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And re-use broken clay pots!
Dear Reader,
I am a simple Dot, barely able to imagine (let alone produce) the many marvels that the technological geniuses among us are creating. Take, for instance, today’s Climate Champ, Omar Yaghi, a Berkeley chemistry professor and Nobel laureate whose invention can — literally! — pull water out of thin air.
Our warming planet is creating more regions and seasons of drought; in fact, a U.N. report said in January that “the planet has entered the Global Water Bankruptcy Era.” In circumstances like these, producing water on demand can save crops and lives.
How does it work? As climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe explained in her newsletter, Yaghi’s company, Atoco, is creating 20-foot generators that rely on “ultra-porous structures to act like high-tech sponges and capture invisible moisture from the air.” Powered by sunlight, these generators could produce up to 1,000 liters of fresh water a day, even in areas impacted by drought or natural disaster.
Yaghi himself is a marvel, born in Jordan to Palestinian refugees in a home that lacked both running water and electricity. When he accepted his Nobel Prize, he said, “I remember the whisper through our neighbourhood, ‘the water is coming’, and the urgency as I rushed to fill every container I could find before the flow stopped.” He urges those with the power to address climate change — and indeed all of us — to find “courage scaled to the enormity of the task,” so that “we may gift the next generation … a planet worthy of their hopes.”
Admiringly,
Dot
For more Bluedot Climate Quick Tips, click here.
