[ocean sounds and music Welcome to World Ocean Radio…]
I’m Peter Neill, Founder of the World Ocean Observatory.
Over and over again, as we address the social and environmental challenges of the day, we base response on strategies of mitigation and adaptation. I can understand the focus, in that it seems something possible, a quick fix or focused change, that may alleviate a short-term problem, improve evident effect, and provide a not too expensive or risky action as a gesture of responsible reaction and solution. As consequence of past decisions and applications swirl around us, our incremental approach is revealed as “too little, too late,” a phrase used by the United Nations Secretary General to describe the outcome of decades of international, inter-governmental collaboration to address the all-too evident outcome of climate change, past mistakes only partially redressed by necessary new structures and behaviors. No one wants to take the risk.
How do we get beyond this stasis? First, we must declare invention as our primary response, to embrace change in technology, financial valuation, political cooperation, and affirmation of the social contract. Doubling down on past ideas and approaches is no longer acceptable. We have to think forward.
One tactic might be to add synergy to our invention toolbox, ideas not necessarily new, but newly combined to greater effect. I have often used as an example the co-location of a geothermal energy plant adjacent to a desalination plant on an existing but obsolete coastal location as a means to use a novel energy technology, self-supporting, in concert with a novel solution to a rapidly declining supply of fresh water as single most important need for future survival, locally and beyond – water to support sustainable life and community powered by renewable energy source efficiently delivered to meet the most immediate demand with diminished infrastructure and increased distribution efficiency. Invention and such solution may not be that much more that what it will take to replace polluting traditional oil or coal-based energy generation circulated by a grid that must be almost entirely rebuilt.
I once read a proposal that suggested that a massive solar farm, covering multiple square-miles of federally owned property in uninhabited desert areas in the southwestern United States, could be built to supply our entire national demand, present and future, generated by a new technology, already proven, at scale, but, again, requiring a massive upgrade for physical distribution. Experiments with microwave transmission through land systems and space delivery have suggested that with investment and resolve these problems, too, can be solved.
Another innovation much in the news today is the contribution of artificial intelligence to our future life. These projects require not just enormous capital, but also enormous electrical generation and water for cooling the thousands of units necessary to support the pervasive functionality on which the world may soon depend. These projects are met with much opposition, primarily from nearby communities and the volumetric financial needs not yet immediately available.
Invention. There are, for example, some proposals and studies for the placement of those data centers underwater where ocean movement and temperature can provide power and cooling from the immediate, natural environment. Aikido, an offshore wind developer, has installed such technology in the pods of floating offshore wind towers; Microsoft, several years ago, launched an experimental underwater data center off the coast of Scotland for a 25-month trial, it was not continued, perhaps ahead of its time.
I can hear the objections to these proposals already, some certainly valid, but reality is upon us, and the needs for energy, water, and technological innovation will not be any less tomorrow, next year, or thereafter. We must take the matter in hand.
Invention. A new way forward. We must organize beyond adaptation and mitigation of the problems of today that will only get worse if we stay our present course. We must apply our best qualities of imagination and invention in synergistic application and cooperative enterprise as the creative means to shape our future, starting now.
We will discuss these issues, and more, in future editions of World Ocean Radio.
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