Oh, there's a lot of it. This is seaweed. It's pretty humble stuff. But it does have some remarkable qualities. For one, it grows really fast. So the carbon that is part of that seaweed, just a few weeks ago, was floating in the atmosphere as atmospheric CO2, driving all the adverse consequences of climate change. For the moment, it's locked safely away in the seaweed, but when that seaweed rots -- and by the smell of it, it's not far away -- when it rots, that CO2 will be released back to the atmosphere. Wouldn't it be fantastic if we could find a way of keeping that CO2 locked up long-term, and thereby significantly contributing to solving the climate problem?
喔,有好多。 這是海草。 它是...它是很不起眼的東西。 但它也有著很驚人的特質。 比如,它成長的速度非常快。 所以,幾週前, 本來還屬於海草一部分的碳, 已經飄入空氣中, 成為大氣二氧化碳, 促成各種有害的氣候變遷後果。 目前,它還被安全地關在海草中, 但當海草腐爛時—— 根據聞起來的味道, 也應該快腐爛了—— 當海草腐爛時,二氧化碳 就會被釋放回到大氣中。 大家應該都非常希望, 我們能夠找到一種方法, 將二氧化碳長期關在海草中, 因而對解決氣候問題 有顯著的貢獻吧?
What I'm talking about here is drawdown. It's now become the other half of the climate challenge. And that's because we have delayed so long, in terms of addressing climate change, that we now have to do two very big and very difficult things at once. We have to cut our emissions and clean our energy supply at the same time that we draw significant volumes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. If we don't do that, about 25 percent of the CO2 we put in the air will remain there, by human standards, forever. So we have to act.
我在這裡要談的是減量。 它現在已經變成 氣候挑戰的另一半了。 那是因為在處理氣候變遷上, 我們已拖延了太久了, 造成我們現在一次要面對 兩件非常非常困難的大事。 我們得要削減排放, 以及使能量供應更乾淨, 同時,我們也得要除去 大氣中大量的二氧化碳。 如果我們不這麼做,我們排放到 大氣中的二氧化碳大約有 25% 會留在大氣中,以人類標準來說, 會持續到永遠。 所以我們得馬上行動。
This is really a new phase in addressing the climate crisis and it demands new thinking. So, ideas like carbon offsets really don't make sense in the modern era. You know, when you offset something, you say, "I'll permit myself to put some greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, but then I'll offset it by drawing it down." When you've got to both cut your emissions and draw down CO2, that thinking doesn't make sense anymore. And when we're talking about drawdown, we're talking about putting large volumes of greenhouses gases, particularly CO2, out of circulation. And to do that, we need a carbon price. We need a significant price that we'll pay for that service that we'll all benefit from.
現在是處理氣候危機的一個新階段, 需要新思維。 所以,「碳補償」這種想法 在現代是說不通的。 當你要做補償時,你會說: 「我容許我自己放 一些溫室氣體到大氣中, 然後我會減量做為補償。」 當你同時要削減你的排放, 和減少既有二氧化碳時, 那種思維就不再合理了。 當我們談減量時, 我們談的是將非常大量的 溫室氣體,特別是二氧化碳, 從大氣循環中除去。 若要做到這一點,就需要碳價。 針對這個讓大家受益的服務, 我們需要訂高價。
We've made almost no progress so far with the second half of the climate challenge. It's not on most people's radar. And, you know, I must say, at times, I hear people saying, "I've lost hope that we can do anything about the climate crisis." And look, I've had my sleepless nights too, I can tell you. But I'm here today as an ambassador for this humble weed, seaweed. I think it has the potential to be a big part of addressing the challenge of climate change and a big part of our future.
在另一半的氣候挑戰上, 我們幾乎沒有進展。 大部分人沒有意識到它。 而且,我必須說, 有時,我聽見人們說: 「我失去希望了,我不認為 我們能解決氣候危機。」 我可以告訴各位, 我也有睡不著的夜晚。 但,今天我是代表 這個不起眼的海草來到這裡。 我真心認為它有潛力 在處理氣候變遷的挑戰上, 及在我們的未來中, 扮演一個很重要的角色。
Now, what the scientists are telling us we need to do over the next 80-odd years to the end of this century, is to cut our greenhouse gas emissions by three percent every year, and draw three gigatons of CO2 out of the atmosphere every year. Those numbers are so large that they baffle us. But that's what the scientists tell us we need to do. I really hate showing this graph, but I'm sorry, I have to do it. It is very eloquent in terms of telling the story of my personal failure in terms of all the advocacy I've done in climate change work and in fact, our collective failure to address climate change. You can see our trajectory there in terms of warming and greenhouse gas concentrations. You can see all of the great scientific announcements that we've made, saying how much danger we face with climate change. You can see the political meetings. None of it has changed the trajectory. And this is why we need new thinking, we need a new approach.
科學家告訴我們,在這世紀結束前 剩下這八十多年間, 我們必須要做的是 每年減少 3% 削減溫室氣體排放, 每年減少 3% 削減溫室氣體排放。 另外,每年也要從大氣中移除 三十億噸的二氧化碳。 這些數字太大了, 讓我們覺得不知所措。 但這就是科學家說我們得要做的。 我真的很不想放出這張圖, 但,很抱歉,我必須這麼做。 這張圖非常有說服力地說出了 我個人失敗的故事, 說明我在氣候變遷工作上 做的所有倡導都失敗了, 事實上,我們大家在處理 氣候變遷上都失敗了。 在這裡可以看到我們的軌道, 它代表的是暖化及溫室氣體濃度。 在圖上可以看到我們過去 所有的重大科學宣佈, 指出我們面臨的 氣候變遷有多危險。 各位可以看到政治會議。 以上這些都沒能讓軌道改變。 這就是為什麼我們需要新思維。 我們需要新方法。
So how might we go about drawing down greenhouse gases at a large scale? There's really only two ways of doing it, and I've done a very deep dive into drawdown. And I'll preempt my -- And I would say this stuff comes up smelling like roses at the end of the day. It does, it's one of the best options, but there are many, many possibilities. There are chemical pathways and biological pathways. So two ways, really, of getting the job done.
所以,我們要如何大規模地 將溫室氣體減量? 其實只有兩種方式, 我對於減量已經做過 很深入的研究。 讓我先—— 我認為,最終它是真的很可行的。 它確實是最好的選項之一, 但,還有很多很多的可能性。 有化學途徑,有生物途徑。 所以,有兩個方法可以搞定。
The biological pathways are fantastic because the energy source that's needed to drive them, the sun, is effectively free. We use the sun to drive photosynthesis in plants, break apart that CO2 and capture the carbon. There are also chemical pathways. They sound ominous, but actually, they're not bad at all. The difficulty they face is that we have to actually pay for the energy that's required to do the job or pay to facilitate that energy. Direct air capture is a great example of a chemical pathway, and people are using that right now to take CO2 out of the atmosphere and manufacture biofuels or manufacture plastics. Great progress is being made, but it will be many decades before those chemical pathways are drawing down a gigaton of CO2 a year.
生物途徑很棒, 因為這個途徑需要用的能量來源 來自太陽,是免費的。 我們用太陽來促進 植物的光合作用, 來分解二氧化碳, 以及捕捉分解出的碳。 另一個是化學途徑。 這個途徑聽起來有威脅性, 但其實一點也不。 用這個途徑的困難之處在於 它們需要用的能源是要花錢的, 或促成這種能源產生是要花錢的。 化學途徑有個很好的例子: 「直接空氣捕獲」, 現在就有人用它來除去 大氣中的二氧化碳, 用來製造生物燃料或製造塑膠。 目前已有很大的進步, 但仍然要數十年, 那些化學途徑才能做到 每年減少十億噸二氧化碳。
The biological pathways offer us a lot more hope, I think, in the short term. You've probably heard about reforestation, planting trees, as a solution to the climate problem. You know, it's a fair question: Can we plant our way out of this problem by using trees? I'm skeptical about that for a number of reasons. One is just the scale of the problem. All trees start as seeds, little tiny things, and it's many decades before they've reached their full carbon-capture potential. And secondly, if you look at the land surface, you see that it's so heavily utilized. We get our food from it, we get our forestry products from it, biodiversity protection and water and everything else. To expect that we'll find enough space to deal with this problem, I think is going to be quite problematic.
我認為,短期來看, 生物途徑給我們更大的希望。 各位可能都聽過植樹造林、種樹, 作為解決氣候問題的方法之一。 我來問一個合理的問題: 我們可以用樹木 把這個問題給「種」掉嗎? 我抱持懷疑,原因有好幾個。 第一就是這個問題的嚴重性。 所有的樹木一開始 都是種子,非常小的東西。 要完全發揮出它們捕捉碳的潛能, 需要數十年的時間。 第二,各位看看陸地表面, 已經被大量利用。 我們從陸地表面取得食物, 取得林木產品, 生物多樣性保護、 水,以及所有其他的運用。 期望我們能找到足夠空間 來處理這個問題, 依我所見,是不切實際的。
But if we look offshore, wee see a solution where there's already an existing industry, and where there's a clearer way forward. The oceans cover about 70 percent of our planet. They play a really big role in regulating our climate, and if we can enhance the growth of seaweed in them, we can use them, I think, to develop a climate-altering crop. There are so many different kinds of seaweed, there's unbelievable genetic diversity in seaweed, and they're very ancient; they were some of the first multicellular organisms ever to evolve. People are using special kinds of seaweed now for particular purposes, like developing very high-quality pharmaceutical products. But you can also use seaweed to take a seaweed bath, it's supposed to be good for your skin; I can't testify to that, but you can do it. The scalability is the big thing about seaweed farming.
但,如果我們去近海看看, 我們可在既有的產業中 找到一個解決方案, 而且它有很清楚的未來方向。 地球表面約 70% 被海洋覆蓋。 在調節我們的氣候上, 海洋扮演了很重要的角色。 如果我們能增加 海洋中的海草生長, 我想,我們就能利用它們 來開發出能改變氣候的作物。 海草的種類非常多, 海草的基因多樣性非常驚人, 而且它的歷史悠久; 它們是最早的有演化的 多細胞生物之一。 現在有人將幾種特別的海草 用在特定用途上, 比如開發很高品質的藥品。 你也可以拿海草來做海草浴, 聽說對皮膚有益; 我無法保證這一點, 但你可以試。 海草養殖有個很重要的特點 就是規模擴展性。
You know, if we could cover nine percent of the world's ocean in seaweed farms, we could draw down the equivalent of all of the greenhouse gases we put up in any one year, more than 50 gigatons. Now, I thought that was fantastic when I first read it, but I thought I'd better calculate how big nine percent of the world's oceans is. It turns out, it's about four and a half Australias, the place I live in. And how close are we to that at the moment? How many ocean-going seaweed farms do we actually have out there? Zero. But we do have some prototypes, and therein lies some hope.
如果我們能用 9% 的全球海洋 來做海草養殖場, 它能減少的所有溫室氣體量, 等同於我們一整年釋出的量, 超過五百億噸。 當我初次讀到這項資訊時, 我覺得太棒了, 但我想最好算一下 全球海洋的 9% 是多大。 結果是約 4.5 個澳洲, 我目前住的地方的大小。 目前我們離這個目標值有多遠呢? 現在我們目前有多少個 海洋中的海草養殖場呢? 零。 但我們確實有些樣板, 所以還是有希望的。
This little drawing here of a seaweed farm that's currently under construction tells you some very interesting things about seaweed. You can see the seaweed growing on that rack, 25 meters down in the ocean there. It's really different from anything you see on land. And the reason being that, you know, seaweed is not like trees, it doesn't have nonproductive parts like roots and trunks and branches and bark. The whole of the plant is pretty much photosynthetic, so it grows fast. Seaweed can grow a meter a day.
這張小圖是一個目前正在 建造中的海草養殖場, 圖中呈現出一些 關於海草的有趣資訊。 各位可以看到,海草在海面下 25 公尺的架上生長。 它和各位在陸地上 看到的東西很不一樣。 原因是,你也知道的, 海草和樹木不同, 它沒有無生產力的部分, 比如根、樹幹、樹枝和樹皮。 海草整體都可以行光合作用, 所以它生長很快。 海草每天能成長一公尺。
And how do we sequester the carbon? Again, it's very different from on land. All you need to do is cut that seaweed off -- drifts into the ocean abyss, Once it's down a kilometer, the carbon in that seaweed is effectively out of the atmospheric system for centuries or millennia. Whereas if you plant a forest, you've got to worry about forest fires, bugs, etc., releasing that carbon. The key to this farm, though, is that little pipe going down into the depths. You know, the mid-ocean is basically a vast biological desert. There's no nutrients there that were used up long ago. But just 500 meters down, there is cool, very nutrient-rich water. And with just a little bit of clean, renewable energy, you can pump that water up and use the nutrients in it to irrigate your seaweed crop. So I think this really has so many benefits. It's changing a biological desert, the mid-ocean, into a productive, maybe even planet-saving solution.
我們如何將碳隔離出來? 這也和陸地上的做法很不同。 你只要做一件事, 就是把海草切斷—— 讓它飄向海洋深處, 一旦到了一公里深, 海草中的碳就會脫離大氣系統, 數世紀或千年之久。 如果種植的是森林, 你就得擔心 森林大火、蟲害等等, 會釋放除碳來。 不過,這種海草養殖的關鍵在於 一根向下深入海中的小管子。 基本上,海洋中部 就是一個浩瀚的生物沙漠。 那裡沒有養分, 很久以前就用光了。 但,再下去五百公尺, 就有清涼、營養豐富的水。 只需要一點乾淨的,可再生能源, 就可以把這些水向上抽, 用水中的營養來灌溉海草作物。 我認為這有很多益處。 它將海洋中部的生物沙漠 改變成有生產力的, 甚至能拯救地球的解決方案。
So what could go wrong? Well, anything we're talking about at this scale involves a planetary-scale intervention. And we have to be very careful. I think that piles of stinking seaweed are probably going to be the least of our problems. There's other unforeseen things that will happen. One of the things that really worries me, when I talk about this, is the fate of biodiversity in the deep ocean. If we are putting gigatons of seaweed into the deep ocean, we're affecting life down there.
所以,這有可能出錯嗎? 嗯,這種規模的任何事物, 涉及到全球性規模的干預。 我們得要非常小心。 我認為,那些發臭的海草堆, 其實可能還算是最小的問題。 有其他未預見的事情會發生。 每當談到這點, 我最擔心的其中一件事, 就是深海生物多樣性的命運。 如果我們把數十億噸 海草丟入深海中, 我們會影響到下面的生命。
The good news is that we know that a lot of seaweed already reaches the deep ocean, after storms or through submarine canyons. So we're not talking about a novel process here; we are talking about enhancing a natural process. And we'll learn as we go. I mean, it may be that these ocean-going seaweed farms will need to be mobile, to distribute the seaweed across vast areas of the ocean, rather than creating a big stinking pile in one place. It may be that we'll need to char the seaweed -- so create a sort of an inert, mineral biochar before we dispatch it into the deep. We won't know until we start the process, and we will learn effectively by doing.
好消息是,我們知道 在暴風雨之後, 很多海草已經沉到了深海中, 或通過海底峽谷。 所以我們談的 這個過程並不是新的; 我們談的是增強大自然的過程。 我們會邊做邊學。 可能這些海洋裡的海草養殖場 必須要是活動式的, 才能把海草分送到 廣大海洋的各處, 而不是在單一地點 創造出一個巨大的海草堆。 我們可能會需要把海草燒焦—— 以產生出一種惰性的礦物性生物炭, 然後再把它送到海洋深處。 在尚未開始這過程之前不會知道, 我們得要邊做邊學。
I just want to take you to contemporary seaweed farming. It's a big business -- it's a six-billion-dollar-a-year business. These seaweed farms off South Korea -- you can see them from space, they are huge. And they're increasingly not just seaweed farms. What people are doing in places like this is something called ocean permaculture. And in ocean permaculture, you grow fish, shellfish and seaweed all together. And the reason it works so well is that the seaweed makes the seawater less acid. It provides an ideal environment for growing marine protein. If we covered nine percent of the world's oceans in ocean permaculture, we would be producing enough protein in the form of fish and shellfish to give every person in a population of 10 billion 200 kilograms of high-quality protein per year. So, we've got a multipotent solution here. We can address climate change, we can feed the world, we can deacidify the oceans.
我只是想要帶大家看看 現代海草養殖。 它是個大事業—— 每年六十億美金的事業。 南韓近海的海草養殖場—— 它們很巨大,從太空中可以看見。 漸漸地,它們不再 只是海草養殖場。 人們在這些地方做的是永續栽培。 要做海洋永續栽培, 就要同時養殖魚類、 甲殼類,和海草。 它能運作得這麼順利的原因 是因為海草會讓海水的酸性下降。 提供了一個理想的環境, 讓海中的蛋白質生長。 如果我們能把永續栽培 擴展到全球海洋的 9%, 我們就能以魚類和甲殼類的形式, 產生出足夠的蛋白質, 每年供應每人兩百公斤的 高品質蛋白質 給一百億人口。 所以,這個解決方案有多種用途。 可以處理氣候變遷, 可以供應食物給世界, 可以減少海洋酸化。
The economics of all of this is going to be challenging. We'll be investing many, many billions of dollars into these solutions, and they will take decades to get to the gigaton scale. The reason that I'm convinced that this is going to happen is that unless we get the gas out of the air, it is going to keep driving adverse consequences. It will flood our cities, it will deprive us of food, it will cause all sorts of civil unrest. So anyone who's got a solution to dealing with this problem has a valuable asset. And already, as I've explained, ocean permaculture is well on the road to being economically sustainable. You know, in the next 30 years, we have to go from being a carbon-emitting economy to a carbon-absorbing economy. And that doesn't seem like very long. But half of the greenhouse gases that we've put into the atmosphere, we've put there in the last 30 years.
這一切背後需要的經濟會很挑戰。 我們得要投資數十億美金 給這些解決方案, 還要花上數十年才能 達到十億噸的規模。 我深信這個理想會成真, 因為若我們不把溫室氣體 從空氣中除去, 它將會一直促成不良的後果。 我們的城市會被洪水淹沒, 我們會喪失食物, 還會有各種內亂。 所以,任何有解決方案 可以處理這個問題的人, 就擁有珍貴的資產。 如我先前解釋的, 海洋永續栽培已經 朝向經濟永續性邁進。 在接下來的三十年內, 我們得要從排放碳的經濟 轉變為吸收碳的經濟。 這時間並不長。 但,我們送入大氣中的溫室氣體, 有一半就是在過去三十年間放的。
My argument is, if we can put the gas in in 30 years, we can pull it out in 30 years. And if you doubt how much can be done over 30 years, just cast your mind back a century, to 1919, compare it with 1950. Now, in 1919, here in Edinburgh, you might have seen a canvas and wood biplane. Thirty years later, you'd be seeing jet aircraft. Transport in the street were horses in 1919. By 1950, they're motor vehicles. 1919, we had gun powder; 1950, we had nuclear power. We can do a lot in a short period of time. But it all depends upon us believing that we can find a solution.
我的主張是, 如果我們花三十年 把這些氣體送入大氣, 我們也能在三十年內將它們取出。 如果你懷疑三十年能做什麼, 就回想一下 1919 年, 和 1950 年做比較。 1919 年,在愛丁堡, 你可能看到用帆布 和木頭做的雙翼飛機。 三十年後,你看到噴射機。 1919 年,路上的交通工具是馬。 1950 年,變成是汽車。 1919 年,我們用火藥; 1950 年,我們有了核能。 在這麼短的時間內, 我們能做的很多。 但,這都要仰賴我們的信念, 相信我們能找到解決方案。
Now what I would love to do is bring together all of the people with knowledge in this space. The engineers who know how to build structures offshore, the seaweed farmers, the financiers, the government regulators, the people who understand how things are done. And chart a way forward, say: How do we go from the existing six-billion-dollar-a-year, inshore seaweed industry, to this new form of industry, which has got so much potential, but will require large amounts of investment? I'm not a betting man, you know. But if I were, I'll tell you, my money would be on that stuff, it would be on seaweed. It's my hero.
我想要做的, 是集結所有對這方面有知識的人。 知道如何在近海 建造結構的工程師、 海草養殖者、金融家、 政府管理者、 知道怎麼做的人。 一同設計出向前走的路,如, 現有的海草產業規模 是每年六十億美金, 我們要如何把它轉變成 這種更有潛能的新形式產業, 但需要很大量的投資? 我不是愛打賭的人。 但,如果是的話,告訴各位, 我會把我的錢下注在海草上。 海草是我的英雄。
Thank you.
謝謝。
(Applause)
(掌聲)