Can Diamonds Fight Climate Change

Ten reasons diamonds are one of our best weapons in the fight against global warming.

1) A diamond is the most compressed form of carbon there is. The bigger your diamond, the more carbon you’ve helped contain in the smallest possible space.

2) A diamond—at least a well-cut diamond—helps reflect global-warming sunlight back into space. It may be a small step, but anything you can do to send solar radiation back towards the sun will help us avoid catastrophic global warming.

3) A diamond on your finger represents a conscious decision not to take that extravagant, carbon-spewing trip to Peru, or Thailand, or Sweden, and spend the money in a less polluting manner by buying jewelry instead.

4) The more people buy diamonds, the more the low-income miners who handle the actual digging will be able to feed their families, and not have to resort to eco-destructive policies like burning down rainforests to plant crops. Every tree that is saved reduces carbon dioxide in the air.

5) Of all your possessions, diamonds require the least energy to move around. Compare the energy requirements of moving a diamond across town, to: your golf clubs, your bowling ball, your fishing tackle, or your anvil collection.

6) Diamonds are sustainable. They won’t wear down and need to be replaced, as will other possessions, a process that wastes energy. Just imagine, if cars lasted as long as diamonds, we could save a great deal of energy at the manufacturing level.

7) Diamonds are a symbol of love, and can equally represent your love of a clean environment. Think of them as a lifetime bumper sticker that shows off your own eco-consciousness, and reminds others they need to be doing their part as well.

8) Diamonds are going to be a critical component in making solar energy commercially viable in the future. We know this because two James Bond films featured diamonds as a mechanism for harvesting clean energy from the sun. (“Diamonds Are Forever” and “Die Another Day”.)

9) Diamonds literally suck heat out of the air. Because of their density, they are slow to warm, and many BTU’s of global warming energy will be consumed trying to raise their temperature if you step from a cold environment, to a warmer one. (And because we are all moving to a warmer environment because of global warming, a diamond’s tendency to act like a heat sink will be ongoing.)

10) Diamonds are a slap in the face to the oil companies, because they represent concentrated carbon energy that Exxon/Mobil will never get its hands on. Think of diamonds as “fossil fuel that got away.”

Diamonds are truly nature’s “greenest” gemstone!