“For decades, scientists have tried to figure out ways to reverse climate change by pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and storing it underground. They’ve tried using trees, giant machines that suck CO2 out of the sky, complicated ocean methods that involve growing and burying huge quantities of kelp.”

                                                ~ Shannon Osaka

The prime climate change demon is carbon dioxide (CO2), and we can’t seem to get our minds around how to avoid it. Humans and animals naturally breathe in oxygen and breathe out CO2. Plants like trees breathe in CO2 and breathe out oxygen. Unfortunately, most man-made energy sources use up oxygen and generate CO2. The big issue is that we’re generating a lot more CO2 than the planet can handle without serious consequences to the climate — and, therefore, us.

Climate change has occurred forever, with swings back and forth as to chemical composition, temperature, moisture and other factors not always conducive to human life. Unfortunately, today, humans are creating major impacts through uses related to energy production and just plain ‘modern’ life in general. We are a lot better off now with all our civilized and humane ways, but the planet is suffering terribly for it. The big challenge is figuring out how to adjust our actions to restore and protect the planet while continuing to enjoy those civilized ways — and the planet.

Pretty much everything we have done since the beginning of civilization to improve the quality of our lives has had climate consequences. The power we use for transportation, manufacturing, climate control, clean air and water, health and medicine — almost every aspect of modern life — has a negative impact on the environment. It is kind of like learning not to pee in the pool you’re swimming in. If only one person did it, it’s probably insignificant. However, if everybody is doing it, we should either stay out of the water or take action to change the swimmers’ ways.

Climate reporter Shannon Osaka quotes Chris Rivest, a partner at Breakthrough Energy Ventures, “We’ve bet the future of our planet on our ability to remove CO2 from the air. Pretty much every IPCC (United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) scenario that has a livable planet involves us pulling like 5 to 10 gigatons of CO2 out of the air by mid- to late-century.”

We’ve all seen the tree-planting programs designed to help with earth’s CO2/oxygen balance, but that effort alone is not enough. There is more to be done. Journalist Gabriel Popkin notes, “For decades, efforts to cut fossil fuel emissions have focused on power plants, factories, and automobiles, not farmland. ‘Agriculture has just not been at the table in a meaningful way,’ says Ben Thomas, senior policy director for agriculture at the Environmental Defense Fund.”

“But it should be. For all of industrial farming’s success at feeding people and livestock and producing biofuel, the sector is also a major polluter, accounting for roughly 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and roughly a quarter of emissions globally.”

“A new kind of food may soon be arriving on grocery store shelves: climate smart. Under the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities, a nascent U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) program, this amalgam of farming methods aims to keep the American agricultural juggernaut steaming ahead while slashing the sector’s immense greenhouse gas footprint.”

“They will achieve this by paying growers to adopt practices thought to either reduce greenhouse gas emissions or capture carbon dioxide from the air. These practices include reducing or eliminating tilling of soil, planting “cover crops” that grow during the off-season and are not harvested, improving how farmers use fertilizer and manure, and planting trees … More importantly, the agency aims to catalyze new, premium markets for products such as climate-smart corn, soybeans, and beef, which it hopes will spur farmers to continue these practices far into the future.”

Osaka touts another ‘new’ approach to the removal of CO2 from sources that send it to the atmosphere. It involves making bricks out of smushed pieces of plants and creating “a method for turning bits of wood chips and rice hulls into low-cost, dehydrated chunks of plant matter. Those blocks of carbon-laden plant matter — which look a bit like shoe-box sized Lego blocks — can then be buried deep underground for hundreds of years.”

“Graphyte’s approach uses the power of plants and trees to photosynthesize and pull carbon dioxide from the air. While trees and plants are excellent at carbon capture, they don’t store that carbon for very long — when a plant burns or decays, its stored carbon comes spilling back out into the air and soil … Graphyte plans to avoid that decomposition by taking plant waste from timber harvesters and farmers and drying it thoroughly, removing all the microbes that could cause it to decompose and release greenhouse gases. Then, in a process that they call ‘carbon casting, it will compress the waste and wrap it into Lego-like bricks, for easier storage about 10 feet underground … The approach, the company claims, could store a ton of CO2 for around $100 a ton, a number long considered a milestone for affordably removing carbon dioxide from the air.”

These and other ideas may be game-changers over time. However, with new climate disasters looming every year, and our critical need to use more and more energy for expanding populations, it is time to keep an eye on the damage we’re doing to our planet.

After all, the Earth is the only pool we have.

Shannon Osaka, The Lego-Like Way to Get CO2 Out Of The Atmosphere, November 13, 2023, The Washington Post

Gabriel Popkin, The Biden Administration Bets Big on ‘Climate Smart’ Agriculture, July 13, 2023, Yale360