Fighting climate change with mammoths may seem crazy, but it has decades of research behind it — including the work of
George Church, Ph.D., a world-renowned pioneer in genomics. Church runs a lab at Harvard and has been exploring how to genetically re-engineer the woolly mammoth using its closest living relative, the Asian Elephant.
The reason is this: One of the greatest threats to the earth is the melting of the arctic permafrost and its massive release of the greenhouse gasses that are stored safely in its freeze. When the herds of woolly mammoth and other animals vanished, that area became covered with a forest that keeps the earth warmer. Church is betting on the idea that a resurrected population of the mammoths, if let loose in the arctic, would chomp and stomp down the bush and trees, exposing the earth to subzero temperatures and allowing the tundra’s original grasslands to grow back. That ecosystem, maintained by the large creatures, would then effectively sequester carbon, rather than allowing it back into the atmosphere.
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