Russ George, who told the Globe and Mail that he is the world’s leading “champion” of geoengineering, says he has been under a “dark cloud of vilification” since the Guardian broke news of an ocean fertilisation scheme, funded by an indigenous village on the Haida Gwaii islands, that aimed to make money in offset markets by sequestering carbon through artificial plankton blooms.
“I’m not a rich, scheming businessman, right,” he said. “That’s not who I am … This is my heart’s work, not my hip pocket work, right?”
A US agency that loaned George’s company 20 expensive ocean buoys said they had been “misled,” and the Canadian National Research Council that provided funding said they “were not made aware” of plans for ocean fertilisation.
The Council of the Haida Nation, which represents all Haida, issued a statement condemning George.
“The consequences of tampering with nature at this scale are not predictable and pose unacceptable risks to the marine environment,” it read. “Our people along with the rest of humanity depend on the oceans and cannot leave the fate of the oceans to the whim of the few.”