investigate groundbreaking nature-based solutions to the climate and other environmental challenges.

Marine Permaculture uses marine solar and wave-driven pumps in the ocean to restore natural upwelling and primary production to grow seaweed ecosystems. Seaweeds fix significant amounts of carbon and have multiple uses including food, feed, fuel, biostimulants, and fertilizer. After sustainable harvesting, residual seaweed can be sunk to the bottom of the ocean sequestering carbon for centuries,  facilitating drawdown of carbon from the atmosphere with extended SeaForestation.  Once deployed at scale Marine Permaculture can regenerate life in seas and soils and restore a healthy climate while building a multi-billion dollar seaweed export market over the next decade.

https://www.climatefoundation.org/

Kate Wing

Kate Wing is the founder of Intertidal Agency, a design and strategy consulting firm for the ocean including policy, philanthropy, and conservation technology enterprises and accelerators.

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We believe that the digital transformation and related technologies are revolutionizing the very nature of the way we live and who we are.  Done right, these innovations can help lead us to a better world. We're here to bring together the people and the tools to help you build it.

One key focus of our mission is to explore how the innovations of Web3, Ai, and Quantum Computing can help to sustain the natural world and build greater efficiencies to grow our shared prosperity. We believe in creating a collaborative, inclusive, and sustainable community to explore innovative solutions. Solutions that will contribute to achieving bioregional and global prosperity by integrating our three interconnected worlds: the natural world, the human-made physical world, and emerging technologies.

Better Worlds seeks to explore alternative viewpoints through media, international conferences, symposia, essays and hack-a-thons that encourage and support the development of innovative solutions.