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President Biden Hits The Road To Promote His Agenda; Four Space Travelers Splash Down In The Gulf Of Mexico; A Program Aims To Capture Carbon With Kelp. Aired 4-4:10a ET
Aired May 04, 2021 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CARL AZUZ, CNN 10 ANCHOR: Hi. I`m Carl Azuz. It`s great to have you along for today`s show, which covers everything from a space splashdown to a
suspended pool that`s making a splash.
We`ll start in Washington, D.C., though. It`s traditional that after giving a State of the Union speech or annual messages we saw last week, a U.S.
president hits the road. The leader spent time at rallies and events to meet with supporters and to try to drum up support for the proposals
outlined in the speech.
President Joe Biden is doing that now. He`s released two major economic plans. One is titled the American Families Plan and the other is the
American Jobs Plan. The first one include more childcare programs, free preschool, free community college. The second one includes spending on
roads and bridges and new climate centered programs.
Together, the two plans would cost almost $4 trillions and they got to get through Congress first. This branch of government controls the purse
strings, and even though the president`s fellow Democrats have the majority of votes in both chambers, it`s a slim majority, especially in the Senate
with 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans. Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, would be the tie breaking vote if there`s a 50-50 Senate split.
At this point, it`s not clear if the president`s proposals have enough congressional support to pass. It`s not clear if there`s enough agreement
on how to pay for them, and it`s not clear if they`ll get any support from Republicans who released an infrastructure plan of their own.
One thing lawmakers might do is break up the president`s large proposals to pass smaller chunks that can get support from both parties. The process is
expected to take months.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AZUZ (voice-over): Ten-second trivia:
NASA`s Apollo 8 mission was noteworthy for doing what?
Orbiting the Earth, orbiting the moon, the first space broadcast or a lunar module landing?
In 1968, three astronauts became the first humans to orbit the moon.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AZUZ: That was also the last time a spacecraft carrying astronauts made a nighttime splashdown, the landing in the ocean, until Sunday. Four
travelers aboard a SpaceX Crew driving capsule arrived in the Gulf of Mexico after spending five months on the International Space Station.
The future of the ISS is uncertain. It`s the most expensive object ever built. The U.S. spends $3 billion to $4 billion per year to run and
maintain it, and NASA is looking for more partners to help with that, at the time when at least one of them, Russia says it`s going to leave the
project in 2025. But work aboard the ISS continues.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Space is supposed to be vast unless you were one of the 11 space explorers posing elbow to elbow
recently on the International Space Station. The NASA space exit, one crew starting, and another one ending.
ANNOUNCER: And liftoff.
HOLMES: Add in two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut who arrived on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in April, and it was officially a full house in
the floating space lab.
For over a week, the 11 stellar roommates bunked together in a place NASA says is the size of a six room house. The number record of people aboard
the ISS is 13 set back in the space shuttle era.
Still, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet (ph) from Crew Two, says it was a tight squeeze.
THOMAS PESQUET, CREW TWO (through translator): Six sleeping spots for 11 members of the crew, that means 5 camp out. There are people scattered
around the entire module. We try to be mindful. People have been trained on that.
HOLMES: Wiggle room will return to the ISS, with the departure of SpaceX Crew One. Astronaut Shannon Walker says she is proud of what her team
accomplished since they arrived last November.
SHANNON WALKER, ASTRONAUT: I think about all of the science that we did and the repairs that we made and, boy, did we make some good repairs --
(LAUGHTER)
WALKER: -- we got it rewired.
HOLMES: Crew One`s return is the first night splashdown of the U.S. crewed spacecraft since 1968. But Walker says, her time aboard the space station
is something she won`t soon forget.
WALKER: What really is going to remain with me is the camaraderie and the friendship and the time that we`ve spent together.
The laughing that we do over dinners, the movie nights that we`ve had, had truly made this very special.
HOLMES: And if any returning astronauts feel a little nostalgic, they only need check out the images posted by Crew Two`s Shane Kimbrough for a peek
at the Earth`s few Earthlings get to see firsthand.
Crew One`s completed mission is the first of 6 crew rotations to the ISS by NASA and SpaceX. Plans that should keep the ISS a busy place for years to
come.
Michael Holmes, CNN.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AZUZ: Fossil fuels like coal, gas and oil are used to produce electricity, heat our homes and power gasoline engines. But when they`re burned to
create energy, they release carbon dioxide into the air and it`s that kind of CO2 that sciences blamed for a number of environmental problems. There
are several organizations working on ways to deal with CO2 emissions. Some focused on switching to other forms of energy. Others focused on removing
existing CO2 from the atmosphere.
You`re about to see one. There are concerns that ropes of kelp could harm marine life or passing ships and it`s not known yet what kind of impact
these masses can have on the ocean floor when they`re sunk down there abut they are believe to be a way to capture CO2 from the air and bury it for
centuries in the deep blue sea.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Kelp as seaweed, also called the macro algae and kelp is one of the fastest growing things in the world. It pulls carbon in at
the fastest rate of any species in the world.
Running Tide is a ocean-based climate solutions company. We`re trying to use kelp which is like a natural way to pull carbon out of the atmosphere
and sink it into the deep ocean.
Trees are fantastic but land-based solutions for carbon removal run into some sort of spatial constraints. We don`t have those in the ocean really.
So, it`s a fantastic place to purse climate solutions.
The process starts on land in a hatchery, in a controlled environment where you can really accelerate the propagation of the kelp seed. And then we put
it out into the water. We have teams working on the biodegradable buoys. After the kelp grows, the biodegradable buoy will dissolve and loses it
buoyancy and by then the kelp is so heavy that it sinks to the ocean bottom, sequestering the carbon for a thousand plus years.
Every chance we get, we`re like the get out on the boat and have a look.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You got a deck here, huh? You see this story developing anywhere?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Three months ago, we put this kelp in the water and it`s just like a single string of kelp seeded line and three months later,
you have like a thousand tons. There`s nothing like, you know, picking up the line and feeling like a thousand pounds of weigh on it. It`s just being
like, all right, like we`re doing the job. We`re getting the work done.
Growing up in a fishing family, I`ve always been interested in how things want to grow in the ocean, how productive the ocean can be and being a
surfer, you become very aware of how powerful the ocean is. So, I think that I was just aware that kelp could be a solution to the carbon crisis.
How long is that, Rob?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nine feet.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nine feet in three months.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wow.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Whoo!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How do we know that throwing as much kelp is not going to disrupt the ocean ecosystems? Like that`s the fantastic question. It`s a
question we ask ourselves every day, and we`re working with some of the best scientists in the world to study and model out what affects this would
have, and if we`re going to have any like undue negative effects, like we`re not going to do it, right?
How do we know that the kelp is not going to come back up, well, if you sink kelp to the bottom of deep ocean, say 12,000 feet, it`s under 5,000
pounds of pressure. For instance, just carbon dioxide under that much pressure is actually heavier than water. So, gravity works everywhere all
the time, so it stays down.
You know, every industry in the world will have to change how it operates in order to reduce its carbon emission. There are a lot of really
progressive companies out there that want to minimize their carbon footprint. So, they`ll buy what`s called a carbon credit for us and we`ll
go remove the carbon for them to offset the carbon they`re emitting to run their business.
Hopefully, this turns into like a revenue generating machine for us because, you know, if we can demonstrate that we can make a profit doing
this then we can pull in more investment and grow the business bigger where we`re really making an impact on the climate.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(MUSIC)
AZUZ: Well, this is a new way to think about an above ground pool. It`s 115 feet above the ground, a clear plastic box that`s 82 feet long and
would allow people to swim between two apartment complexes in London. You`ll have to live in one of the buildings to enjoy the pool and the
cheapest two bedroom unit costs $1.4 million.
But moving through the pool that opens later this month is said to be like swimming and flying at the same time.
It might be private, but it ain`t private. You can see right through what they`re trying to do. And while critics might say people there have gone
off the deep end, they still got their heads in the clouds with the ears a little more thin when they get in to swim. They just can`t be afraid of
heights or depth to take a plunge while hopefully not taking a plunge, if you know what I`m saying.
Rochester Adams High School gets today`s shout-out. It`s in Rochester Hills, Michigan.
And I`m Carl Azuz for CNN 10.
END
