As climate action finally begins in the United States in earnest, leaders face a maze of choices. The data keep coming in, and shifting, and sometimes changing. An example: methane is 25 times more impactful than carbon dioxide, per our EPA. Yet other credible and science-based entities state it’s 67 times more impactful, or 89 times. The fact that methane does not sustain in our atmosphere the same length of time as carbon dioxide does complicate quantifying its impact. We long for the day we can rely on data based on factual, empirical, nonpolitical science.

On one occasion, ironically, in Clear Water, Florida, I experienced their passive and gentle presence. Unequivocally, the nuances around their life model require hard science. But it seems like, today at least, human political divisions are being superseded by the manatee. We are putting political division aside, in order to save a remarkable species.

Floating Island International (FII) is reaching out to the international floating photovoltaic (FPV) community. The U.S. is poised to “Make America great... again” around the emerging alternative energy market.

With some two-trillion dollars earmarked for climate action by the Biden administration just in the U.S., FII is poised to fill in the critical environmental gaps associated with conventional FPV projects.

The US has two-trillion dollars earmarked for climate action, and it's time to break out around FPV, fix impaired water, and reduce GHG too.

The environmental impact of FPV projects is squarely in the realm of BioHaven Floating Islands. A space where the US could break out around FPV is with the cleaning of impaired waterways, a no-brainer integration between what we do and what floating solar market needs. Freshwater, currently the source of some 20% of total greenhouse gas, can be stewarded back to health, fish productivity, and high impact climate changing gas reduction.

Nature-as-model, biomimicry, is the gentle arm-twister that pulls us towards actual sustainability! Here at the Shepherd, Montana research center, where BioHaven Floating Islands were born, we marvel at the result when we partner with Nature.

We partner with autotrophic life forms, like hyper-accumulator plants that cycle exponentially more nutrients (and other contaminants) out of water than regular plants do. We design BioHavens to give these superstars of the plant kingdom the best possible growth conditions, to help us fix water!

Today we face a pandemic virus. And we don’t know where the end zone is. As a race, we will do our best to survive and thrive, but the reality is that we don’t know how to contend with every natural threat. We do know, however, that another massive threat is looming. Our fresh water has been hit with a triple punch…massive nutrient surges, inaction by uninformed water stewards, and climate change. The result is a form of desertification.

Floating Island International (FII) provides hope to the market. The company was founded in 2005, and currently has over 9,000 BioHaven islands, our signature product line, launched and fixing nutrient impaired water around the globe. The islands are all about cleaning water. They employ a concentrated wetland effect, and in the process cycle nutrients that otherwise grow cyanobacteria and dangerous Harmful Algae Blooms into healthy water and fish.

Seeing our way clear of the hubris and toxic noise from spent people, folks who simply don’t have a sense of propriety, of reasonable behavior, who don’t know where or how to spend their energy, that is the challenge of life in the United States in 2021 if we want a better future.

Clear vision through the fog of obfuscation, of fallacy, of misdirected anger, is rare. But it is happening. There is a movement that does not bow to misdirection. It simply advances. The movement is called Biomimicry.

Biomimicry is the model for a better future.

Who would challenge the obvious truth, the basic statement that “they aren’t making more real estate”? It’s clear in the general public’s mind that real estate is finite. Right? But is it? Since 2005, Floating Island International has “launched” 10,000 pieces of real estate around the planet - some large, some small, all of them representing new “land” that wasn’t there before. And these new islands actually grow over time, and as they grow, they fight climate change.

Today as the entire planet battles a viral pandemic—a battle we are increasingly uncertain about winning based on the rush of COVID evolutions—it’s fitting that we consider water and the evolutionary forces it faces. Clean water is at the heart of the mission of Floating Island International.

The Clean Water Act(s), in place since the early ’70s, October 1972 to be exact, gave us clear direction, and blatant contaminant pollution became forbidden.

At the time it was passed, a time of rivers that actually caught on fire, we were a nation ready to act. Montana’s own Senator Max Baucus led from the Democratic aisle, and bipartisan movement took place. But the Act didn’t address nutrient pollution. That would have meant telling farmers that fertilizer needed to be regulated. America, the world’s breadbasket, wasn’t ready for that.

Now, nearly a half century later, nutrient pollution regularly results in Harmful Algae Blooms of incredible volume. These blooms occur in headwater states, like Montana, and stretch down to the Gulf of Mexico They occur in every sector of the country, and the Lake Erie’s and Chesapeake Bays of our country are the recipients, and the victims. And as they die, so will we.

Biomimicry works for profit too!

Nature as Model is biomimicry. Nature as business model is something different again, but fundamental in several critical respects.

We humans are short sighted. Over the last hundred years, immediate gratification has been the rule. We look for short-term ROI. In fact, having completed a Crowd Funded equity raise, and tracked the occasional queries from a few hundred investors, I can’t help chuckling as I recount the several queries from one such investor. “When can I sell my shares? When can I make a profit?” Note, this individual had invested all of one hundred dollars.

Nature is the ultimate inventor. She has more prototypes under her belt than any other inventor, and we call it “evolution.” And evolution, which includes prototype development and testing, takes time. Not necessarily human scale time either.