Mother Jones
This story originally appeared on the Slate website and is reproduced here apart of the Climate Desk collaboration.
According to technological optimists, in the next two or three decades, humanity will embark on a new era of possibility. Super-smart computers and other advances may even make certain types of less risky, large-scale climate actions a reality. Open any number of sci-fi books from the last few decades and you have an idea of how nanotechnology could make planetary-scale engineering possible. (Kim Stanley Robinson’s work comes immediately to mind.) Maybe swarms of self-replicating photosynthetic nanobots will be able to quickly and cheaply suck CO2 from the air? What about coating all the world’s rooftops in organic solar panels? Or optimizing biofuel production from algae on the molecular scale? The possibilities are mind-boggling.
Earlier this month, delegates from virtually every country on Earth gathered in Geneva to produce the initial draft of a global climate agreement to be signed in Paris later this year. In it were several references to net zero or negative emissions after 2050.
On our current path, humanity is still tracking at (or even slightly above) the worst-case climate scenario laid out about a decade ago. The latest comprehensive update from the world’s climate scientists outlined a best-case scenario that is now likely to require a ramp-up of carbon capture-and-storage to meet emissions targets. If it works, sucking excess carbon dioxide from the air could result in net negative global carbon emissions by the end of the century, and likely provide our best hope for returning concentrations to pre-industrial levels in our lifetimes. If it works.
We’re still far, far from that trajectory—emissions continue to increase each year at the global level. We’ve waited so long to address escalating carbon emissions that we must honestly consider research into these technologies. And, let’s face it, trying to shift humanity off fossil fuels any time soon feels increasingly like a lost cause.
Taken from:
