Probably not. This sort of project is used by bad-faith actors, and naive policymakers, to justify not taking urgent action to curtail emissions. There’s a good case for saying it would be better if this sort of piffling demonstration didn’t exist, because then it would be harder to delay action on emissions
Unfortunately the reality is that if we do not figure out how to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere, we are 100% going to breach a tipping point for CO2. We crossed the line of being able to stop this with CO2 reductions decades ago.
Per the article, building the plant generated about 15% of the CO2 it will remove. Operating it and downtime consume another 20% or so. It’s still a net benefit…but a tiny one.
25kg per year, per tree. Let’s plant these “trees” everywhere.
If every one of the 20 some million adult Canadians planted a tree once a week for say 10 weeks a year, just imagine. 20 million x 10 x 25kg sequestered a year later and you get additional benefits. No need to change your lifestyle, just plant on on the fringe of grass by the Walmart parking spot, drop on in by your workplace, etc. Golf courses: sorry we need trees, your lifestyle will change sooner rather than later anyway golf course user.
Edit: 5 million metric tonnes, I think.
And, hey, why not pay young people to do this? You get a tray of trees in the morning. Sign into your app, document each tree. In addition to planting the app sends you to previous locations others planted trees at to verify the tree is there.
The messaging that needs to happen is this: we need to reduce emissions drastically on a scale never before seen AND we need to fund research on extracting as much CO2 from the air as possible or we are looking at this being the worst mass extinction in Earth’s 4.5 billion year history and that includes the great dying.
It is not enough to focus on Carbon capture OR CO2 emissions reduction. We need both and we need them now.
Better 3 seconds than 0. We need everything we can to fight climate change if we are even going to have a chance of mitigating the damage.
Probably not. This sort of project is used by bad-faith actors, and naive policymakers, to justify not taking urgent action to curtail emissions. There’s a good case for saying it would be better if this sort of piffling demonstration didn’t exist, because then it would be harder to delay action on emissions
Unfortunately the reality is that if we do not figure out how to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere, we are 100% going to breach a tipping point for CO2. We crossed the line of being able to stop this with CO2 reductions decades ago.
this doesn’t mean anything. they did the same with a snowball once.
Net negative likely. How much CO2 was emitted to create this plant?
Per the article, building the plant generated about 15% of the CO2 it will remove. Operating it and downtime consume another 20% or so. It’s still a net benefit…but a tiny one.
I have a way to do this but it would require people to plant trees.
https://ecotree.green/en/how-much-co2-does-a-tree-absorb
25kg per year, per tree. Let’s plant these “trees” everywhere.
If every one of the 20 some million adult Canadians planted a tree once a week for say 10 weeks a year, just imagine. 20 million x 10 x 25kg sequestered a year later and you get additional benefits. No need to change your lifestyle, just plant on on the fringe of grass by the Walmart parking spot, drop on in by your workplace, etc. Golf courses: sorry we need trees, your lifestyle will change sooner rather than later anyway golf course user.
Edit: 5 million metric tonnes, I think.
And, hey, why not pay young people to do this? You get a tray of trees in the morning. Sign into your app, document each tree. In addition to planting the app sends you to previous locations others planted trees at to verify the tree is there.
5 million tonnes.
But then if 4000 tonnes is equal to reversing 3s worth of emissions, 5 million tonnes would still only be 3750s, or just over 1 hour.
Yup, not awesome but you do it year after year. It might help raise consciousness. But, yes, ultimately a drop in the bucket.
Removed by mod
The messaging that needs to happen is this: we need to reduce emissions drastically on a scale never before seen AND we need to fund research on extracting as much CO2 from the air as possible or we are looking at this being the worst mass extinction in Earth’s 4.5 billion year history and that includes the great dying. It is not enough to focus on Carbon capture OR CO2 emissions reduction. We need both and we need them now.