Sadly I am a bit hopeless about climate change. Even if every person on earth dropped everything and started making biochar to be buried it would not sequester enough carbon to make a difference.
Hi! I work a lot with carbon dioxide removal systems. If every person on Earth dropped everything and started making biochar, it would definitely make a huge difference. Yes, we add a lot of carbon dioxide to the air of a year, but it’s doable to remove it. Humanity has taken on much bigger challenges before and succeeded. Now that’s not to say that it’s likely. I think it’s entirely unlikely that we avert the worst impacts of climate change unless something big changes. Thankfully, we get to choose what to work on every day, and I get to choose to work on that alongside inspiring people.
(and yes, this isn’t what the article is about, but it seems like it’s what everyone is responding to)
> Humanity has taken on much bigger challenges before and succeeded.
Feel free to list them, we're basically reverse terra forming ourselves out of existence at that point, I don't think we've done anything even remotely close to that scale in such time frame
During World War II, the United States spent 40% of its GDP on the war. So we can spend big on things when we decide to.
That would be the equivalent of $12 trillion per year today, and we would clean up the climate in a jiffy with that. It would be a huge opportunity for job creation, manufacturing, innovation. It’s wild as a society we’ve convinced ourselves that stabilizing the climate is a cost instead of a massive opportunity.
> During World War II, the United States spent 40% of its GDP on the war. So we can spend big on things when we decide to.
The United States wasn’t the only one spending that much on war, that’s why we were able to do so. What incentive do countries have to spend money on carbon capture? Any money spent on that is money not being invested in generating more wealth, so there is zero incentive to move first, you’ll just fall behind and become economically and potentially physically vulnerable.
If we could convince all major powers to all spend money on carbon capture, it would work great. That’s a simple ask but an almost impossible thing to negotiate.
Otherwise, there’s no incentive to act first, there’s actually great incentive to not act first.
I desperately wish the world could work together on this problem, but I don’t see why we would given the situation.