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

Year 2, Month 5, Day 25: How Can I Miss You If You Won’t Go Away?

The Seattle Times’ Lance Dickie reports on a speech by Bill Gates, urging a change in the way we do things:

Gates made a strong case for the federal government to lead and fund basic energy research. Private money is involved, including his own, but he laid out a simple truth: Vested interests will keep the energy industry doing what it does — fighting to maintain the status quo.

Gates nailed it, and not just because his pithy observation came on the 142nd anniversary of the golden spike that linked the transcontinental railway at Promontory, Utah. — a triumph of government-financed risk taking for a better future.

So the doyen of Davos got me thinking. Take all the federal money pumped into the oil industry, in the form of tax breaks, depletion allowances and other gravy, and put the savings toward energy research, not deficits.

Finance basic research on nuclear power and storage capacity for renewable energy.

Despite nuclear power’s avoidance of climate-changing carbon emissions, solving the lethal legacy of nuclear waste never gets much beyond fighting over holes in the ground and creation of a petroglyph that still translates to “Run!!” in 7011.

Sent May 14:

There are some whose allegiance to ideology is stronger than self-interest and common sense when it comes to the facts of global climate change. And some may admit that the world’s atmosphere is warming, but deny the need for bold action on reducing humanity’s greenhouse emissions — because they’re confident that we’ll be able to find a technical solution to the problem before it’s too late. Perhaps; we clever apes have solved quite a few complex puzzles in our time. But if our brightest minds and our most sophisticated tools are to tackle anthropogenic global warming, they need massive support. The United States government’s investment focus must be on the development of sustainable energy sources rather than rewarding the fossil fuel industries — and on a scale commensurate with the magnitude of the problem. Bill Gates may be awfully rich, but he’s not rich enough to do it by himself.

Warren Senders