What Sense of Urgency?

The events of last month with the EPA denying the state of California’s application for a waiver from the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from mobile sources should give pause to anyone interested in quickly implementing solutions to climate change.

The solutions are out there. Sandia National Laboratory is developing the Counter-Rotating Ring Reactor Recuperator (CR5), a device that uses solar energy to break the carbon-oxygen bond in carbon dioxide, forming carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide can then be reacted with oxygen to form methanol. So, this might be a way to create renewable fuels while achieving some carbon sequestration. Sandia calls it the “Sunshine to Petrol” project. Here’s a description of an earlier version of the CR5 for trying to create hydrogen (which has been set aside for the current methanol version, which is apparently more practical). Then, there’s a group at Ohio State University who is developing a bioreactor with algae which uses photosynthesis to trap the carbon dioxide in a gas stream. The algae are then harvested for livestock feed or biodiesel production. A plant the size of a Walmart would be needed to sequester the carbon emissions from a power plant, but it sounds do-able.

However, there’s the tiresome and time-consuming process of overcoming the resistance of entrenched economic interests, of which Charles Stoss says hopefully that “[c]apitalism will clean up its own shit — once it acquires a new set of taste buds and realizes it's delicious,” and which David Brin characterizes not as free-market advocates but rather anti-market kleptocrats. The question which arises is whether or not we have the time for all of the bullshit which is part of the regulatory and political ground-clearing needed prior to actually start engineering changes in consumption patterns, manufacturing processes and infrastructure to achieve a lower carbon footprint, before the life-changing climate-change really kicks in.