Russian Billionaire Uses COP to Push Revival of Woolly Mammoths
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Andrey Melnichenko, a Russian billionaire who made a fortune in coal and fertilizer then found himself sanctioned after the invasion of Ukraine, now has a plan to stem methane emissions from the thawing Siberian permafrost: recreating a time when woolly mammoths roamed the tundra.
At a lavish pavilion at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, Melnichenko is showcasing a plan to bring a slice of Russia’s ecology back 14,000 years. It’s an eccentric idea to counter a very dangerous problem — methane is a much more potent gas than carbon dioxide and billions of tons of it are trapped in Russia’s vast tundra. Restoring Siberia’s ice age ecosystem could slow its release, the theory goes.