Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Diatom - Coggle Diagram
Diatom
The Problem
Bankrolling plastics
- Our finance sector is not taking the human-induced sixth mass extinction seriously and is actively providing capital to sectors that governments and scientists agree is deemed harmful to biodiversity
Findings
- Between Jan 2015 and Sept 2019, banks provided loans and underwriting of more than USD 1.7 trillion (equivalent to Russia's GDP) to forty key plastic chain actors
- None of the top 20 banks which provide the lion's share of funding have developed any due diligence systems, contingent loan criteria, or financing exclusions when it comes to the plastics packaging industry
- The 10 largest financiers were Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Wells Fargo, BNP Paribas and Morgan Stanley
- Together they accumulated 62% of the finance identified
Stats
- Worldwide, about 2 Mn plastic bags are used every minute
- Each bag is used on average for 12 mins, but can take 100s or 1000s of years to decompose
- Acc to UN, Ingestion of plastic kills an estimated 1 Mn marine birds and 100,000 marine animals every year
- 90% of all birds and fish are believed to have plastic particles in their stomach
- An average person eats about 100 particles of micro plastics in every meal and on average 70,000 particles a year
Demand
- A south east asian survey commissioned by UN found that 91% of consumers in the region were concerned about plastic waste
- In Europe, over 53% of consumers name plastic waste as a major environmental concern
- Studies show that nearly half of all consumers worldwide now expect manufacturers to take a lead
What kind of actions
- Rather than simply focussing on carbon, we need to shift the focus to restoring & protecting the underlying apparatus of our life support systems
-
Why Ocean is important?
- Ocean covers 71% of the surface of the planet
- Houses 99% of all 8.7 million species on the planet
- Absorbs excess heat to maintain atmospheric equilibrium
- Produces more than 50%-80% of all life on earth
What's a Diatom?
- Ultimate carbon sequestering tech
- Type of phytoplankton encased in silica
Whales
- Whales are ultimate climate change tech
- Protect whales
- At a minimum, even a 1% increase in phytoplankton productivity thanks to whale activity would capture hundreds of millions of tons of additional CO2 a year, equivalent to the sudden appearance of 2 billion mature trees
Economics of Whales
- Value of a living great whale = $2 Mn
- Total supply of whales is estimated at $1 Tr (so a viable economic driver)
Resources for research
-
Let’s not forget, when the fossil fuel industry came into existence, it was lauded as a vast improvement over whaling for oil, and plastics were initially conceived to reduce the ivory trade that devastated threatened elephant populations.
- Blockchain enabled applications
- What need is there to rely solely on governments and billionaires to unlock capital for critical challenges when a well coordinated, unified and massive effort can be orchestrated and verified automatically by the 99%?
- 1 billion people giving $1 in unison is $1B, without putting any financial strain on any one member of the network
- So we need to establish multiple asset classes that measurably reduce harm to the ocean, and massively sequester carbon by protecting the Whale-Diatom cycle