Some good news just in from Copenhagen:
Which is obviously a great relief.
In the unlikely event that this fails to work, we can also report on the growing popularity of the idea of artificial ‘trees’. They look like this:
It seems they will absorb that pesky carbon so much better than the real thing:
‘Klaus Lackner, a physicist with the Earth Institute … estimates that each ‘tree’ would cost £12,000 and over its lifetime would capture almost 20 times the amount of CO2 it consumed during its production and operation … The institution calculates that 100,000 artificial trees could capture all emissions from Britain’s homes, transport and light industry. It says that five million would do the same for the whole world.’
Five million of them. Imagine that. You could leave all the lights on and not feel guilty.
We will return to the topic of ‘geo-engineering’ – less politely known as civilisation’s latest desperate get-out clause – another time in this blog. For now, relax your shoulders, breathe deeply and repeat after me: it’s all about carbon. Carbon is all it’s about.
She looks like the real thing
She tastes like the real thing
My fake plastic love.
But I can’t help the feeling
I could blow through the ceiling
If I just turn and run.
And it wears me out …
[...] I see Paul Kingsnorth has just blogged this photo at the Dark Mountain Project with the caption: “Which is obviously a [...]
Are those calculations correct? That would be a price tag of 60 billion pounds to capture the carbon emissions of the entire world, and if we double that amount, we could take carbon out of the atmosphere at the same rate we’re currently putting it there. That seems very cheap.
Something tells me that scaling up production might increase costs, but maybe not. If they would cost only that much, this actually seems like a good idea to me. I’d accept five million or more of those things world wide if it meant stabilizing the climate or even restoring it to it’s normal condition.
perfect! now if they can just tweak them to convert those troublesome gasses into shade, food and habitat for many thousands of beasties, purify water, produce topsoil, encourage cloud formation and rainfall, stabilise soils and provide a beautiful, low-energy, multiuse material when felled I’ll buy one.
Thanks Graeme. Any thoughts on where the ten million trees could be ‘planted’? Or how many of them will be needed to compensate also for the real trees which are currently being felled in their hundreds of thousands to make way for plantations to grow palm oil to burn in our cars? Or what happens to global emissions in a few decades time when ten billion of us want cars?
There’s no prospect, incidentally, of ‘restoring’ the climate to any previous condition, as I think even the most optimist eco-mainstreamer would confirm. Too much change is locked in already.
Well, that’s it then, if Brad’s on the case then I’m gonna stop working on this thing and get back to my good ol’ 9 to 5 job pressing buttons for a living.
Altogether now: “Brad, you are our last hope!”
Who’s brad?
As for where they could be planted….how many electrical utility poles have we got worldwide? Or lampposts? I imagine we could place them here and there in our cities, possibly as replacements for when we need poles anyway.
I can think of lots of reasons these things wouldn’t actually work, most likely cost, scalability problems or some other factor. If they actually do work as described, I think it could be worth doing.
While we would still have lots of other problems/predicaments (you name a few among many), it would make our larger predicament somewhat easier to bear.
As for ten billion drivers, I suspect peak oil will prevent that from becoming an issue. It might also prevent us from planting fake trees, which is part of the reason I’m not sure it would actually be feasible. But I think fake trees make more sense than space mirrors, or soot in the atmosphere, or palm oil for that matter.
Let’s not debate the merits of the fake trees because they’re going to make them anyway, because there’s money in it for someone. The issue is that the temporary fixing of the carbon problem will be a license to ramp up the mindless consumerism and pollution. And of course fake trees are only going to fix one problem (carbon emmisions) while the issue is actually the wholesale destruction of the biosphere, as Tom N notes.
There may or may not be money in it. Unlike windmills or solar panels, they don’t produce energy, they take energy to run. So someone would have to actually subsidize them in order for them to be built and operated.
Anyway, I acknowledge the moral hazard risk that they would let people continue in their ecologically harmful ways. But global warming will be ecologically harmful as well, or at least to the ecology as used by us (I think nature will eventually survive alright, on a long enough timescale).
Given that current levels of warming don’t seem to be pressuring people to do much to change their lifestyles, I’d be fine with using fake trees if they made things easier for us, even if we’d still be left with all sorts of bad things. I don’t think there are only two options, A: Useless and B: panacea.
These trees MIGHT fall under option C: useful, but leaves many things unfixed. I don’t know. But I’d like to know more about them before I can say I’d be for or against.
The ‘trees’ apparently have to be stand-alone: they would take up a vast, vast land area – if there was any left not already taken up palm oil trees, wind ‘farms’ and solar arrays.
When they’ve taken the carbon out of the atmosphere, of course, we then need to find somewhere to store it. Pumping it under the ocean floor seems to be a popular idea. I can’t see why this would be less hazardous than the storage of nuclear waste.
But the main point here, surely, is that these things, and other such techno-fixes, are presented and would be used not as a first step towards a new world but as an excuse to carry on with the old one.
Yes Paul – it certainly is the main point. But is there a silent majority or minority – who agree with this?
It seems to me that it is a minority, in the order of perhaps 2% of the UK public. The other 98% are too dumbed down to either think or care. However many of those love to play around with technical fixes…
So, the next real question is: how can the 2% that do care influence the 98% that don’t?
Julian, I’m sorry to say I believe that the 2% who care cannot influence the 98% because if they could, it would have happened by now. History shows that civilisations never vote themselves out of existence; they collapse.
Yes Mark, that is indeed the logical conclusion. Of course, if the 2% positively ‘aware’ were to swap with the 2% who hold the reins of global corporate/finacial/media control – then it would be another story..
However, the ‘collapse scenario’ is the most likely outcome of our current dilemma. However, one never knows what life has in store – and remember, David (as it is written) nailed Goliath with just a sling and a stone! It therefore makes much sense for us all to engage ourselves in the David v Goliath confrontation of our times. Try to stop the vagabonds wiping us out BUT simultaneously engage in positive and life engendering activities that build the arks for the time to come.
Its through engaging in both these actions that we become whole and uncompromised. This sends positive microvita into the collective energy fields upon which we all draw. And that which happens at unseen levels has repercussions on that which appears fixed beyond redemption.
[...] I see Paul Kingsnorth has just blogged this photo at the Dark Mountain Project with the caption: “Which is obviously a [...]
[...] I see Paul Kingsnorth has just blogged this photo at the Dark Mountain Project with the caption: “Which is obviously a [...]
I note that the picture of the giant potato graters places them in a desert conveniently apart from where most people live. I expect like much ‘futuristic’ technology it probably will not come to pass – our imaginations exceed our realism – which is both exalting and a major contributor to the mess we are in!
I’m writing here to apologise for my rather disparaging comment on your other post. Loving your sarcastic and cynical caption for the Brad Pitt image.
Please can we be clear on which bits are the cynicism and which bits are suggesting alternatives to the status quo that it is so easy to be cynical about.
Thanks
Jamie – I don’t think you’ll find many ‘liberals’ here at DMP. As for the cynicism – not a word I would use, but you should feel free to distinguish as you see fit.
We are not a project that exists to promote ‘engineering solutions’ to anything. There are plenty of people doing that. Neither are we a project that feels a ‘responsibility’ to suggest ‘answers’ that you might consider useful or comfortable. It’s not what we are here for. But if you do want ‘alternatives’ and the like, you should feel free to come to the festival in May, where you will find visions aplenty. And do feel free to bring your own.