Many plants consume CO2. It seems planting (and NOT 'harvesting) them is too common-sensical, not high-tech enough, or fast enough to sustain all of our bad habits. I've not seen any global assessments of this question (might be a better thing to throw money at).
Instead of incineration of plant 'waste' (exactly the wrong thing) (e.g. India's yearly pollution problem) we can bury much more of it (leaves, branches, crop residue, paper, cardboard) in the ground. And leave it there. Perhaps with enhanced biomes that consume and 'lock-up' CO2. (Low-tech again. Putting incinerators out-of- business as a by-product.)
We can require all fossil-fuel producers to invest a large share of their profits (otherwise wasted on shareholders - they have no plans) on mitigation. That would incent them to find optimal solutions. With severe penalties including jailtime for an added incentive (far more effective than carbon taxes).
More so trees aren't a permanent carbon sink. They get knocked over, get burned in forest fires, and their leaf litter decomposes, all releasing the CO2 back into the atmosphere.
To be clear, I'm agreeing that this is an important and neglected area of climate research.
to create and demonstrate a solution that can pull carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere or oceans and lock it away permanently in an environmentally benign way,Teams can submit entries across natural, engineer and hybrid solutions. Judges in the competition will evaluate the teams based upon four basic criteria:
- A working carbon removal prototype that can be rigorously validated and capable of removing at least 1 ton per day.
- The team’s ability to demonstrate to the judges that their solution can economically scale to the gigaton level.
- The main metric for this competition is fully considered cost per ton, inclusive of whatever considerations are necessary for environmental benefit, permanence, any value-added products; and
- The final criteria is the length of time that the removed carbon is locked up for. A minimum goal of 100 years is desired. "
Just providing the criteria for those interested. This is from the Xprize website. https://www.xprize.org/prizes/elonmusk
Flag on Jevons paradox, or Bitcoin, or random environmental issue they just assume is global warming related, or the thing they don't like so no one should have it.
It's a bit meta I guess, but it should work, get productive discussions going and get at least part of the population supporting real change.
Worst case it'd solve the biggest global warming detriment, annoying people.
1- Trees take time, and are picky about location, not all planted trees survive
2- Trees don't grow on Mars :D (iirc he needs to capture Martian CO2 for his rockets, and any incidental improvement on the Sabatier might be useful for him)
3- Elon already gave like a million bucks to team trees, how long will it take for that money to absorb a relevant amount of CO2 compared to whatever this process this prize might entail?
its like trying to bail water out of the sinking ship using a cup instead of fixing a breach