The problem: Climate Change
Human activities have warmed the climate at a rate that is unprecedented. While climate change is poised to have devastating impacts everywhere, those in global extreme poverty will be hardest hit. Climate change will both push more people into extreme poverty and catastrophically affect the lives of people already in extreme poverty. According to the World Bank, “up to 132 million people may fall into poverty by 2030 due to the manifold effects of climate change.”[1] The effects of climate change on the world’s poor include forced displacement, destruction of homes and property, health effects from extreme weather events (droughts, floods, wildfires, hurricanes, exposure to extreme temperatures), impacts on crop yields, food prices and food insecurity.[2]
The most widespread scientific benchmark for measuring global warming is the rise in average temperature relative to pre-industrial levels. This has already increased by 1.1°C. The 2015 Paris Agreement aims to ensure no higher than a 2°C rise by 2100 and endeavours to limit it to 1.5°C. But even those increases would be catastrophic. And the scale of global action required to limit warming to 1.5°C – a devastating, nonetheless best–case scenario – is historically unprecedented.[3]
The solution: Carbon Removal
In order to fully address climate change, we need to both reduce emissions and remove carbon that already exists in our atmosphere. Removing carbon is a critical component of keeping warming below catastrophic levels, but has nonetheless been relatively neglected. According to the IPCC, the future of a livable planet relies, at least partly, on removing anywhere from 100 billion to a trillion tons of carbon already in our atmosphere by 2100, depending on how much we keep adding to it.[4]
Carbon removal solutions – methods of removing previously emitted carbon dioxide from the ambient air – encompass a broad range of approaches. These include natural solutions, such as planting more trees and changing our agricultural practices to those that store carbon in soils. They also include technological interventions, such as enhanced weathering and direct air capture [5]
Numerous engineering, financial, and political challenges stand in the way of scaling up carbon removal solutions.[6] However, to meet our climate goals, it is imperative that we deploy permanent and safe carbon removal solutions in the coming decades at an extraordinary scale and in a just and equitable way.
