There have been an endless number of climate-driven disasters over the last year. The climate story of the past ten years has been slow but steady. A majority of countries have announced plans to get to net zero on carbon dioxide emissions by the end of the 21st century.
Clean energy became cheaper quicker than expected. The cost of both solar energy and batteries has fallen in the last decade. In the world today, solar is the cheapest form of new electricity to build, and electric vehicles represent more than a third of new vehicle sales.
This doesn't mean we can relax. It's far from it. We are not close to meeting our climate goals. We can only emit around 10 years of emissions if we want to limit warming to 1.5C. Even with the progress we've made, the increase in global temperatures is very likely to surpass 1.5C by the early 2030s.
Where do we go from here? There is a short answer.
It is important to point out that climate change is gradual rather than sudden. There is no proof that 1.5C is a boundary. The risks become more unpredictable the further we push the climate beyond where it has been. Climate shifts in the past and potential future tipping points such as CO2 release from thaw permafrost should give us pause. If we want to reduce the harm we cause on ourselves, every tenth of a degree is important.
Just because we pass 1.5C doesn't mean we can't return. The world will stop warming if emissions are zero. If we remove more CO2 from the atmosphere than we emit it will cool the world back down. The removal of CO2 from the atmosphere and oceans is an essential part of meeting our climate goals. Climate models suggest that we need to remove 6 billion tons of CO2 per year by the end of the century in order to bring the temperature back down to 1.5C.
Every tenth of a degree matters if we want to minimise the damage
There is a form of carbon dioxide removal that people are familiar with. About a quarter of the CO2 we emit today is sequestered by the Earth's living systems. Changing how we manage agricultural land and pasture to get more carbon into the soil could be one way to enhance the natural carbon sink. It is inexpensive today, but it is likely to be temporary. As a result of climate change, trees may be cut down, soil may dry up, and beetles may kill trees. The land is limited to use. Half of the carbon dioxide removal that we need can be provided by trees and soil.
There are other ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Hundreds of companies around the world are quickly developing approaches like this. Direct air capture, which sucks CO2 directly from the atmosphere, taking agricultural waste or wood and storing carbon from it deep underground, spreading minerals like basalt that absorb CO2 from the atmosphere on to agricultural fields are included.
The approaches are less likely to be reversed. They are more expensive at the moment. We should focus on making them cheaper like we did with renewable energy. This is the goal of Frontier, a $925m advance market commitment that Stripe, where I am climate research lead, is part of. We want to send a signal to entrepreneurs and researchers that if they build and scale those early-stage technologies, we will buy them. A decade ago, this approach was used to speed up the development of the pneumococcal vaccine in low-income countries.
Climate science says that CO2 is forever. It will take half a million years before a ton of CO2 is completely removed from the atmosphere. If we want to counteract fossil fuel emissions, we need to put more carbon in trees or soils, but CO2 from fossil fuels needs to be mitigated. The Science Based Targets initiative only allows measures that permanently remove carbon from the atmosphere to neutralise a company's remaining fossil fuel emissions in their net zero standard.
Carbon removal should not be overstated. Reducing emissions is cheaper than removing CO2 from the atmosphere. We need to reduce global CO2 emissions by around 90% if we want to limit warming to 1.5C. We can't afford to ignore 10% of the solution to climate change.
The world spent $755 billion in the year 2020. Reducing emissions cost the world $755 billion in 2011. The money should be spent on carbon removal technologies. We can't assume that ways of removing billions of tons of CO2 will magically appear in the future. We can make net-zero a reality, stop the world from heating up, and give ourselves the tools to reverse global warming if we invest today.
Holly Jean Buck wrote "Why Net Zero Is Not Enough" about ending fossil fuels.
Is it possible to save the natural world in time?
Bill Gates wrote how to avoid a climate disaster.
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