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US businessman defends controversial geoengineering experiment
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/19/geoengineering-canada
Founder of the San Francisco-based geoengineering firm Planktos Inc, Russ George, during an interview in 2010. Photograph: VPROBeagle
The American businessman who dumped around 100 tonnes of iron sulphate into the Pacific Ocean has become a lone defender of his project, after a storm of criticism from indigenous peoples, the Canadian government and a UN biodiversity meeting in India.
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 gliders 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.