Frank Swain: The device that reverses CO2 emissions
The year is 2050. Walk out of the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum in Midland, Texas, and drive north across the sun-baked scrub where a few remaining oil pumpjacks nod lazily in the heat, and then you'll see it: a glittering palace rising out of the pancake-flat ground. The land here is mirrored: the choppy silver-blue waves of an immense solar array stretch out in all directions. In the distance, they lap at a colossal grey wall five storeys high and almost a kilometre long. Behind the wall, you glimpse the snaking pipes and gantries of a chemical plant.
As you get closer you see the wall is moving, shimmering –
it is entirely made up of huge fans whirring in steel boxes. You think to
yourself that it looks like a gigantic air conditioning unit, blown up to
incredible proportions. In a sense, that's exactly what this is. You're looking
at a direct air capture (DAC) plant, one of tens of thousands like it across
the globe. Together, they're trying to cool the planet by sucking carbon
dioxide out of the air. This Texan landscape was made famous for the billions
of barrels of oil pulled out of its depths during the 20th Century. Now the
legacy of those fossil fuels – the CO2 in our air – is being pumped back into
the emptied reservoirs.
If the world is to meet Paris Agreement goals of limiting
global warming to 1.5C by 2100, sights like this may be necessary by
mid-century….
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210310-the-trillion-dollar-plan-to-capture-co2
This
obscure energy treaty is the greatest threat to the planet you’ve never heard
of
Erin Brockovich - Plummeting sperm counts, shrinking penises: toxic chemicals threaten humanity
"DoD: At Least 126 Bases Report Water
Contaminants Linked to Cancer, Birth Defects"
John Sentamu - It’s time to
act against the oil companies causing death and destruction
Matt Sheehan - Silent documentary on China's
unspooling environmental disasters
Joseph Stiglitz on artificial intelligence: We're
going towards a more divided society
Restoring
forests could capture two-thirds of the carbon humans have added to the
atmosphere
From Siberia to Australia:
the age of fire is the bleakest warning yet
The Amazon is burning. The
climate is changing. And we're doing nothing to stop it
David Cox - The planet's prodigious poo problem
Owen Jones: Why don’t we
treat the climate crisis with the same urgency as coronavirus?
Abolish War - Russell-Einstein Manifesto of 1955
Chomsky: Internationalism or Extinction
