The Great Lockdown has crushed consumer demand.

Environmentally, this is a good thing. Less demand means less production, resulting in less pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, leading to stories like the Himalayas being visisble for the first time in 'decades' in Punjab.

That being said, The Great Lockdown is temporary. The US and other countries are planning to re-open in just 1 week, on May 1st.

Even if that gets delayed, COVID-19 will eventually recede as vaccinations will be rolled out, or there will be sufficient herd immunity.

As a result, consumer demand will return, matched by ramping up production, and with it, unsustainable levels of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

"Business as usual" will come back, but it won't work forever.

The carbon budget puts an actual number to our allowable amount of additional emissions before the end of the century in order to avoid disaster, and some claim we're past the point of no return in limiting emissions sufficiently.

Why This Matters

COVID-19 is considered an "invisible enemy," but experts actually knew it was coming for years.

In 2015, Bill Gates warned the world of an inevitable pandemic. A 2016 research paper warned that another SARS-CoV was poised for human emergence. SARS-CoV-2 finally emerged in December 2019.

In the same way, experts see environmental devastation coming.

"Global warming [will] cause an additional 250,000 deaths per year."

By "devastation," they mean even worse than the hundreds of thousands of people dying now due to climate change.

The World Health Organisation predicts that between 2030 and 2050, "global warming would cause an additional 250,000 deaths per year from heat stress, malnutrition, malaria and diarrhoea."

Genetically Engineered Ocean Phytoplankton

Going from climate change to ocean phytoplankton might seem like a bit of a leap, but these microscopic marine algae actually hold a potential key to solving climate change.

What Phytoplankton Do

Phytoplankton photosynthetically convert CO2 into oxygen, like trees.

In fact, phytoplankton are responsible for half of the world's oxygen production (with the other half being trees, grasses, and other plants).

In short, phytoplankton offset carbon emissions.

What Are Carbon Offsets

The phrase "carbon offset" almost always refers to buying "carbon credits" in a carbon market to offset carbon emissions you're generating.

More than just buying carbon credits to offset carbon emissions, we can create new sources of carbon offsets. This is commonly done with things like building solar infrastructure and wind farms, or planting trees.

Phytoplankton are one potential source of carbon offsets.

Where CRISPR Comes In

CRISPR enables programmable DNA. Coupled with photosynthetic carbon fixation, genetically engineered phytoplankton present an opportunity for massively scalable carbon dioxide removal.

Essentially, we could turn the ocean into an enormous carbon sink, on steroids.

There are countless projects to increase renewable energy from offshore wind power, solar panels, and hydropower, but CRISPR obviously has no role in non-biologic systems.

This makes genetically engineered phytoplankton an especially attractive opportunity. So much attention is put on other renewables, that phytoplankton as a carbon removal tool is a virtually untapped niche.

YCombinator calculates that we need just 1% of the ocean's surface to remove 47 gigatons of CO2 per year (and we only need to sequester 20 to 40 Gt).

What Would Be Modified

Since CRISPR can be used to modify DNA, what exactly could we change in phytoplankton?

Phytoplankton need trace minerals to grow and conduct photosynthesis, which aren't present in high enough quantities across the whole ocean and its surface.

If we could solve phytoplankton's mineral requirements, they could conduct photosynthesis across the entire ocean, instead of relatively few areas.

As Nature.com explains, crops have already been genetically modified to tolerate worse-than-normal conditions, like the presence of "aluminum, boron, salt, drought, frost, and other environmental stressors."

We've done the same with animals, such as salmon engineered to grow larger and cattle enhanced to exhibit resistance to mad cow disease.

YCombinator envisions one solution for phytoplankton engineered "to convert sunlight and CO2 into a chemically stable bioplastic."

Another potential solution is programming phytoplankton to collect necessary nutrients more efficiently or self-assemble into an enormous oceanic infrastructure.

With the near-limitless application of CRISPR, there are countless ideas to explore.