Chats on the Charles

The Pacific Ocean shimmered like a sheet of diamonds as another golden California sun finished its day’s work. Despite this idyllic distraction, it was hard to avert my gaze from the thick plume of white smoke rising from the hills surrounding Los Angeles. Nature both beautiful and punishing.

Flying from Los Angeles last week provided a bird’s eye view of the historic forest fires ravaging Southern California. At the same time many world leaders were meeting in Paris to discuss progress on the 2015 Climate Accords. The juxtaposition was ironic. The fury of an ecological balance disturbed contrasted with the futility of the efforts to repair that damage.

There is a worldwide consensus that elevated levels of carbon in the atmosphere are leading to global warming. This is resulting in an increased frequency of severe weather events like the one California is experiencing. Most scientific models point to massively increased human industrial activity as the chief culprit responsible for this rise in carbon. Despite the deceiving megaphones of megalomaniacs this is established fact.

For billions of years most of the carbon on the planet was buried deep in oceans or the earth’s crust as organic material. Human, animal and geologic activity moved that carbon from deep in the earth to the atmosphere. Plant photosynthesis, and carbon capturing minerals removed the excess back into the earth keeping the rate of carbon accumulation in the atmosphere low and therefore our climate in a delicate balance. Two hundred years of industrial activity has dramatically increased the amount of carbon in the air because the natural carbon sinks cannot cope with the increased emissions from burning fossil fuels. The debate is on how to reverse this trend without curtailing the economic growth of the global economy.

Achieving a lasting carbon balance in our atmosphere involves two elements. First we need to stop pumping excess carbon into the air. Second, once an ongoing equilibrium is achieved, we need to remove the extra stock of carbon already emitted over the last two centuries. The Paris accord primarily deals with the first part of the problem, namely reducing the carbon we are currently emitting. I believe the accords will fail to meet even this limited remediation goal due to the economic aspirations of several billion low income people and the current non-participation of the United States.

Achieving a sustainable carbon balance in the atmosphere will once again require scientific innovation and ingenuity. There are encouraging signs in the form of Planetary Scale Carbon Capture And Sequestration Technologies.  These technologies not only help us achieve our zero net carbon emission goals while maintaining economic growth but can also begin to move the atmospheric carbon levels back down to more appropriate levels. Two recent articles in The Economist and The New Yorker highlight the state of progress in this area. One significant approach is to dramatically increase agricultural yields so arable land can be shrunk by half and the unused land planted with millions of trees. Essentially we need to plant trees over a Canada sized area to start making a difference. Another effective strategy is to directly capture the carbon from air and store it deep within the earth. Several exciting new technologies are trying to implement these approaches economically and in a way that can be scaled to a planetary level.

The scientists chasing these audacious goals need to be strongly encouraged and supported by public and private capital. I hope an increasing number of students entering the fields of science and technology take this on as a defining problem of their careers. As intrepid researchers literally turn carbon in the air back into potential diamonds (diamonds are essentially carbon crystals fused together deep within the earth’s core at very high pressure), they will not only make fortunes for themselves but will also save our planet.

Only if they succeed, to paraphrase DeBeers, will Earth be forever.