Carbon dioxide removal is not the global warming panacea proponents will have you believe

You will no doubt have heard about plans to fix global warming by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. You might even have seen some of the more advanced technologies deployed at small test sites.

However, while carbon dioxide removal technologies such as afforestation, direct air capture, and ocean fertilization can help reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, they are highly unlikely to fix global warming on their own. Indeed, the impact they could have may be to accelerate the speed at which the planet is warming.

Primarily, the problem is that carbon dioxide removal technologies are still in the experimental phase and their commercial viability is uncertain. Even if these technologies do become commercially viable and can be scaled to a size where make a material difference to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, they will take an inordinate amount of time to deploy at a global scale.

Given the urgency of the climate crisis, waiting for these technologies to become mature and widely available is not a feasible option.

Even if we do reach a point where these technologies are able to reduce carbon dioxide concentrations, it is not clear how much carbon dioxide can be removed using these methods or how long the captured carbon dioxide will remain sequestered. In some cases there are concerns about the unintended consequences of using them, such as altering ocean chemistry or reducing biodiversity.

The largest and most obvious danger though, is that organisations which rely upon fossil fuel extraction to create immense profits will use the presence of such technologies as an excuse to greenwash their products and justify the development of new extraction projects. By selling customers on the idea that emissions can be cleaned up by these innovative technologies they persuade the average person on the street that reducing emissions is unnecessary.

This is fundamentally and dangerously wrong. The only effective way to address climate change is to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases at their source. Carbon dioxide removal can only ever be contributing factor in cleaning up the mess we have made.

In a world where far too many people remain unconvinced of the (solid and damning) evidence of anthropogenic climate change, anything which further clouds the conversation can only ever be a terrible thing.