Trashing Carbon Dioxide
June 8, 2020
Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere just reached the highest level ever recorded, despite the economic bite of the coronavirus pandemic, prompting a geochemist keeping watch to declare: “The buildup of CO2 is a bit like trash in a landfill. As we keep emitting, it keeps piling up.” Precisely. As researchers recently argued in Issues, carbon dioxide emissions that drive climate change can be treated as a waste management problem, and they proposed fixes that would not require drastic reductions in energy use, transformations in energy technologies, or changes in lifestyle.