Whales are far more valuable to people alive than dead

I knew that whales were a kind of reservoir of carbon, but I didn’t know just how much carbon they stored. Apparently, it’s enough to make a measurable contribution to the problem of the warming of the earth and the oceans. Basically, whales remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by the way the eat and poop. It is described in this excellent Ted Talk I heard recently given by an economist, Ralph Chami, who became an ally of whales after he got to see a Blue Whale up close and when he learned how important they are in helping to regulate the climate. 

Whales are useful for controlling carbon dioxide in the air because a major food on their menu is called krill, creatures that look like little shrimp. Krill, in turn, eat microscopic organisms called phytoplankton, which take so the equivalent of 4 Amazon forests of CO2 out of the atmosphere each year. By eating the krill, whales are storing much of that carbon in their bodies, so it doesn’t get released back into the air. When whales die, they sink to the bottom of the deep ocean. Anything below 1000 meters stays put in the ocean virtually forever. Even better, when the whales poop, they provide fertilizer for phytoplankton, which then grab even more CO2 from the atmosphere. Due to their tremendous size, the poop of whales contributes A LOT to nourishing the phytoplankton. 

As an economist, Ralph Chami realized that he had to translate the services that whales do for the planet (that is, sequester huge amounts of carbon and therefore help mitigate global warming) in ways that people understand: dollars and cents. So, he estimated that the services a single whale does to capture carbon in the course of their lifetime could be valued at 3 million dollars. It turns out that, on land, elephants also do an excellent job storing carbon, not in their bodies but by fertilizing trees, which in turn sequester carbon. He valued their services to the earth to be about 2.6 million dollars each. 

Armed with this information Ralph Chami has been trying to create a market place where companies who need to off-set their carbon footprints purchase credits from countries or areas that are taking measures to protect whales or elephants, or grow sea grass, which is also good at capturing carbon dioxide. 

It may see cold and calculating to give a monetary value to living things such as elephants and whales, but, if it helps to protect them, it can be a positive thing. 

Chami, R. (n.d.). What a living whale is worth -- and why the economy should protect nature [Video]. TED Talks. https://www.ted.com/talks/ralph_chami_what_a_living_whale_is_worth_and_why_the_economy_should_protect_nature?language=en