This episode of Tangled features Dr Brian von Herzen. Brian is the founder and executive director of the non-profit Climate Foundation, and the inventor of marine permaculture.
Brian is an ocean scientist, an engineer and an entrepreneur. He has spent decades doing academic research; working in Silicon Valley; and leading environmental projects around the world. His work focuses on attaining food security for the growing human population while also ensuring the survival of the world’s non-human ecosystems.
From his understanding of how ecosystems cycle and recycle resources, Brian hopes to figure out ways to take excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and balance it back into the soils and deep oceans, thereby reducing global warming.
In our conversation, Brian also talks about:
- saving Greenland from permanently melting, using his idea of a massive popsicle
- reversing coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef
- increasing the world’s soil fertility with biochar
- and why he hopes to see cows on beaches.
Brian is an optimistic polymath. And his ability to come up with good ideas and then make them happen is beyond impressive.
Please listen to our conversation, and find out more about Brian’s work at climatefoundation.org.
Show Notes
07:31 Documentary excerpt, showing the wave pump system
11:00 von Herzen’s CV
20:19 The Vanishing Face of Gaia, Sir James Lovelock
29:51 See the whale shark Dr von Herzen mentions
32:30 the Blue Economy Challenge
33:27 Drawdown: book and project started by Paul Hawken
35:27 seaweed as feed supplement for livestock