Are any technologies capable of solving the climate crisis at scale? To tackle big risks requires big imagination and big bucks. And, except for annihilation from global thermonuclear warfare, no set of risks loom larger than the continuing atmospheric buildup of greenhouse gases, chiefly carbon dioxide. Earth is responding to this buildup through rising temperatures, melting glaciers, expanding seas, migrating species and disease vectors and a host of other impacts. Scientists and policymakers believe that the Paris accord goal of restraining warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2030 is or soon will be surpassed and that temperature increases of up to 7F by 2100 are within the realm of possibility. These large-scale impacts have clearly gotten the attention of government policymakers and the private sector, most particularly the fossil fuel industry. The enactment of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act provided significant funding for initiatives to decarbonize the economy and, more specifically, authorizes taxpayer dollars to underwrite investments in carbon capture and sequestration, hydrogen and a host of other technologies. While fossil fuel companies have consistently opposed the federal government’s efforts to curtail greenhouse gases through regulatory policies, some major producers (including ExxonMobil, Chevron and Occidental Petroleum) are building new businesses (often underwritten by generous public subsidies) designed to capture their own emissions while marketing technologies and services to other firms. A growing number of experiments are underway across a range of technologies, including: Other, more exotic "geoengineering" concepts to capture or chemically transform carbon emissions are in the talking or early building stage. Scientists in Greenland plan to harvest "rock flour" from retreating glaciers and apply its ability to extract CO2 when... |