For a Greener Future we must look at our past

hi

my name is dr alex thompson and i’m a

marine biogeochemist

and ecologist i also work with startups

and small businesses to make their

industries a little bit more sustainable

by helping them to develop new tools and

resources

to green up what they’re working on now

explaining to someone what a marine

biogeochemist and ecologist does can

sometimes be a little bit confusing

i don’t swim with dolphins i don’t swim

with whales and although i love to track

turtles

it’s just not something that we do

instead we look at how our global

systems respond to change and how things

in the mud

and in our trees and our plants are able

to capture different things like carbon

and release things like gases

trying to help people understand how

their interactions can affect

these different systems is sometimes

also a little bit confusing

so i’m going to invite you to close your

eyes and just imagine something

imagine that you’re at a barbecue the

sun’s out

the barbecue’s sizzling someone’s made a

pavlova

everything’s great you hear the magic

world’s called

food’s ready so you line up by the

barbecue all excited to get your sausage

sandwich

vegan or meat whatever it is that you

choose you get handed a plastic plate

you get given some bread you get a

sausage you sit in the sun

and life is good after about 20 to 120

seconds depending on how fast you eat

your sausage sandwich

you take your plastic plate and you pop

it in the bin not much thought is put to

that process other than

man that sausage was great however what

we’re not considering

is that for you to eat that sausage

sandwich off that plastic plate

has literally taken billions of years of

evolutionary processes

to create the components that are

essential for that plastic inside that

plate

now you might be thinking that sounds a

bit extreme billions of years for a

plastic plate

well let me just kind of talk that

through for you so

our planet was formed about 4.54 billion

years ago

and for a good portion of those initial

years it was a big

hot gassy soup not a particularly

pleasant place to live

certainly not a place that you and i

could live and for a very long time

not a place that literally anything

could live

about two and a half to three billion

years ago we started seeing some

organisms appear

that worked out that they could turn

this process of all these gases that

kind of appeared on earth

suck them up and with some sunlight

start producing oxygen

these organisms are cyanobacteria and

they’re the ancestors of microalgae that

we still have on planet earth today

so all this time about two and a half

billion years ago

these tiny cyanobacteria were sucking up

carbon from our ancient atmospheres

producing oxygen at such a rate that

they were actually able

to produce earth’s atmosphere as we know

it today they produced so much oxygen

that all life on earth was

able to evolve and over time we started

seeing like plants and animals

dinosaurs all the way to humans you and

i appear on earth

all because these tiny organisms were

able to suck carbon from our atmosphere

and convert it into enough oxygen to

produce a livable atmosphere

so again what has this got to do with

your plastic plate

well these tiny organisms these tiny

ancestral algae

were so good at sucking carbon from the

atmosphere that over time

as they died they became compressed and

squished under the earth’s surface

this happened again and again and again

over billions and billions of years

until the point that they got into this

big kind of soupy stuff underneath the

earth’s surface

mixed in with things like dinosaur bones

and bits of plants

this is now what we call our fossil fuel

reserves

we see today that we then use these

fossil fuel reserves these ancient

bits of dead algae and carbon from our

ancient atmospheres

and turn it into things like fuel and

even plastics

so what we see is these ancient cells

get sucked up onto our earth’s surface

converted into things that you and i can

use

sometimes for a very short period of

time like for eating a sausage sandwich

and then they get disposed where again

over time they might be shredded

degraded and turned back into carbon

dioxide that’s returned to the

atmosphere

so what happens to this carbon that was

captured by these algae cells all these

billions of years ago

well once you’re done eating your

sausage sandwich off your plate

and you’ve disposed of that plastic

plate over time that plastic becomes

shredded and breaks down

depending on what type of plastic it is

this process may take a number of weeks

or hundreds of years that ancient carbon

that was captured by algae all those

billions of years ago

turned into fossil fuel reserves

extracted and processed and turned into

a plastic plate

then essentially returns back to the

atmosphere where

it’s starting to contribute to climate

change because additional carbon dioxide

is put back into the atmosphere

making it as unlivable as it was all

those billions of years ago

that’s a pretty big feat and a pretty

big journey for a tiny tiny little cell

to make

but we have to go back to this idea of

carbon

and we can sometimes think of carbon as

a pretty dirty word

but actually carbon isn’t dirty at all

although it makes up a lot of dirt

it’s also a really essential element

that makes up things like you and i

cars computers plants tree trunks and

the food that we eat

in fact everything organic on this

planet uses carbon as an essential

building block

there’s nothing bad about carbon except

it’s just one of those things that if

it’s in the wrong place and it’s

too much in a wrong place then it can

cause some pretty big problems

as we know a lot of the drivers of

global climate change is too much carbon

dioxide in our atmosphere and just like

our plastic plates

if we have carbon in the wrong place it

can cause some pretty big problems

so let me backtrack a little bit how do

we get plants to actually capture and

store carbon

and how do these ancient algae cells get

so good at capturing carbon from our

atmosphere and helping it turn into a

livable atmosphere

well like you and i plants and anything

that photosynthesize essentially breathe

except instead of breathing in oxygen

like you and i do

they breathe in carbon dioxide they

don’t need the oxygen so they put that

back out so we can actually breathe and

it forms a livable atmosphere

and the carbon that they’re able to

capture is incorporated in its leaves

its roots

if it has a trunk it’s incorporated in

its trunk and over time as that plant or

that tiny microscopic photosynthetic

cell grows

the carbon stays within its body then as

that plant or cell

dies the carbon stays within that bit of

leaf or that bit of twig or that bit of

trunk

and over time as it falls to maybe the

seabed

maybe the forest floor maybe a bottom of

a lake

it becomes compressed over time with

bits of sediment and dirt

and over time that becomes what we call

a stored carbon pool

this is really great because it means

that we’re able to store carbon in

different places across the earth and

photosynthesis is one of the most

efficient ways that we can pull carbon

from our atmosphere

although we think that carbon can cause

a lot of damage and you know on the

other side

makes up essential components of all

life on earth

carbon is also a really delicate thing

when i was researching

carbon in north sydney in a seagrass

motor a few years ago

we found a seagrass meadow that had been

performing this process this sucking up

carbon from the atmosphere

incorporating its leaves the leaves are

falling down they’re creating this

big muddy kind of composite of carbon

stock over time

for over 5 000 years that seagrass

meadow had been sitting there for longer

than your eye

will ever exist on this earth and had

been performing this process for so long

that it held such a rich carbon stock

that it could potentially offset

numerous people’s activities

however when we came back to the site a

few months later this meadow had been

dug up and all that carbon potentially

lost

meaning that carbon that had been

sitting there for up to 5000 years

potentially returned back to the

atmosphere going against what we’re

trying to do which is to mitigate

climate change

so how do we look back at these

processes the problems that have been

going on for billions of years capturing

carbon from our atmosphere with algae

and cyanobacteria

using seagrasses to capture carbon and

store it for so long

and help us to understand how these

processes can help us build a greener

future

well the processes that we’re trying to

change now are very similar to the

processes that existed all those

billions of years ago

we’re trying to capture carbon from our

atmosphere and store it for really long

times

and we’re also trying to make products

and things that you and i need to live

more sustainable so that we can continue

using them in the future

what if there was a way that we can

start to use these different

technologies these photosynthesis

and the ability of algae to produce oils

to develop new products and

help us to capture more carbon in the

making well

in laboratories and research centers

across the world this is exactly what’s

happening

we’re harnessing these tiny organisms

these micro algae

seaweeds and seagrasses to develop new

products and ways of capturing carbon

from our atmosphere

to help us both mitigate climate change

but to also develop new tools and

resources

to make industries more green you might

be thinking

how’s this possible well you might

remember that i was talking about how

micro algae cells are essentially what

our fossil fuels are made up of

and that’s because they’re so good at

producing oil that they can produce

massive reservoirs of it

if we’re to grow this micro algae on the

surface of our earth we can extract the

oil and make very similar products to

what you and i need

fossil fuels to make today things like

plastics and biodegradable foams

compostable

resources and things like clothing can

be made out of these products

i want to end this by saying that we as

a global community have a destination

that we

need to reach in terms of sustainability

and mitigating climate change

plants algae and photosynthesis are just

one of the vehicles that we can use to

reach this destination

but there are many other vehicles out

there that can help us get to the same

place

if i was to ask you one thing it would

be to go out there and find what these

are

across the world there’s many different

technologies evolutionary processes

and reservoirs of knowledge that are out

there that can help us get there but

it’s going to take your support

investment and engagement to really get

these things going

if i was to ask you one thing go out

there and find which ones to support

and don’t forget about the plastic plate

thanks

i’m alex thompson