San Diego Researchers Looking To Grow A Climate Solution

Speaker 1: 00:00 San Diego researchers think plants may offer a significant way to draw down excess carbon in the air that carbon is feeding a cycle. That's warming the planet's climate KPBS environment. Reporter Eric Anderson says there's a lot riding on the local research. Speaker 2: 00:18 Greenhouse manager, McKenna Hopwood opens the door to what she jokingly calls the meat locker Bags of drying plants, both stocks and routes, hang from the ceiling like slabs of meat in a cooler, but of course they're plants. Speaker 3: 00:35 So, um, these have all been root washed and then processed. And then they've been drying for about a week and depending on the crop, we'll dry them for about a week to two weeks. And then we'll throw them in the plant drying oven for a day or two. And then we'll do our biomass weights. Speaker 2: 00:51 This is the final stop for plants raised in the salt. Greenhouse Hopwood is constantly growing several different plant species here. Speaker 3: 01:01 Um, some plants don't really like to be watered from the top and these ones are really sensitive. So if they have soil that gets tossed into the middle of the plant, they won't produce their flowers. Speaker 2: 01:12 Some of these plants grow fast seed to harvest. In a few months, others are crop plants like corn soybeans and wheat add in sorghum, rice and canola. And that's most of the popular food crops grown in the world. Total plant acreage is about the size of India. Speaker 3: 01:30 One of the biggest challenges we think, and the biggest threat, um, for, um, humanity is the climate crisis. Speaker 2: 01:38 King Bush is looking for ways to make these widely used plants a lot better at moving carbon from the air and storing it deeper in the ground. He's using millions of dollars in grants to develop longer and deeper root systems. And they are the key to storing carbon that the burning of fossil fuels spews into the air. Speaker 3: 01:57 And we're trying to find, um, um, mechanisms, genetic recipes, if you want. So to actually make better plans or make plans better in storing larger amounts of carbon underground for longer in the soil. Speaker 2: 02:11 Bush hopes to find the right combination of gene manipulation and breeding and the transfer of desirable traits from other plants to make those six crops better at carbon sequestration, Butch says they represent a short-term answer to a long-term problem. Speaker 3: 02:27 And there are currently only actually no really scalable methods to draw down carbon dioxide except from plants. So if you think about this in the long run, this technology will enable a carbon draw-down, um, that is really urgently needed to get back to, uh, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere that are safe for us. Speaker 2: 02:48 But the clock is ticking. The planets average temperature continues to climb at dramatic rates. Bush says it'll still be about five years before he's likely to develop the plants that confident will help. It could be 15 years before enough of those plants are planted to make a difference. Speaker 4: 03:06 And then we can write on yeah, Speaker 2: 03:10 Soccer, searcher. Joanne Corey says temperatures are rising because people push more carbon dioxide into the air than what the planet can handle. She understands the urgency, but remains hopeful. Speaker 4: 03:26 You only had to get those 18 plants, push your mind on a regular seasonal basis, right? It's pushing around more than 800. Speaker 2: 03:38 Cory thinks plants can pull about four gigatons of that extra carbon out of the air and put it into the soil, building out more renewable energy and making cars electric could help too. But those transitions will take time. Cory thinks developing plants that can move the carbon out of the plant sugars and into non-biodegradable polymers. Buried deep and roots could buy some time until other solutions come along. Speaker 4: 04:04 I'll take some wheat right here. It's been grown a little long. Speaker 2: 04:08 The kind of Hopwood is spending that time in search of a scalable solution in the salt greenhouse. You just take this guy, transplanted it, but success here and in the lab will have to be duplicated on a global scale. Researchers are confident. The science will help them improve the plants, but they don't share that optimism about governments and farmers who will have to implement the solution before the climate gets too warm. Eric Anderson KPBS news, Speaker 1: 04:38 Joining me is rom Ramanathan distinguished professor of atmospheric and climate sciences at the Scripps institution of oceanography and renowned climate researcher. He's led efforts to mitigate climate change with the United nations, the national Academy of sciences, the state of California, and with the Vatican and welcome to the program. Speaker 4: 04:58 Thank you for inviting me. Speaker 1: 05:00 The researchers who are developing these plants to remove more carbon from the atmosphere, think it would take at least 15 years for plants like this to have a significant impact. Won't we have seen major damage from climate change by then Speaker 4: 05:15 Quite a bit. Uh, in fact, uh, teaming a bit sub colleagues. I published a study two years ago saying that we are going to cross the next dangerous threshold of warming in about 10 years from now, but by 2030. And, uh, I am personally, uh, if I'm spending sleepless nights, it's on this point. But to me, it looks like we are going to take another three to five years to recover from this COVID crises. And by then the new crises would start in terms of climate change. The warming of, uh, another dangerous threshold, which is degree in half as of 2015, the planet has already worn by a degree. And by the time it goes to one and a half, that's the planet we have not see in the last hundred and 25,000 years. So be you're going to be crossing such unprecedented threshholds every 10 to 15 years from now onwards, unless we bend that warming curve and to bend the warming curve, you have to bend the emissions curve. Since we have deleted so much bending the emissions curve by itself is not enough via put so much pollution close to a trillion. Tons of pollution is up in the air. Big, got to suck that out of the air, this making the plants, uh, roots, uh, go fatter and longer to take the carbon is one of many, many, many ways we need. Speaker 1: 07:11 So is there a point of no return where we can no longer influence the trajectory of climate change? Speaker 4: 07:19 Uh, the Marines, uh, unfortunately, and sadly, yes. Uh, as I see it, it is not a single point of no return. Uh, it's going to depend on whom, you know, what 10 years from now, if you have not been that warming curve, I expect, uh, at least a 3 billion people. They are what I call on bottom 3 billion, not for any pejorative reasons. They are on the bottom of the energy ladder. They have no access to any, uh, clean energy, even for basic things. And with the degree on the hot warming, that may have a huge disruption for them in their ability to make a living in that ambiguity, to maintain just the basic living standards. That's 10 years from now. And then let's go to the middle 3 billion and they're the ones Speaker 1: 08:22 Living in cities, maintaining or basic services Speaker 4: 08:28 For them. I think, uh, where they are going to be severely severely impacted irreversibly. It'll be another 20 to 25 years from now. When the warming reaches about two degrees, that would be catastrophic for them. And then there's the busiest 1 billion. I am part of this, and many of us are. And for us, the point of no return will come beyond 2050. When the warming could go beyond two, three degrees. By the time you go to three degrees warming, that's a planet we have not seen in the last 25, 30 million years. We don't even know what's waiting for us the next 10 years, Rican divorce, all this dystopian, nightmarish scenarios, it's in our power. We can still do it. Speaker 1: 09:25 We are currently moving away from an administration in Washington that basically denied human caused climate change to one way of preventing further climate damage is a very high priority. What are you expecting to see from the new Biden administration? Speaker 4: 09:41 I think the first thing we need to do is, uh, joined the global community, particularly the Paris agreement. And you ask, why, why do we need all of this? Why can't we just cut our emissions? Uh, my answer is that, uh, these pollutants stay once you dump them into there, they stay for decades to centuries. So pollution anywhere is global warming everywhere. Okay. So we got to cut these emissions more wide. And for that I personally feed, it requires American leadership, American technology, and, uh, the American ingenuity to solve problems. So we need to cut our own emissions down. And in that regard, I like very much the plier, the, uh, president elect has already announced and what I would like to see an aggressive global leadership so that we share our technologies. We share our knowledge. So every country like India, Africa, China, they can bring the emissions down. Speaker 1: 10:55 I have been speaking with Rama, Rama, nothin, distinguished professor of atmospheric and climate sciences at Scripps. And I want to thank you so much for speaking with us. Speaker 4: 11:04 Thank you, Marie.