Carbon-dioxide removal needs more attention

livemint.com:

a balance between anthropogenic emissions…and removals". Residual, “hard to abate" emissions of greenhouse gases were to be balanced by the withdrawal of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. The project at Fujairah aims to show one of the ways in which what went up can come down, and the way of the world be righted.

This is the logic of “net zero". Back in 2015 only one country had enunciated a net-zero target for its economy: Bhutan. Now the number is 101, and between them they account for just over 80% of global greenhouse-gas emissions.

The increasingly vocal opponents of these net-zero targets on the political right say many of the domestic policies associated with cutting emissions are too expensive, or irksome, or both. Those focused on keeping global warming since the Industrial Revolution well below 2°C, as per the Paris agreement, know those steps being taken to reach net zero are also not yet ambitious enough. As the “emissions gap" report issued by the un Environment Programme in the run up to the Dubai COP points out, none of the G20 countries is reducing emissions at a pace consistent with its net-zero target.

There is a lot less concern about the burgeoning removals gap. Few of those who have mouthed commitments to net zero appreciate how central greenhouse-gas removal is to the notion; of those who do, few recognise quite how vast the challenge is. Emission cuts of 90% would still see enough gas entering the atmosphere for a balancing level of removals to be a huge undertaking.