@maxxrosenblum
Instagram · Greenscreen Talking Head
@maxxrosenblum America’s freshwater mussels are doing the ugliest, most valuable job in the country’s rivers. A single adult filters as much as fifteen gallons of water a day, a dense bed the equivalent of a municipal treatment plant, and some individuals live longer than a human. Yet of the 300 or so species native to North America, roughly 70% are imperilled and more than 30 are extinct. Dams, sediment and the pearl-button industry took the first cut in the 19th and 20th centuries; since the 1970s, a still-unexplained collapse has hollowed out populations across the Southeast, sparing the fish and insects in the same streams. What makes this interesting is not the dying animal but the growing asset class around it. Private finance for nature hit $102bn in circulation last year, eleven times the 2020 figure. Some $2.1bn of venture capital flowed into nature-focused startups in 2024, double 2019, and 196 governments have pledged $200bn a year by 2030 under the Kunming-Montreal framework. Markets are emerging to pay for measurable ecological work, nitrogen removal, carbon drawdown, biodiversity gain. Few candidates fit the brief as cleanly as the freshwater mussel: output in gallons per day, buyers under statutory pressure, supply already being produced at taxpayer expense in state hatcheries. An unlovely creature, and perhaps a mispriced one. #economics #vc #ecosystems #mussels
