The journal Nature receives 10,000 scientific papers every year, but in 2023 they picked just five as the technologies most likely to make an impact on society. Jupiter Ionics was one of them. Specializing in making ammonia from electrolysis instead of fossil fuels, it is poised to revolutionize not only agriculture but our energy and transportation sectors as well. It is our pleasure to have Douglas MacFarlane, founder of Jupiter Ionics, as our guest. 

Hopefully you've just listened to Episode 9 so you've you got a pretty good picture of how we arrived at the predicament we're in, how we've been supplementing agriculture with artificial nutrients for over 200 years and how ammonia is essential to feeding eight billion people. All of that hinges on the continued production of large global quantities of ammonia. So now you're ready for solutions, and Jupiter Ionics is one of them. 

You can read more by visiting: 
Jupiter Ionics
A Roadmap to the Ammonia Economy
 
Thanks for listening! If you liked this episode, please tell your friends. Hit the like button wherever you heard this so you'll know when the next one comes out. And if you missed any of the episodes, they're waiting for you. Stay optimistic about climate change. Together, we will do this.

Music in this episode provided by Artlist.io 

Theme Song - "The Best Thing" by Paper Planes
00:00 and 00:54 - "Milk Steak" by DoGBeaT
07:13 - "The Long Ride Home" by Kashido
13:05 - "Mangrove" by Low Light
08:17 - "Lost Are We" by Alon Peretz
15:32 - "Ocean Sunrise" by Kevin P. Holt
19:14 - "Ten Lost Years" by Yehezkel Raz
20:56 - "Shimmer" by Adrien de la Salle

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You might be surprised to hear it phrased this way, but you are a fossil fuel product.

Half of the nitrogen atoms in your body are artificially synthesized. They are a product of the Haber-Bosch process, a process that requires fossil fuels. The world's population relies on fossil fuels powering the Haber-Bosch production of ammonia, used in fertilizer, to grow the food that keeps us alive. You are what you eat.

In fact, without fossil fuels you probably wouldn’t exist on earth today. When we talk about our carbon footprint, the only real question is which foot – the right or the left. 

That might be a lot to swallow, so we’re going to approach this in two episodes. Because to understand the magnitude of the technology Douglas MacFarlane developed with his team at Monash University, to see how radically it will change the world, you’ll first need to understand how we got here. And this story is so huge, so all-encompassing, and (despite being something we’re all living through) almost completely unknown to you, that we’ll have to lay the groundwork in this episode for you to appreciate the next.

So, get ready for birds, bones, and guns as we explore ammonia. 

Our guest today is Douglas MacFarlane of Jupiter Ionics. He and his team developed a new method to produce ammonia without fossil fuels. Green ammonia might play a very big role in solving climate change and bring ammonia redemption.  

Thanks for listening! If you liked this episode, please tell your friends. Hit the like button wherever you heard this so you'll know when the next one comes out. And if you missed any of the episodes, they're waiting for you. Stay optimistic about climate change. Together, we will do this.

Sound FX by Pixabay Sound Effects
Music in this episode provided by Artlist.io 

Theme Song - "The Best Thing" by Paper Planes
00:00 - "It Dont Rain" by Ben Strawn
04:05 - "Sentiment" by Runar Blesvik
08:00 - "Finale" by David Morton
08:17 - "Lost Are We" by Alon Peretz
11:42 - "Auf Wiedersehn" by Victor Dance Orchestra
14:20 - "Battle of the Nations" by Conways Band
15:01 - "Ebb and Flow" by Kadir Demir
20:00 - "Heavens" by Itai Argaman

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Today we're looking at trees. 

This was not the episode I wanted to do next. I had a few others planned, but everywhere I looked for replacements to fossil fuels, people thought trees were the answer. Architects specifying timber to replace concrete in low-embodied-carbon buildings,  companies buying carbon credits from forests to reach net-zero, biomass replacing coal in coal fired power plants. Every solution I heard felt... weird.

Trees don't strike me as a 21st century high-tech solution to climate change. Maybe I'm crazy. You tell me. Listen to these voices and tell me if you sense the weirdness. 

There are approximately three trillion trees on earth today. That sounds like a lot, but there used to be more. Before human agriculture, there were twice as many, about six trillion trees. Humans removed 46% of all the planet’s trees since the dawn of agriculture, and half of that happened since 1900. So pervasive has human intervention been that only about 34% of the world's forests are primary forests, you know, the kind we think of when we hear the word “forest”. That's 34% AFTER the 50% we've already removed. That means 85% of the world's original forests are currently serving human use.

Half of them serve us by no longer existing at all. 

The truth is, whatever we use timber for, timber is not renewable. It is a finite resource, one that competes with all of our other resources, and one we've already half depleted. 

When you see it like this, you realize so many of our attempts to use trees are absurd. The ideas that we’re pushing to make more, to use more, to burn more, to bury more are such consumerist concepts. They’re anathema to all environmental beliefs and scientific understanding, but it’s environmentalists and scientists proposing it. 

That's weird.

How unnatural are we willing to make nature in order to clean up our mess? More correctly, how much MORE unnatural than the 85% we already have.

This obsession of ours for the regenerative beauty of trees, this timberpunk view of returning to a yesteryear we've long since depleted, this puerile faith in nature to clean up our adult-sized mess, our love of forests may yet be the end of them. 

This podcast is called Replace, Remove, Recover, and as you can see from trees, we get so motivated by Replace Remove that we often forget about Recover. We need to stop looking at nature as a renewable resource and see it for the finite and closed system it is. The next time you’re looking for a low carbon alternative, don’t look at trees. Don’t ask nature to solve this for you. Recover means we need a plan for the next million years. 

If you want to make a difference, contact the Rainforest Action Network to see how you can protect a forest, not for carbon credits, but for survival. Talk to your local Climate Change Commission to treat biomass the same way we treat coal. Tell your local Emissions Trading Scheme to divorce forests from carbon, forcing funds to be spent on anthropogenic solutions to anthropogenic emissions. 

We need solutions that don't involve trees.

Rainforest Action Network: https://www.ran.org/

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with someone you know who needs to hear it. If it made you feel, made you angry, made you cry, let someone else feel the same. 

Music in this episode provided by Artlist.io 

Theme Song - "The Best Thing" by Paper Planes
01:10 - "Sero" by Crest
03:30 - "Many Persons in His Head" by Max H.
06:10 - "What We Have Lost" by David James Terry
10:06 - "Many Persons in His Head" by Max H.
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15:00 - "Sleeper Valley" by Ardie Son
19:18 - "Erased from My Mind" by Kevin Graham
24:31 - "Less Than Tomorrow" by Raphael Angelini
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27:58 - "Less Than Tomorrow" by Raphael Angelini

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