Seasteading is a new book by Joe Quirk, with Patri Friedman. I cannot resist calling it quirky. If you are expecting the book to consist mostly of wacko libertarian ideas, you are wrong. It consists mostly of wacko environmentalist ideas. Apparently, there exist visionaries or crackpots, or both, who think that seaweed and other ocean life can provide cheap food, cheap energy, and cheap carbon sequestration. Here are some random excerpts:
Ricardo has shown that his most basic sea farm costs only $200.00 US to construct, covers only a half hectare in size, and supports five people with year-round harvests of diverse crops. (p. 85)
an ultrahealthy algae species called dulse. . .smoking it as if it were meat they were astonished to find it tasted like [bacon] (p. 98)
The authors suggest that adding iron to the Southern Ocean circling Antarctica alone could reduce carbon dioxide levels by 15 percent. (p. 146)
the ocean’s stored energy can be tapped by OTEC, or ocean thermal energy conversion. . .OTEC produces no greenhouse gases, blights no land, is not visible from shore, requires minimal maintenance, and runs twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. p. 146-148
If you take away any message from this book, it is this: Seasteading is about emigrant rights.
p. 301
1. I am skeptical that there are these twenty-dollar bills lying on the sidewalk floating in the oceans.
2. Even if there are twenty-dollar bills floating out there, it is not clear to me that you need to live on the ocean in order to collect them.
3. Do not mistake resources for wealth. Wealth consists of patterns of sustainable specialization and trade. There is plenty of land in the U.S. Land is only scarce in places like New York or San Francisco, where the patterns of specialization and trade are so lucrative.
4. From a PSST perspective, the most promising economic model for a seastead would be as a seaport. Find a part of the coast that lacks a natural harbor, set up a seastead harbor, and build a bridge or tunnel to connect the seastead to the land. That would create new opportunities for specialization and trade.
All movements have their crackpots and these environmentalist on seaweed qualify as one. In reality a lot of money has been spent on the potential of seaweed and it is really not making an impact. (Although I suspect these amounts have fallen with the natural gas boom and the improvements of solar & wind energy the last 5 years.) The oil companies do know there are long term threats to fossil fuel and they analyzing alternative energy.
Long term (say 2050 – 2060) I bet solar and wind together provide over 50% of the US power energy and there will always be a spot of fossil fuel. (I am not making predictions on transportation fueling.)
(1) is why I haven’t followed seasteading closely, though it’s a fun idea. There’s way too much at stake politically (see South China Sea) for the most powerful entities in the world to not embrace seasteading if it were close to being viable. If and when seasteading does become viable, I’d expect the result to be firmer state control of the oceans, though if somehow seasteading isn’t realized by state-favored entities, the temporary frontier may still be interesting.
The late Prof. MacKay wrote a section in his book “Without Hot Air” about the country-sized areas required to meaningfully sequester carbon from the atmosphere through ocean nourishment:
https://www.withouthotair.com/c31/page_247.shtml
There is not enough temperature difference between ocean surface temps and the depths to make OTEC viable. I recall from engineering class that’s it’s like 1% efficient, so lots of capital without a lot of energy production.
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