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To keep or improve on this trajectory would likely mean major investments in technology. But not everyone agrees that’s where our money should go.
Many environmental groups are deeply skeptical of carbon capture. Most of the 40 million tons in carbon gas captured today by carbon capture and storage (that is from industrial smokestacks as opposed from the plain air) is injected into the ground and used to force more crude to the surface— thus further extending the life of fossil fuels. In July, hundreds of climate activist groups signed a letter encouraging the Biden administration to stay away from that sort of carbon capture.
Earlier this week, Thanu Yakupitiyage, the U.S. director of communications for 350.org, one of the groups that signed the letter, said its position hadn’t changed since the IPCC report. “Often the Biden government and other world leaders start with carbon capture and other false solutions,” she said. “In order to tackle the climate crisis, first we have to keep oil and coal in the ground. It is a matter of priorities.”
But Noah Deich, the co-founder and president of Carbon 180, a carbon removal advocacy group, hopes that the IPCC assessment shows that the time for such “either/or” arguments has passed. “We are simply out of time for picking a preferred method for carbon removal and we simply have to use every tool at our disposal,” he said.
For now the political pendulum in Washington seems to have shifted towards favoring carbon removal. In the bipartisan infrastructure bill the Senate passed this week, there was a record $9 billion plus for carbon capture. Deich notes the bill has $3.5 billion for four regional direct air capture hubs and another $3.5 billion for transport and storage of carbon including money to build a massive pipeline network to carry captured CO₂.
Yet even if some atmospheric carbon dioxide removal moonshot is successful beyond our wildest dreams, the IPCC isn’t offering any kind of panacea. “Sustained net-negative emissions might eventually result in reversing temperature increases,” the report concludes, “but other climate changes would continue in their current direction for decades to millennia.”
There is no point in getting depressed by this, said Friedmann. “Whether we are optimistic or pessimistic, the work looks the same. The IPCC has outlined the problem. Now we can get on with the tasks.”
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