During the 2019 Amazon Re:MARS conference which took place back in June, Robert Downey Junior announced that he was forming a new company that would use nano-tech and robots to clean up the environment starting early next year.
He was there as the opening speaker for the Las Vegas based conference which covers the subject of MARS – Machine learning, Automation, Robotics and Space, and his speech was pretty Tony Starkish. Many noted the similarities between the actor and the character whose success and popularity was so instrumental to the early success of Marvel Studios, whose most recent movie to be front-lined by RDJ is currently the highest grossing film of all time. For anyone who has had their head in the sand for the last decade, his character in the films, Tony Stark, was known for giving similarly impassioned speeches to large audiences and also spearheaded the use of nano-tech to save the world.
Although he didn’t get into the details of how this technology would work to improve the environment, or which other partners will comprise the coalition, he did speak about the benefits of AI in general and how that technology will play an ever increasing role in our business and personal lives moving forward.
As of September 1, 2019, the Footprint Coalition website doesn’t provide any additional details about the operation and has a form up where people can sign-up for their newsletter. RDJ is now added to the list of celebrities who have launched their own environmental foundations, including fellow Avengers actor Mark Ruffalo.
This all sounds pretty awesome if it’s legit, but it left me wondering what role nano-tech could play in helping the environment, and what the realistic timeline is for deploying it. According to The Scientific American, the technology could be the “Holy Grail” of climate change and has the ability to mitigate pollution by pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere and converting it into other, useful materials. It is reported to be nearly ready for deployment.
Nanomaterials can convert carbon dioxide into useful products like alcohol. The materials could be simple chemical catalysts or photochemical in nature that work in the presence of sunlight.
That’s pretty cool, but it sure seems like a lot of work for a beer…
This is exciting news in my opinion. I signed up for the newsletter, and I’m keeping my fingers out of my gauntlet and cautiously crossed that RDJ’s real-life “assembly” of super-influencers and, most likely, super-rich individuals and companies will be as successful at saving the world in real-life as his on-screen counterparts.
