The case for extraeconomic activity
Earlier we wrote climate action will be most effective when it is ‘extraeconomical’. This means it removes itself from the economy at large, banks, money and markets. This is a hard sell because most people think it harmless to look for investors for a project, write a business case and deliver some product of economical value. Our point is that that is exactly the problem, because a product of economical value helps maximize the utility of fossil fuels, the core purpose of 20th century economics. Fossil fuel and credit are inextricably linked in the ‘carboncredit’ system, and you can’t escape it from within.
Another reason to go for extraeconomical is that you can’t use fossil fuels to solve the climate problem. You would run out and/or make it worse. You have to use renewables, solar, wind, wave energy, biomass. To do what? Capture carbon while keeping yourself alive. It is possible, but it either takes a lot of manpower or a lot of machines (hence our concept the ‘Roboeconomy’). Extraeconomical activity creates assets without looking for a price, it looks to establish a process that has a positive impact on our climate and environment.
How to invest extraeconomically
No proces or activity starts from scratch, but that is not a requirement to be extraeconomical. The key requirement is that you can sustain your process autonomously, without interacting with a market, especially not with the fossil fuel market. Thus an extraeconomic project proposal looks different from your average business case : It has capex (capital expensenditures), but no opex (operational expendtures), debt or yield. You may wonder "but what do I get out of it?" You get the option to go to the market, without having to at all time. That is a stark difference compared to most if not all current enterprises.
An extraeconoical project has to outline how it uses natural resources including energy to sustain it’s operation. So lets take a wave energy based ocean fertilization field, one that generates ocean life, captures carbon from seaweed and algae (for instance by pyrolizing and sinking it to the bottom). This operation requires a significant investment in robust wave driven pumps, the monitoring infrastructure, materials. It poses a challenge as it does not produce everything needed to sustain itself, but it can sustain a community of land based people that eat the fish and seaweed and have the industry to maintain, repair and perhaps even expand the field. An extraeconomic model quickly arrives to be diverse with autonomous expertise.
Another example : Ocean based farming on floating rafts of bamboo. Our so called Bambooya project. The fertilzer to feed the bamboo is found around 200 meters deep, there’s plenty of water, the expansion can be done by growing bamboo on the rafts, fresh water can be secured through the micro climate you create, and you can expand and mix with fish and algae farmes until the Pacific and Atlantic are covered, converting enormous amounts of CO2 into Carbon and cooling our climate (which results in addicitonal on land growth and preservation of biomass according to studies). Capex? Very low.
Apart from innovative uses of technology you could do the same for deserts. You use either contour trenches (Peter Westerveld) or controlled grazing to get the land back into its carbon sequestring mode, and you run it just for the sake of that effect. Creating green pastures and forrests that cpature clouds above, increase albedo, biodiversity, clean the air but are not food on anyones plate except those that run it.
With new technology (and old tech as well) it is possible today to use the enormous stretches of near empty land and ocean on earth to do extraeconomical projects. The only issue is the encroachment of the carboncredit system on next to all resources on earth. It’s a carbon fueled machine that eats everything, the people involved forming its ‘bloodstream’, the money that changes hand in the process of consuming the carbon. It has to be kept at bay. For that reason it would be good to create ‘Extraeconomical zones’.
If you are investor or know someone interested in starting extraeconomical projects, let us know through info@greencheck.nl.
The importance of an extraeconomical response to climate change