Speaker 1: Welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westerwald. You might remember
Speaker 1: I was slowly making my way through the most recent
Speaker 1: IPCC report. That's the Mitigation Report, which came out in April. Well,
Speaker 1: it's almost three thousand pages, and between life and work,
Speaker 1: it's taken me a while. But today I want to
Speaker 1: get into one of the main topics I saw a
Speaker 1: lot of people focusing on in the report, carbon dioxide removal.
Speaker 1: People really kind of saw what they wanted to see
Speaker 1: about CDR in this report. Some heralded it as proof
Speaker 1: that CDR will in fact save us, so no need
Speaker 1: to look into anything else. Others claimed the IPCC had
Speaker 1: actually said quite the opposite, and I wondered, how could
Speaker 1: that be. It was the first time I can remember
Speaker 1: people having that diverse of views about what the IPCC
Speaker 1: report actually said. For all its inscrutability, the IPCC report
Speaker 1: is generally not ambiguous about what the science says. So
Speaker 1: I read the report with a particular interest in all
Speaker 1: the places where CDR showed up and what the underlying
Speaker 1: data and research and the report actually said about it.
Speaker 1: Lucky for me, the smart folks over at the Center
Speaker 1: for International Environmental Law or CL had the same idea
Speaker 1: and put together a brilliant report on this subject. Today,
Speaker 1: I'm joined by the architects of that report, Nikki Reisch,
Speaker 1: director of the Climate and Energy Program at CL and
Speaker 1: Carol Muffett, the organization's president and CEO. They walked me
Speaker 1: through a whole bunch of the discrepancies on carbon removal
Speaker 1: tech in this report and were able to actually answer
Speaker 1: the question what did the IPCC say about the potential
Speaker 1: of this tech that's coming up? Right after this quick break.
Speaker 2: I was hoping that we could start with kind of
Speaker 2: your focus in this most recent analysis.
Speaker 3: The genesis of this report lies in a phenomenon that
Speaker 3: I've seen going back across several IPCC reports, and particularly
Speaker 3: saw it in the special report on one point five degrees,
Speaker 3: and that is that people will cherry pick individual lines
Speaker 3: out of the summary for policymakers and use those lines,
Speaker 3: often taken out of context, to spend very simple but
Speaker 3: deceptive narratives about what the IPCC is saying. And nowhere
Speaker 3: has that been clearer than in lines taken out of
Speaker 3: the summary for policymakers on things like carbon capture and
Speaker 3: storage and the role for CDR, and you know, with
Speaker 3: the SR one point five report. I found that to
Speaker 3: actually explain to people what the IPCC was really saying
Speaker 3: about these technologies, you actually had to go through the
Speaker 3: whole report and pull out, like here are all the
Speaker 3: cautionary notes that the IPCC had included around these technologies.
Speaker 3: There were warning signs flashing everywhere if you read the
Speaker 3: whole report, But if you read not only the executive summary, sorry,
Speaker 3: the Summary for policy Makers, but the press releases characterizing
Speaker 3: that Summary for policy makers, you would have believed that
Speaker 3: the IPCC was doing nothing but seeing the praises of
Speaker 3: these technologies, when nothing could be further from the truth.
Speaker 3: And so that's why we sent out to analyze these documents.
Speaker 3: And I'll say that part of the reason for the
Speaker 3: focus on the Summary for policy Makers is that it
Speaker 3: is the window into which the vast majority of the
Speaker 3: world views what the IPCC has examined and what it's found.
Speaker 3: And so our goal was to actually unpack what the
Speaker 3: IPCC is really saying about these technologies, to push back
Speaker 3: against those oversimplified and frankly false narratives that the IPCC
Speaker 3: is saying. You know, CCS and CDR are the solutions
Speaker 3: to the climate crisis, because the IPCC really doesn't say that.
Speaker 3: I think the additional complication comes from the fact that,
Speaker 3: you know, the Summary for Policymakers is unique among the
Speaker 3: IPCC documents in being the one moment where politics really
Speaker 3: does come into play. As states negotiate that summary line
Speaker 3: by line by line, and when you've got a thousand
Speaker 3: pages of text to work with, like, there is a
Speaker 3: lot of leeway in terms of word choice, in terms
Speaker 3: of emphasis in what goes into that summary, And this
Speaker 3: is part of what we were trying to expose, is
Speaker 3: that you know, the IPCC has these complex and extensive
Speaker 3: warnings on these technologies and the over reliance on them,
Speaker 3: but you don't get that in the Summary for policy Makers,
Speaker 3: precisely because there was all this political pressure to tell
Speaker 3: a very different story.
Speaker 4: I think I would just add that the other critical
Speaker 4: piece we wanted to unpack in this analysis was to
Speaker 4: expose the way that the assumptions built into the models
Speaker 4: that the IPCC is reviewing and reporting on really skew
Speaker 4: perceptions of what's possible, and that those assumptions, while acknowledged
Speaker 4: in passing by the IPCC in its report, really play
Speaker 4: a much greater role in the way that the report
Speaker 4: describes mitigation pathway and can really skew the way that
Speaker 4: the public and policymakers take away messages. And so we
Speaker 4: really examine some of the key political and economic assumptions
Speaker 4: that constrain the way the models represent what mitigation pathways
Speaker 4: are available and what outcomes are possible. And so we
Speaker 4: go into unpacking some of that about the focus on
Speaker 4: and assumptions about economic growth that really exclude the possibility
Speaker 4: of reconceiving growth as something other than the inexorable accumulation
Speaker 4: of and use of resources, So that possibility is really
Speaker 4: written out of many of the underlying models. And the
Speaker 4: models also really have an approach to cost and portraying
Speaker 4: the cost of mitigation measures that don't capture the costs
Speaker 4: of climate change itself or adaptation to climate change. So
Speaker 4: what you get is a really skewed picture of the
Speaker 4: least cost mitigation measures for a particular temperature target, and
Speaker 4: that bias towards avoiding near term costs really ends up
Speaker 4: skewing the models towards reliance on future speculative technologies rather
Speaker 4: than near term available mitigation measures.
Speaker 2: Now I want to talk to you about that a
Speaker 2: little bit more, because I think it's so interesting that
Speaker 2: in this report, where you had this new chapter, chapter five, right,
Speaker 2: which is really questioning a lot of these economic assumptions,
Speaker 2: you also still had these models that were based on
Speaker 2: the traditional interpretations of growth and on some economic models
Speaker 2: that are starting to be more and more questioned. So
Speaker 2: I'm curious, I guess just what you think of that.
Speaker 3: Maybe I'll start with that point about things being contradictory.
Speaker 3: I think that was actually one of the precise reasons
Speaker 3: that we wanted to do this analysis, is because there
Speaker 3: are really clear warning signs in the Working Group one
Speaker 3: and Working Group two reports that emphasize that we have
Speaker 3: extraordinarily limited amount of time that we need to reduce
Speaker 3: fossil fuel emissions into the atmosphere because we have to
Speaker 3: keep warming below one point five degrees. And the OBBOCC
Speaker 3: warns in the clearest possible terms that going beyond one
Speaker 3: point five degrees, even temporarily, will result in irreversible losses
Speaker 3: to ecosystems, to communities, to human lives. And you really
Speaker 3: don't see the recognition of that urgency, the recognition of
Speaker 3: the critical importance of not going beyond one point five
Speaker 3: degrees reflected in Working Group three, and I think that
Speaker 3: in a similar way, the Working Group two report really
Speaker 3: highlighted the critical importance of centering issues of social justice,
Speaker 3: of human rights, of centering issues of equity, including in
Speaker 3: responses to the climate crisis. And you would think that
Speaker 3: that as well would frame the analysis of options that
Speaker 3: Working Group three was looking at, but in fact it doesn't.
Speaker 3: And you mentioned the point about constant I think one
Speaker 3: of the things that was really striking for us, even
Speaker 3: in the late stages of this report is Fig. Seven
Speaker 3: from the Working Group three report, which lays out in
Speaker 3: really stark terms. I think that the difference between the
Speaker 3: promise of renewable energy and the reality of renewable energy
Speaker 3: and electrification and the potential of some of these technologies
Speaker 3: like carbon capture and storage and CDR. If you look
Speaker 3: at Fig. Seven, what you find is that there enormous
Speaker 3: near term emission reductions to be made at relatively low cost,
Speaker 3: some in fact, you know, at negative cost, which means,
Speaker 3: you know, the economy benefits from accelerating wind and solar
Speaker 3: energy deployments. You could you could achieve more reductions from
Speaker 3: reducing methane emissions from oil and gas, and of course
Speaker 3: you could achieve even more if you stopped producing so
Speaker 3: much oil and gas in the first place. And then
Speaker 3: you compare that with the IPCC's own evaluation of the
Speaker 3: costs and potential of CCS and CCUS, and it's striking
Speaker 3: because the IPCC is saying here in graphic terms, literally, look,
Speaker 3: this stuff is extraordinary expensive and it has very limited potential.
Speaker 3: And yet you know when you look at the report itself,
Speaker 3: you don't see that reflected in the analysis at all.
Speaker 3: In fact, the story that the some of it for
Speaker 3: policy appears to tell is one that really puts CCS
Speaker 3: and CDR at the forefront of solution.
Speaker 2: That's so interesting.
Speaker 4: We focus a lot in this analysis on the major
Speaker 4: gap or contradiction or disconnect if you will, between this
Speaker 4: report and what the headlines are and the last report
Speaker 4: that really emphasized in loud and clear terms the irreparable
Speaker 4: harm that will result from overshooting one point five. So
Speaker 4: you would think, following on the heels of that report,
Speaker 4: that a report focused on mitigation strategies would center or
Speaker 4: at least focus heavily on those measures that would enable
Speaker 4: the world to avoid overshoot of one point five degrees.
Speaker 4: And the irreparable harm that the IPCC just showed would follow.
Speaker 4: And yet we see a presentation of these modeled pathways
Speaker 4: side by side, so that in presenting the C one
Speaker 4: modeled pathways, those that involve no or low overshoot of
Speaker 4: one point five right alongside scenarios that model at temperature
Speaker 4: rise to catastrophic levels can be misread or would suggest
Speaker 4: that all options are on the table, that all those
Speaker 4: pathways are somehow acceptable or conceivable policy options. And you
Speaker 4: referenced the chapter on demand side measures, which I think
Speaker 4: you know is a really important one to see in
Speaker 4: this report. But we did notice similarly that many of
Speaker 4: the most new and radical and critically progressive thinking about
Speaker 4: reconceptualizing demand and the systemic change needed to actually reduce
Speaker 4: energy demand is not yet reflected in the modeling of
Speaker 4: mitigation pathways, in those integrated assessment models that really underlie
Speaker 4: the graphs and charts of projected pathways. And you know,
Speaker 4: there's a lag time always between new science and the
Speaker 4: consensus science. That's sort of summarized here. But what we're
Speaker 4: also seeing is that the scientific studies that are produced
Speaker 4: are influenced by the government sources, the corporate entities, and
Speaker 4: other funders that really guide what research is done, and
Speaker 4: so there's a real gap and a need to ensure
Speaker 4: that research is being done to actually map and model
Speaker 4: what it would look like to implement some of these
Speaker 4: systemic changes, because there is a deep contradiction between the
Speaker 4: IPCC's own recognition and multiple places in the report that
Speaker 4: economic growth, businesses usual economic growth and conceptions of it
Speaker 4: is one of the major drivers of emissions and is
Speaker 4: a driver of this current crisis. So we need to
Speaker 4: reconceptualize growth, and yet the models are sort of prisoner
Speaker 4: to this fixed concept of growth continuing apace and even
Speaker 4: accelerating in the future, when if we want to tackle
Speaker 4: this crisis and avoid human catastrophe, we need to upend
Speaker 4: those assumptions and rethink the approach entirely.
Speaker 2: M Yeah, I'm curious what you guys think. You know,
Speaker 2: do you mention the research just how much this sort
Speaker 2: of illustrates the need to get certain umber interests out
Speaker 2: of the research realm.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: I think there's a simple answer and a complex answer.
Speaker 3: I'll start with a simple one. We have seen a
Speaker 3: long history of the fossil fuel industry funding research programs,
Speaker 3: funding research projects, funding entire research institutions at colleges and universities,
Speaker 3: particularly at many of the most prestigious universities like MIT,
Speaker 3: and you look at the research that comes out of
Speaker 3: those programs, and much of it emphasizes technologies like this.
Speaker 3: MIT ran a whole program on carbon capture and storage
Speaker 3: for a long time. I think you see a heavy
Speaker 3: focus in a lot of this industry funded research on
Speaker 3: what can be done that allows business as usual while
Speaker 3: managing the problem, or appearing to manage the problem, and
Speaker 3: I think that is just a fundamental conflict. Importantly, much
Speaker 3: of that government support has also come from government agencies
Speaker 3: who have the promotion of fossil fuel production and use
Speaker 3: as part of their agency mandate. And so I think
Speaker 3: the net consequence is you get this body of science
Speaker 3: that is funded by, supported by, and driven by the
Speaker 3: underlying agendas of the companies and government agencies that are
Speaker 3: funding it. And even with the best intentions of the
Speaker 3: researchers involved, I think the pressure is clear to produce
Speaker 3: outcomes that are going to keep the money flowing. The
Speaker 3: net result is these modeled realities become our perception of
Speaker 3: the real reality, and modeled realities are pushing us towards
Speaker 3: the planet that is frankly unlivable.
Speaker 4: Yeah, just on that, if I can just jump in
Speaker 4: on that, on that last point, just to underscore something
Speaker 4: that we were talking about before about all of the
Speaker 4: assumptions built into these you know, modeled realities and how
Speaker 4: they skew the outcomes. I think, you know, a critical
Speaker 4: reflection that may seem obvious, but I don't think is
Speaker 4: frequently acknowledged, is that, you know, models that incorporate various
Speaker 4: mitigation measures reflect outcomes based on what would happen if
Speaker 4: those mitigation measures worked in practice like they do in theory.
Speaker 4: They don't model what happens when they fail. So the
Speaker 4: models that build in, for example, reliance on CCS model
Speaker 4: what happens if CCS worked perfectly as designed in theory.
Speaker 4: But in reality, what we've seen to date is that
Speaker 4: CCS projects have repeatedly over promised and under delivered on
Speaker 4: emissions reductions and haven't achieved those promised outcomes. The IPCC's
Speaker 4: report says explicitly that what's assumed is where it refers
Speaker 4: to CCS in modeled scenarios that assumes a capture a
Speaker 4: carbon dioxide capture rate of ninety to ninety five percent.
Speaker 4: That's a rate that just simply has not been consistently
Speaker 4: achieved by any CCS projects to date. So when your
Speaker 4: model is reflecting a theoretical, hypothetical, imagine possible outcome, and
Speaker 4: real world policy choices are being based on that aspirational picture,
Speaker 4: we find ourselves in, you know, the very deep water
Speaker 4: and very you know world ablaze that we're currently living in.
Speaker 2: That to me was like the scariest thing in your analysis,
Speaker 2: because I was just like, oh God, that's just not
Speaker 2: gonna work. There was that paper last year that Ben
Speaker 2: Fronta did about how some of the economists who had
Speaker 2: been commissioned to do white papers in the nineties and
Speaker 2: came up with some of the economic growth models are
Speaker 2: now kind of saying, oops, we didn't include the cost
Speaker 2: of inaction. But you know, that's now what twenty years on.
Speaker 2: I guess I'm curious what you guys think the chances
Speaker 2: are of these models being updated to actually reflect reality
Speaker 2: quickly enough for policymakers to actually find them useful.
Speaker 3: I think we've suffered from this approach to modeling for
Speaker 3: a very long time, and we've seen the impacts of
Speaker 3: climate change and the costs of those impacts systemically and
Speaker 3: systematically underestimated for years. If you look at any given
Speaker 3: year in recent years, what we see are climate fueled
Speaker 3: or climate exacerbated disasters in countries around the world that
Speaker 3: take an array of forms and add up to untold
Speaker 3: billions of dollars literally every year, year and year out.
Speaker 3: I think the problem now is like the accumulated costs
Speaker 3: of those losses are accelerating every year, and they're only
Speaker 3: going to accelerate what it would take to integrate projections
Speaker 3: of those increased costs into the models. Frankly, I don't know,
Speaker 3: but I think part of my concern is that we
Speaker 3: have lost an extraordinary amount of time and waiting for
Speaker 3: more economic models to prove to us a reality that
Speaker 3: we see unfolding around us every day is maybe not
Speaker 3: the strategy we need. What we need is to recognize
Speaker 3: that we have solutions right in front of us and
Speaker 3: crafting extraordinarily complex models to say that, well, maybe the
Speaker 3: solutions that we have, you know, aren't necessary because we
Speaker 3: could admit something that might work fifty years from now.
Speaker 3: It's just not the way to address this crisis.
Speaker 4: I think one of the key takeaways from this report buried,
Speaker 4: though it may be in places, is really that we
Speaker 4: have the mitigation measures we need. They exist, their affordable, proven,
Speaker 4: they work, and what we need to do is to
Speaker 4: deploy them rapidly and now. And those measures are clearly
Speaker 4: renewable energy reduction and energy demand. Those are the key
Speaker 4: center pieces of an effective strategy. And there are some
Speaker 4: models in the mix of the thousands that are reviewed
Speaker 4: here that of course do show just how quickly we
Speaker 4: could reduce emissions and how hopeful the world might be
Speaker 4: if we were to accelerate those policy measures that rely
Speaker 4: on proven mitigation strategies that are available now and not
Speaker 4: speculative ones that may or may not work at all,
Speaker 4: and that bring a host of other environmental and social
Speaker 4: risks along with them. What's lacking is the political will
Speaker 4: not this scientific proof, and I think that's a real
Speaker 4: change in where we are. And the importance of these
Speaker 4: reports is that, yes, there's of course benefit in deeper
Speaker 4: and more extensive study and intensifying that the scientific study
Speaker 4: of climate change, its dynamics, impacts, et cetera. But the
Speaker 4: science on the causes of climate change is crystal clear,
Speaker 4: and the known solutions that address those underlying drivers are
Speaker 4: evident and available, and so really we're not facing a
Speaker 4: gulf of scientific knowledge. We're facing a tremendous gulf and
Speaker 4: an absence of political will, and we need to unleash
Speaker 4: the stranglehold that vested interests have on our collective future
Speaker 4: and the policies that are going to keep it livable.
Speaker 3: If I can add just one point that I think
Speaker 3: is too often lost in these analysis, and that is
Speaker 3: that a CO two molecule omitted to the atmosphere today
Speaker 3: doesn't warm the atmosphere once and disappear. It warms the
Speaker 3: atmosphere and keeps on warming the atmosphere until ten years,
Speaker 3: one hundred years, sometimes a thousand years from now, when
Speaker 3: it eventually decays out of the atmosphere or it's pulled
Speaker 3: out of the atmosphere for some reason. That is really
Speaker 3: important because it means the impacts of each individual's CO
Speaker 3: two molecule are accumulative. It will keep contributing to warming
Speaker 3: as long as it's in the atmosphere, and that means
Speaker 3: that cutting emissions early, Cutting emissions now has a much
Speaker 3: higher impact than trying to cut emissions or pull carbon
Speaker 3: out of the atmosphere a decade from now. Or three
Speaker 3: decades from now. One of the really striking things that
Speaker 3: comes out of the IPCC report is there's a place
Speaker 3: where the ibc C acknowledges that the divergence between the
Speaker 3: high ambition pathways and the low ambition pathways would become
Speaker 3: clear in terms of emissions, in terms of other sorts
Speaker 3: of pollutants within a few years, and by twenty thirty
Speaker 3: we would start to see that divergence in terms of
Speaker 3: what the levels of nw CO two accumulating in the
Speaker 3: atmosphere are. That's an extraordinary thing to recognize, and I
Speaker 3: think our policy processes don't appreciate it enough. Literally, if
Speaker 3: we accelerate these responses, we'll start seeing the outcomes from that,
Speaker 3: the shifts in that really really rapidly. And by contrast,
Speaker 3: if we delay action, you know, we're not just fighting
Speaker 3: the emissions in twenty thirty, We're fighting the cumulative warming
Speaker 3: from all the missions between now and twenty thirty.
Speaker 2: Why do you think that there was such a difference
Speaker 2: between Working Group two and Working Group three, especially given
Speaker 2: that I feel like a lot of people were expecting
Speaker 2: Working Group three to kind of come out guns blazing
Speaker 2: in a way that it didn't really.
Speaker 4: The key difference between these past reports on the physical
Speaker 4: science and the impacts and experiences of climate change and
Speaker 4: this Working Group three report on what can and effectively
Speaker 4: what should we do about it. Although the report is
Speaker 4: not prescriptive, it lays out science and research about what
Speaker 4: can be done to address this problem and really tease
Speaker 4: up what is ultimately a political and economic question about
Speaker 4: which steps are we going to take. All of them
Speaker 4: carry some cost, but some costs are born disproportionately by
Speaker 4: future generations but also by disadvantage populations today, and some
Speaker 4: of those costs are absolutely necessary to bear. What we
Speaker 4: saw was a sort of battleground between states with really
Speaker 4: vested interest in maintaining a business as usual approach to
Speaker 4: their economies to energy sector and trying to, as they might,
Speaker 4: to blunt any messages that suggest we need to radically
Speaker 4: rethink and drastically and dramatically move, beginning immediately away from
Speaker 4: all fossil fuels and replace them with renewables, and focus
Speaker 4: on the necessary systemic changes in the way that we
Speaker 4: use resources to lower demand and make our approach to
Speaker 4: living sustainable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think what I would add to that is,
Speaker 3: first to recognize the extraordinary resistance on the part of
Speaker 3: some core governments, not just Saudi Arabia as a producer
Speaker 3: of oil and gas, but the US to grappling honestly
Speaker 3: with what the IPCC science tells us, and grappling honestly
Speaker 3: with what that means for how things need to change,
Speaker 3: because changing is politically unpalatable and politically uncomfortable, even when
Speaker 3: it's vitally necessary. And I think that is compounded by
Speaker 3: where we are in the trajectory of denial. We talked
Speaker 3: earlier about the role of industry and funding funding scientific
Speaker 3: research in the space, and I think if you if
Speaker 3: you watch the history, if you want, if you watch,
Speaker 3: if you pay attention to denial efforts across spaces and
Speaker 3: across time, they follow a pretty predictable arc. First, you
Speaker 3: deny that a phenomenon exists, and then you deny that
Speaker 3: the phenomenon is a problem, and then you deny that
Speaker 3: the problem is severe, and when that no longer works,
Speaker 3: then you deny that people are causing the problem or
Speaker 3: that you specifically are causing the problem. Then you turn
Speaker 3: to economics and say, oh, well, it's too expensive to
Speaker 3: address it. And then in the final stages, you take
Speaker 3: one or two one or two courses and we're seeing
Speaker 3: both of them play out. You argue that, oh, yes,
Speaker 3: the problem exists, and we're part of the solution, we've
Speaker 3: been part of the solution all along, or you couple
Speaker 3: that with the problem exists, but it's really too late
Speaker 3: to do anything about it, so we really just need
Speaker 3: to learn to adapt. And that schema, that playbook is
Speaker 3: one that we've seen play out over and over again.
Speaker 3: And so what does that mean for these IPCC analysis Well,
Speaker 3: I think it means that we know that the fossil
Speaker 3: fuel industry spent a really long time arguing that there
Speaker 3: was no such thing as climate change, and it lost
Speaker 3: that arguments in the weight of the overwhelming evidence, and
Speaker 3: so engaging in that part of the fight really doesn't
Speaker 3: benefit it anymore. And then they spent a long time
Speaker 3: arguing that it wasn't worthwhile to address the climate crisis.
Speaker 3: But again, the evidence makes clear that we have to act.
Speaker 3: And so what I think you've seen isn't a really
Speaker 3: heavy shift in the debate away from those early parts
Speaker 3: of the denial equation. This problem doesn't exist, this problem
Speaker 3: is manageable to focusing denial efforts on you know what
Speaker 3: we can manage this. Fossil fuels are part of the solution.
Speaker 3: They've been part of the solution early on all along,
Speaker 3: and that I think is that disproportionate focus of industry efforts,
Speaker 3: and that efforts and funding of countries like the United
Speaker 3: States and Saudi Arabia, I think has a disproportionate impact
Speaker 3: on the science around mitigation as compared to the science
Speaker 3: that speaks to the physical reality of climate change and
Speaker 3: the mounting and incontrovertible evidence of its impacts.
Speaker 4: There are just some really critical and really damning quotes
Speaker 4: in the report about the consequences of continued fossil fuel
Speaker 4: production and use that try as the you know, the
Speaker 4: governments might have to water things down. In the summary,
Speaker 4: policy makers are there in black and white about, you know,
Speaker 4: the way that committed emissions from existing fossil fuel infrastructure
Speaker 4: are going to blow through the remaining carbon budget, implying
Speaker 4: that there's a clear need to you know, phase out
Speaker 4: and shutter existing facilities, let alone you know, halt expansion.
Speaker 4: That is all there, and I think it's really valuable
Speaker 4: to pull that out because though it may not make
Speaker 4: the headlines, it is certainly incontrovertible based on the cumulative science.
Speaker 3: There is one of those factoids that I'd like to
Speaker 3: highlight for you because it's actually, yeah, please, ordinarily important,
Speaker 3: and that is, you know, when we talk about we've talked,
Speaker 3: you know, a lot about ccs, but two of the
Speaker 3: biggest carbon dioxide removal technologies that figure in the Working
Speaker 3: Group three report and indeed in the business models of
Speaker 3: oil and gas companies and in the national action plans
Speaker 3: of the United States and other countries are bio energy
Speaker 3: with carbon capture and storage called BEX and direct air capture,
Speaker 3: which is all the rage lately, the idea that you
Speaker 3: can suck carbon directly out of the ambient air. And
Speaker 3: I mentioned this because there's a extraordinary and growing reliance
Speaker 3: on BES and DAC, particularly in these models. And you
Speaker 3: hear even climate advocates say, well, we're going to need
Speaker 3: that to address the problem. And I think one thing
Speaker 3: that the IPC scene makes really abundantly clear that people
Speaker 3: should understand is that BEX and DAX, even according to
Speaker 3: their advocates, wouldn't make any meaningful contribution to removing CO
Speaker 3: two from the atmosphere until well after twenty fifty. Some
Speaker 3: models say twenty sixty, twenty seventy or beyond. In a
Speaker 3: world where we need to cut emissions in half by
Speaker 3: twenty thirty and eliminate them by twenty fifty, you know,
Speaker 3: strategies that say, oh, we'll start contributing to the solution
Speaker 3: sometime after twenty fifty simply have no significant place.
Speaker 2: I find that so concerning too, just the number of
Speaker 2: climate people that I see kind of being like, well,
Speaker 2: we're going to need this, but it's not being clear
Speaker 2: about how far off and potentially impossible it is. The
Speaker 2: idea of a giant CO two vacuum is like so
Speaker 2: viscerally appealing to people that I think it's it's just
Speaker 2: so dangerous.
Speaker 4: Well, and I think there's been a real misperception and
Speaker 4: misreading of the messages on CDR carbon dioxide removal, and
Speaker 4: the two most prominent forms of which discuss our backs
Speaker 4: and DAC. In that short many scientific studies will show
Speaker 4: that we may need some amount of CDR at some
Speaker 4: time in the future to address residual emissions. That statement
Speaker 4: is not the same as saying CDR is a central
Speaker 4: part of combating the climate crisis and we need to
Speaker 4: invest in it now. Those things are quite different, and
Speaker 4: the latter has been portrayed as a key takeaway of
Speaker 4: this latest report, when that's far from the truth. If
Speaker 4: you look at what as Carol was just saying, if
Speaker 4: you look at the underlying science and the observations about
Speaker 4: the tremendous uncertainties about whether these technologies will even work
Speaker 4: if and when they are deployable because they are not
Speaker 4: demonstrated at scale, and the tremendous social, environmental economic risks
Speaker 4: they pose because of the massive inputs of land, energy,
Speaker 4: and water that they require. When you look at those
Speaker 4: facts in combination with the urgent need to reduce emissions
Speaker 4: now in the immediate future, and the fact that any
Speaker 4: emissions that we continue to release have a cumulative impact,
Speaker 4: the takeaway is clear that we need to focus efforts,
Speaker 4: energy and investment on the available, deployable, proven strategies they
Speaker 4: can do that near term dramatic reduction today, and that CDR,
Speaker 4: BEX and DAC are really dangerous distractions and speculative possibilities
Speaker 4: in the future are not a response to an ever
Speaker 4: more urgent and oppressive present where climate change is literally
Speaker 4: taking lives as we speak.
Speaker 1: That's it for this time. Thanks for listening, and we'll
Speaker 1: see you next week.