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There's a lot of buzz about how big data and now blockchain will "solve climate change". Scientists are worried that the exaggeration will turn into a 'dangerous idea that there is a technological magic bullet.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
According to a report on the climate U.N. published at the beginning of this month, the world has only about 12 years to reduce carbon emissions and avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Silicon Valley has been working on a solution for years, often promising quick solutions. Blockchain, the technology behind cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, is the ultimate solution coming from great technology. The KQED member Sam Harnett has more.
SAM HARNETT, BYLINE: Until about a year ago, almost no one in the climate science talked about blockchain. But at the recent Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco, it was all over. There were panels and documents. People were talking about how it could help mitigate climate change in all ways.
TOM BAUMANN: Land use, agriculture, carbon sequestration, renewable energy …
HARNETT: Tom Baumann is co-chair of the Climate Chain Coalition. He came to the conference to spread awareness about the blockchain. So, what's it?
BAUMANN: Blockchain, or distributed ledger technology, really refers to a broader ecosystem of technologies.
HARNETT: OK, think this way. Blockchain is like an accounting book that everyone can see, a distributed ledger. It is a transaction registration that is not held by a central authority, like a bank, but by the computers of all users of the blockchain. Transparency is its main advantage. Tons of new companies are coming, claiming they will use the transparency of the blockchain to solve all kinds of problems – from curing cancer to the end of trafficking in human beings – and now also from climate change.
PAUL GAMBILL: It is our intention to build the infrastructure to make the inversion of climate change possible.
HARNETT: Paul Gambill was a software product manager. He is working on climate change now. But it continues to take the big step in the technological world. He is the CEO of a new Silicon Valley company called Nori.
GAMBILL: Nori is a blockchain-based market that makes it easier for people to pay to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
HARNETT: At this time in California, parts of the United States and Canada, the European Union and a number of other countries are participating in "cap-and-trade" carbon credit systems. The total number of carbon emissions that can be issued is limited. And then companies can buy carbon credits that allow them to issue more. Economists love this market-based solution. But there is a problem when it comes to carbon counting.
GAMBILL: Carbon markets in the past have been plagued by fraud and double counting problems.
HARNETT: Nori wants to use the blockchain to check accounting and take it a step further, to create a market for people who take carbon away from the environment. Now, the company has not launched yet. But this does not limit the store's ambition.
GAMBILL: We want to make sure that all this climate change problem goes away.
HARNETT: So scientists like Douglas McCauley.
DOUGLAS MCCAULEY: Yes, I wish it was that easy.
HARNETT: McCauley is a researcher at the University of Santa Barbara. He says the danger of the great promise of Silicon Valley, which interrupts the ethos of all that suggests that there is a quick and easy solution.
MCCAULEY: The things that solve climate change will be really difficult.
HARNETT: How to convince countries to reduce emissions or people to stop driving cars that pollute. McCauley says that first was the blockchain, the artificial intelligence and the big data were the newest things. Now, these have proven to be valuable tools for climate research, but in any case, it took some scientists to cut all the fuss.
MCCAULEY: We need to look beyond the bright thing and start talking about how to apply it properly.
HARNETT: McCauley says the blockchain could help with things like counting carbon credits or keeping track of, for example, how many trees are planting a plant to suck carbon from the air. Katharine Mach, Stanford climate scientist, is on agreement. But she says it's dangerous to believe that blockchain is a kind of miracle cure.
KATHARINE MACH: It is essentially a changing ethics, in which we will not develop solutions that are actually more important to make the whole problem something resolvable.
HARNETT: With the clock ticking on climate change, Mach says there's no time to lose in ordering the facts from the hype. For NPR News, I'm Sam Harnett.
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