Year 3, Month 4, Day 22: I’m Waiting To Pay Off My Credit Cards Until After I Win A MacArthur. What?

Cute. The Toronto Star looks at direct carbon capture from the atmosphere, leading with a cat:

Sometimes when your cat jumps on a neighbour’s rooftop it can lead to good things.

That’s how it worked for Graciela Chichilnisky, co-founder and managing director of New York City-based Global Thermostat. Chichilnisky’s five-year-old company is one of a handful of start-ups looking for a low-cost way of capturing carbon dioxide directly out of the air.

Such a solution would certainly be welcome in the battle against human-caused climate change, and Global Thermostat thinks it has the right approach. It uses waste heat from fossil-fuelled power plants and industrial facilities – and even thermal energy from concentrated solar power plants—to activate its carbon-capture process.

Its easier said than done, of course. The road from idea to development to demonstration to commercial production is a long and expensive one.

We need resources in these technologies, yes — but we can’t avoid necessary changes in our own ways of life, either. Sent April 12:

The field of direct atmospheric carbon capture holds enormous promise for the long-term prosperity and happiness of our species. But the prospect of a technological fix sometime in the next half-century does not excuse us from the immediate demands made by an imminent planetary crisis. We must begin transforming our energy economy from fossil fuels to renewables, transforming our food economy to reduce the impact of GHG-heavy meat farming, and transforming ourselves into a culture focused on the long-term consequences of our decisions.

Furthermore, if we place our hopes in technological wizardry, we’ve got to put our wallets there too. All the brilliant engineers in the world won’t accomplish a thing if they’re not funded adequately, and when solutions emerge to the ongoing disaster of global climate change, they’ll need economic support on an unprecedented scale.

Yes, it’s going to be expensive — but nowhere near as costly as failure.

Warren Senders