Why Carbon Removal is Necessary

I recently wrote a Forbes article on carbon removal technology and what options are out there to test and potentially scale in the future. In this article I wanted to unpack why I fundamentally believe carbon removal is necessary. It's not the only thing we must do to reverse climate change but it's part of the solution and is becoming increasingly important. Let's unpack why.

Humans put up over 40 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year. The carbon in the atmosphere stays there for a very long period of time (300 - 10,000 years). Our current carbon concentration is over 420 ppm and we are currently seeing Earth get warmer at an unprecedented rate (ex. 2023 was the hottest year in the modern temperature record). The effects of CO2 in the atmosphere have proven to be catastrophic already resulting in a higher frequency of extreme weather events (heat waves, floods, wildfires, etc), sea level rise and an increase in crop failures. The existential threat of this global heating is agricultural collapse and inevitably, human civilization ceasing to exist.

Despite currently being at over 420 ppm, the Earth has warmed by just over 1 degree in the last 100 years. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) believes we can stay under 2 degrees despite emitting more CO2 and even hitting 500 ppm. This is a flawed and dangerous notion. Not only does history contradict it (the last time the world was over 500ppm it was 5 degrees warmer) but the IPCC’s notion discounts the delayed effect of CO2 in the atmosphere. The current temperature increase and higher frequency of climate disasters that we are seeing are in fact a result of the carbon put in the atmosphere 40-50 years ago. This delayed reaction is what should make people panic because it means that as a society we have yet not felt the impacts of being at over 420 ppm.

Now that we’re aligned on the reality of the situation at hand, let me answer why carbon removal is necessary. At a basic level, we need to remove all the CO2 we’ve historically put up because if we reduce our global emissions tomorrow to 0, as a society we still need to deal with the effects of the CO2 currently in the atmosphere. We’ve likely broken the carbon cycle and made it so that many of our natural safeguards against climate change (i.e. carbons sinks like the Amazon) are not as effective as they once were. Furthermore, carbon removal becomes even more necessary when one realizes that our other solutions to battle climate change are limited and/or not ready.

Beyond carbon removal, the other solutions to battle climate change include carbon capture at source, planting trees/reforestation, moving away from fossil fuels and to renewables, and electrifying our society. Carbon capture at source, albeit a great idea, is unlikely to be executed properly given that the responsibility of doing it would fall upon the very people who benefit greatly from the fossil fuels industry (they won’t feel a sense of urgency, they don’t have a direct incentive to do this well, and they are not well equipped to do this). Planting trees is noble but there is a finite amount of land and the solution is not enough (if each person in the U.S. planted one tree per year it would offset only 3% of the carbon dioxide they produce each year). Not to mention deforestation and the increase in wildfires makes trees a contributor to CO2 in the atmosphere (the Brazilian Amazon released ~20% more carbon dioxide than it absorbed over the last decade). The transition away from fossil fuels will likely take several decades and if we wait for that transition to be done we will be in a far worse place. Renewables also have limitations (solar energy systems can only work during the day, wind can only be produced at scale in certain countries). Finally we’ve done a good job electrifying some parts of our society but a lot more still has to be done even within transportation (we need to ideally move to a society where shared electric vehicles become the norm).

We need to remove carbon from the atmosphere and our oceans to clean the slate while all the other ways to combat climate change are given time and resources to ensure we don’t make the same mistakes as a society again. Carbon removal can become a multi-trillion dollar industry and Canada is well equipped to be at the epicenter of it (companies like Deep Sky have identified this opportunity and are well positioned to become leaders in the space). Our fight isn’t against climate naysayers, it’s against the establishment that believes we are still below 1.5 and can stay below it.