Is it really only fifty years? I would have guessed a couple hundred at least. Climate change is really a time problem. Given hundreds of years we'll be off carbon based economies purely for economic reasons. In fact I think that will largely be true in less than a century. So anything like this that buys us time may actually be all it takes.
But how about stopping deforestation? That seems like it would be more effective - pay developing countries based on maintaining their forested areas, policed using satellite data. I think we should also focus on planting trees and basically every other mitigation we can at the same time - doing one thing doesn't preclude others.
This is being done with some success in the rain forests of one of those deforestation happy palm oil producers, Indonesia.
The trees can be gasified and turned into biochar, and buried into the soil to capture the carbon and improve the soil quality (while generating electricity and heat). Then new trees can be planted in their place. Or they can be used to build buildings which sequesters carbon similarly (albeit for a shorter span of time).
But how about stopping deforestation? That seems like it would be more effective - pay developing countries based on maintaining their forested areas, policed using satellite data. I think we should also focus on planting trees and basically every other mitigation we can at the same time - doing one thing doesn't preclude others.
This is being done with some success in the rain forests of one of those deforestation happy palm oil producers, Indonesia.
https://www.wri.org/blog/2019/02/indonesia-reduces-deforesta...