SKYMINING ADVOCACY: Global warming: how to consign it to history

Climate change and ecosystem destruction are mere symptoms, like a fever, of a much deeper underlying problem: a lack of reciprocity between humanity and Earth. On the macro scale, we almost only extract carbon from the earth and rarely put anything back.

Today, society is in an unrelenting pursuit of prosperity, profit and economic growth, on a planet with ever-decreasing resources. There is less forest, less productive soil and less fossil fuels, while there are more deserts and levels of atmospheric carbon are increasing by the minute.

On the quest to solve this moral and spiritual dilemma, we would like to invite you to listen to the oldest and wisest of all women, she whom we are assailing: Mother Nature. She has been around for billions of years after all, and she has handled crises like this before.

Her message is unambiguous: we cannot solve human-made problems in nature with purely human-made solutions. Nature must be part of it, in a relationship of reciprocity – as opposed to extraction. Nature is abundant. If we cooperate in the right way, we will find both profitability and solutions that can become ubiquitous, allowing nature to heal in time.

It is time to enrol the wisdom of ecological systems and transform our own methodologies from extraction and waste to regeneration and abundance. Skymining bridges ecological restoration with income-generating opportunities, whereby the right choice also becomes the most profitable choice. By closing the carbon cycle, Skymining brings carbon back down to the soil and creates resilient, productive and habitable landscapes that generate economic returns. Our mission is to re-establish reciprocity between humankind’s existing habits and nature, to heal our shared foundation – its wondrous ecosystems.

We invite the G20 leaders to take part in this new mission of reciprocity; a mission that begins with rethinking the perceived villain at the heart of our challenge – CO₂ itself.

CHANGING THE NARRATIVE

In the eyes of the media, and the public, CO₂ is a villain. It warms the planet. It is a waste product. It is perceived as useless. But a negative story cannot solve a negative situation; only a positive story can foster positive change. 

It is easy to forget that carbon is a fundamental building block of life and present in all living things. As such, it is a valuable asset rather than a problem. The ‘negative externality’ of burning fossil fuels, cutting forests and making food have cumulatively, and inadvertently, created the world’s single largest (and currently untapped) resource. The sky is the world’s largest carbon mine.

By reframing CO₂ from a problem to an asset, Skymining enables the capitalist economic system to embrace the removal of atmospheric carbon as the greatest financial opportunity since the discovery of fossil fuels. Overnight, CO₂ goes from a problem too big to solve to an opportunity too big to miss. 

The size of the atmospheric carbon mine is large enough to entice even the world’s largest corporations and government programmes. In fact, it is large enough to solve all of society’s challenges relating to energy, food and fibres. And by putting carbon back in the soil, millions upon millions of non-arable or harmed hectares of land will transform into new, healthy ecosystems.

RECIPROCITY BY REVERSING THE CARBON FLOW

Give nature a tree seed, you soon have a forest. Give nature carbon, and she will cycle it to create ample life in all its forms. If we are to thrive on this planet, humankind must establish a new relationship with nature that is simultaneously sustainable and monetarily profitable.

Skymining reverses the carbon flow by mining carbon out of the world’s single largest carbon reserve – the sky – to create profitable carbon-negative fuel, food and fibre on vast plantations of marginal or degraded land planted with specialised crops. As the crops grow and absorb CO₂ through photosynthesis, their perennial root networks sequester carbon in the ground, building new stocks of healthy topsoil and restoring the land. 

As carbon and nutrient stocks in the soil are restored over time, the land appreciates in value and generates increasing revenues. Through our platform, the plantations are turned into digital assets, enabling liquidity for all investments as well as seamless integration into all current business models and financial systems. By doing this, we lay the foundation for reaching reciprocity at the needed speed and scale.

Scaling up, Skymiming can counter the challenge of desertification, currently claiming 12 million hectares per year, and growing populations needing food, demanding five million more hectares. Embracing this opportunity would not only green much of the world’s marginal lands, but also create massive amounts of fuel, food and fibre that lessen our dependency on fossil fuels while slowing deforestation. This means that Skymining tackles the core paradigms required to reverse climate change:

• Replace the existing use of fossil fuels
• Remove CO₂ from the atmosphere
• End deforestation and soil erosion

Investing in Skymining also plants the literal seeds for new ecosystems; it builds biodiversity; it supports local economic activity and well-paying jobs in the developing world. In fact, Skymining works towards at least 10 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

RECONNECT WITH OUR PLANET

We are facing a moral and spiritual crisis and it is time for each of us to make a choice. Are we going to reconnect with our living planet in a sustainable, reciprocal relationship, or do we continue to consume with careless abandon? 

Given the current technological landscape, Nobel Prize–winning economist William Nordhaus estimates the price of mitigating climate change at roughly $93 trillion over the next 32 years.

For less than 5% of that investment, Skymining could remove the world’s total annual CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels, all while reclaiming millions of hectares of marginal or degraded land for future food production.

The G20 members now need to do all they can to make the removal of carbon from the atmosphere as habitual as emitting was in the past. With Skymining, that becomes not only possible, but profitable. Together, we can relegate global warming to history.