After the pledge: Scientists scramble to make politicians' climate goals a reality
It doesn’t look like much: a white steel box the size of a small garden shed, a fan sticking out of one side, sitting in the middle of a stark volcanic lava field.
But it might just be one of the keys to humankind’s survival.
The box is a carbon dioxide collector. It sucks in air and filters out the greenhouse gas. Then the machine sends the gas to be pumped 2,000 feet underground into basalt bedrock. There, the gas turns into rock itself, locked away safely for hundreds of thousands of years.
The collector is testing one of the buzziest new technologies in the quest to save the world from potentially catastrophic global warming, direct air capture. Climate scientists have concluded that to avert disaster, reducing greenhouse gas emissions alone will not be enough. On top of that effort, one way or another, we will have to actually remove CO2 from the atmosphere too.
As global leaders meet Tuesday in Paris on the second anniversary of the Paris climate agreement, the world is waking up to a reality embedded in that accord: Of the 116 scenarios that the Intergovernmental
Out of thin air... Including the carbon sinkMake 'em pay