Interview with Peter Fiekowsky

Peter Fiekowsky, author of "Climate Restoration - The Only Future That Will Sustain the Human Race"

Peter Fiekowsky's Website

Fiekowsky’s mission in life is to leave a world we’re proud of to our children. In service to that mission, Fiekowsky has a 30-year track record as a citizen lobbyist for global poverty reduction and climate policy. A decade ago he turned to researching how to restore our climate.

Peter Fiekowsky is an MIT-educated physicist and engineer, serial entrepreneur, philanthropist, social innovator, and author. He has worked at NASA and the Fairchild/ Schlumberger Artificial Intelligence Lab in Palo Alto; taught at MIT; and developed his own machine vision company, Automated Visual Inspection LLC (AVI). He holds 27 patents and is on the board of Climate Capex, a fintech company designed to help complete the global transition to 100 percent clean energy by 2040 by tripling the rate of investment in solar projects.


A decade ago, when it became clear that global warming would endanger the future for all of us, Fiekowsky turned his energies to restoring a climate that will instead promote the flourishing of humanity as well as Earth’s current ecosystems. He launched the Foundation for Climate Restoration in 2017 to work with top scientists, innovators, policymakers, and others, to create the understanding and policy needed to further climate restoration, and served as its Board Chairman until 2020.​

Fiekowsky has worked closely with the academic and entrepreneurial leaders who are developing the viable, scalable, and permanent solutions that constitute the climate-restoration path.

Organizations Fiekowsky has built to help achieve climate restoration include the following.

The Foundation for Climate Restoration (FCR) works with top scientists, innovators, policymakers, citizens, faith leaders, activists, and students to create the understanding and policy needed to further climate restoration. The Foundation has been instrumental in the adoption of climate restoration as a goal by both the Vatican and the United Nations.

Methane Action (MA is a nonprofit organization that convenes scientific experts, environmental lawyers, philanthropists, and policy experts to ensure the implementation of solutions that will reduce atmospheric methane concentrations to pre-industrial levels.

Methane Oxidation Corporation (MOC) is implementing what may become the first climate-restoration success: restoring atmospheric methane levels by 2030 while enabling companies to neutralize their carbon footprint through the active reduction of atmospheric methane.

The Stable Planet Alliance is working to frame the next set of UN Development Goals under the umbrella of achieving a healthy, sustainable population by 2100.

Fiekowsky has been an investor in and advisor to many companies working in the climate restoration field, in particular synthetic limestone, clean energy financing, cold fusion, ocean restoration, kelp, and methane oxidation.

The Paris Accords, widely accepted as the key to solving today’s climate crisis, set a goal of zero net carbon emissions by 2050. But that’s not good enough. The only way to guarantee a livable future is climate restoration, which can reduce greenhouse gases to historic levels. Scientist and entrepreneur Peter Fiekowsky explains the technology and maps a practical path that will let humankind survive and thrive.

As Fiekowsky explains in Climate Restoration, this will require removing a trillion tons of excess CO2 from the atmosphere. The good news is that this task, while enormous and technically challenging, is eminently feasible. Scientists and engineers have developed four major technologies for greenhouse gas removal and storage: Ocean iron fertilization; synthetic limestone manufacture; seaweed permaculture; and methane oxidation.

Fiekowsky shows that these technologies are safe and practical—and, even more remarkable, that they require little if any government funding, since they can be financed largely through existing markets. For these reasons, they have enormous promise as vehicles for achieving climate restoration.

With the global climate crisis continuing to spiral out of control, the time for tough conversations about what it will really take to create a healthy future for humanity is here. Climate Restoration will inspire those conversations and, ultimately, the actions we must take to ensure a livable planet for generations to come.

“Effective and galvanizing . . . An invigorating, thought-provoking plan to address climate change.”—Kirkus Reviews

“With inviting clarity and an engaging optimism, Fiekowsky considers four promising solutions [for climate restoration], presenting the possibilities with persuasive power. He simplifies the science for easy comprehension, and makes the case with such hopeful vigor that the book becomes something rare: a dead-serious, no-illusions look at climate change that doesn’t stir despair.

Michael Carter, Co-Host

Michael Carter's Website