Since I’m at the beach this week, it seems like a good time to leave you with a review of Ruth Kassinger’s Slime, a broad survey of all the ways scientists and entrepreneurs are solving problems with algae. Algae have the potential to help us feed more people and provide better nutrition, to fuel transportation at personal and industrial scales, and to help clean up some of the environmental messes we’ve made. More than once while reading the book you may sense that algae sound too good to be true. Kassinger is clearly enthusiastic; at the same time, she is frank about the commercial struggles and failures algae businesses have already faced. Most of the projects she describes are in proof-of-concept or prototype stages and have significant hurdles to overcome if they are to scale to the point of global impact. Still, the opening chapters remind us that algae have already shaped the world several times over, so their potential is not entirely theoretical.
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