Sunday, December 03, 2017

Is Limiting Emissions Enough? Of course not.




                                                          Comments due by Dec. 10, 2017


SWEDEN’S parliament passed a law in June which obliges the country to have “no net emissions” of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by 2045. The clue is in the wording. This does not mean that three decades from now Swedes must emit no planet-heating substances; even if all their electricity came from renewables and they only drove Teslas, they would presumably still want to fly in aeroplanes, or use cement and fertiliser, the making of which releases plenty of carbon dioxide. Indeed, the law only requires gross emissions to drop by 85% compared with 1990 12/3/2017 Greenhouse gases must be scrubbed from the air.
 But it demands that remaining carbon sources are offset with new carbon sinks. In other words greenhouse gases will need to be extracted from the air. Sweden’s pledge is among the world’s most ambitious. But if the global temperature is to have a good chance of not rising more than 2ºC above its pre-industrial level, as stipulated in the Paris climate agreement of 2015, worldwide emissions must similarly hit “net zero” no later than 2090. After that, emissions must go “net negative”, with more carbon removed from the stock than is emitted.
This is because what matters to the climate is the total amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. To keep the temperature below a certain level means keeping within a certain “carbon budget”—allowing only so much to accumulate, and no more. Once you have spent that budget, you have to balance all new emissions with removals. If you overspend it, the fact that the world takes time to warm up means you have a brief opportunity to put things right by taking out more than you are putting in (see chart 1). Being able to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is, therefore, a crucial element in meeting climate targets. Of the 116 models the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) looks at to chart the economically optimal paths to the Paris goal, 101 assume “negative emissions”. No scenarios are at all likely to keep warming under 1.5ºC without greenhouse-gas removal. “It is built into the assumptions of the Paris agreement,” says Gideon Henderson of Oxford University.

Climate scientists like Mr. Henderson have been discussing negative-emissions technologies (NETs) with economists and policy wonks since the 1990s. Their debate has turned livelier since the Paris agreement, the phrasing of which strongly suggests that countries will need to invent new sinks as well as cutting emissions. But so far politicians have largely ignored the issue, preferring to focus on curbing current flows of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. NETs were conspicuous by their absence from the agenda of the annual UN climate jamboree which ended in Bonn on November 17th. In the short term this makes sense. The marginal cost of reducing emissions is currently far lower than the marginal cost of taking carbon dioxide straight from the atmosphere. But climate is not a short-term game. And in the long term, ignoring the need for negative emissions is complacent at best. The eventual undertaking, after all, will be gargantuan. The median IPCC model assumes sucking up a total of 810bn tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2100, equivalent to roughly 20 years of global emissions at the current rate. To have any hope of doing so, preparations for large-scale extraction ought to begin in the 2020s. Modellers favour NETs that use plants because they are a tried and true technology. Reforesting logged areas or “afforesting” previously treeless ones presents no great technical challenges. More controversially, they also tend to invoke “bioenergy with carbon capture and storage” (BECCS). In BECCS, power stations fuelled by crops that can be burned to make energy have their carbon-dioxide emissions injected into deep geological strata, rather than released into the atmosphere. The technology for doing the CCS part of BECCS has been around for a while; some scenarios for future energy generation rely heavily on it. But so far there are only 17 CCS programmes big enough to dispose of around 1m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. Promoting CCS is an uphill struggle, mainly because it doubles the cost of energy from the dirty power plants whose flues it scrubs. Other forms of low emission electricity are much cheaper. Affixed to bioenergy generation, though, CCS does something that other forms of generation cannot. The carbon which the plants that serve as fuel originally took from the atmosphere above is sent into the rocks below, making it a negative emitter. The problem with afforestation and BECCS is that the plants involved need a huge amount of land. The area estimated ranges from 3.2m square kilometres (roughly the size of India) to as much as 9.7m square kilometres (roughly the size of Canada). That is the equivalent of between 23% and 68% of the world’s arable land. It may be that future agricultural yields can be increased so dramatically that, even in a world with at least 2bn more mouths to feed, the area of its farms could be halved, and that the farmers involved might be happy with this turn of events. But it seems highly unlikely—and blithely assuming it can be done is plainly reckless. Negative thinking Less land-intensive alternatives exist—at least on paper. Some are low tech, like stimulating the soil to store more carbon by limiting or halting deep-ploughing. Others are less so, such as contraptions to seize carbon dioxide directly from the air, or methods that accelerate the natural weathering processes by which minerals in the Earth’s crust bind atmospheric carbon over aeons or that introduce alkaline compounds into the sea to make it absorb more carbon dioxide. According to Jennifer Wilcox of the Colorado School of Mines, and her colleagues, the technology with the second-highest theoretical potential, after BECCS, is direct air capture (see chart 2). This uses CCS-like technology on the open air, rather than on exhaust gases. The problem is that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air, while very high by historical standards, is very low by chemical-engineering ones: just 0.04%, as opposed to the 10% or more offered by power-plant chimneys and industrial processes such as cement-making. The technologies that exist today, under development by companies such as Global Thermostat in America, Carbon Engineering in Canada or Climeworks of Switzerland, remain pricey. In 2011 a review by the American Physical Society to which Ms Wilcox contributed put extraction costs above $600 per tonne, compared with an average estimate of $60-250 for BECCS. Enhanced weathering is at an even earlier stage of development and costs are still harder to assess. Estimates range from $25 per tonne of carbon dioxide to $600. On average, 2-4 tonnes of silicate minerals (olivine, sometimes used in Finnish saunas because it withstands repeated heating and cooling, is a favourite) are needed for every tonne removed. To extract 5bn tonnes of carbon dioxide a year may require up to 20bn tonnes of minerals that must be ground into fine dust. Grinding is energy-intensive. Distributing the powder evenly, on land or sea, would be a logistical challenge to put it mildly. Ideas abound on a small scale, in labs or in researchers’ heads, but the bigger mechanical schemes in existence today capture a paltry 40m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. Most involve CCS and have prevented more carbon dioxide escaping into the atmosphere from fossil-burning power plants, rather than removing it. Removing 8bn-10bn tonnes by 2050, as the more sanguine scenarios envisage, let alone the 35bn-40bn tonnes in more pessimistic ones, will be a vast undertaking. Progress will be needed on many fronts. All the more reason to test lots of technologies. For the time being even researchers with a horse in the race are unwilling to bet on a winner. Pete Smith of Aberdeen University speaks for many NETs experts when he says that “none is a silver bullet, and none has a fatal flaw.” It will also not come cheap. WITCH, constructed by Massimo Tavoni of Politecnico di Milano, is a model which analyses climate scenarios. Unlike most simulations, it also estimates how much research-and-development funding is necessary to achieve roll-out at the sort of scale these models forecast. For all low-carbon technologies, it puts the figure at $65bn a year until 2050, four times the sum that renewables, batteries and the like attract today. Mr. Tavoni says a chunk of that would obviously need to go to NETs, which currently get next to nothing. Even the less speculative technologies need investment right away. Trees take decades to reach their carbon-sucking potential, so large-scale planting needs to start soon, notes Tim Searchinger of Princeton University. Direct air capture in particular looks expensive. Boosters note that a few years ago so did renewables. Before technological progress brought prices down, many countries subsidised renewable-energy sources to the tune of $500 per tonne of carbon dioxide avoided and often spent huge sums on it. Christoph Gebald, co-founder of Climeworks, says that “the first data point on our technological learning curve” is $600, at the lower end of previous estimates. But like the price of solar panels, he expects his costs to drop in the coming years, perhaps to as low as $100 per tonne. However, the falling price of solar panels was a result of surging production volumes, which NETs will struggle to replicate. As Oliver Geden of the German Institute of International and Security Affairs observes, “You cannot tell the greengrowth story with negative emissions.” A market exists for rooftop solar panels and electric vehicles; one for removing an invisible gas from the air to avert disaster decades from now does not. Much of the gas captured by Climeworks and other pure NETs firms (as opposed to fossil-fuel CCS) is sold to makers of fizzy drinks or greenhouses to help plants grow. It is hard to imagine that market growing far beyond today’s total of 10m tonnes. And in neither case is the gas stored indefinitely. It is either burped out by consumers of carbonated drinks or otherwise exuded by eaters of greenhouse grown produce. There may be other markets, though. It is very hard to imagine aircraft operating without liquid fuels. One way to provide them would be to create them chemically using carbon dioxide taken from the atmosphere. It is conceivable that this might be cheaper than alternatives, such as biofuels— especially if the full environmental impact of the biofuels is accounted for. The demand for direct air capture spurred by such a market might drive its costs low enough to make it a more plausible NET. From thin air One way to create a market for NETs would be for governments to put a price on carbon. Where they have done so, the technologies have been adopted. Take Norway, which in 1991 told oil firms drilling in the North Sea to capture carbon dioxide from their operations or pay up. This cost is now around $50 per tonne emitted; in one field, called Sleipner, the firms have found ways to pump it back underground for less than that. A broader carbon price—either a tax or tradable emissions permits—would promote negative emissions elsewhere, too. Then there is the issue of who should foot the bill. Many high-impact negative emissions schemes make most sense in low-emitting countries, says Ms Wilcox. Brazil could in theory reforest the cerrado (though that would face resistance because of the region’s role in growing soyabeans and beef). Countries of sub Saharan Africa could do the same in their own tropical savannahs. Spreading olivine in the Amazon and Congo riverbasins could soak up 2bn tonnes of carbon dioxide. Developing countries would be understandably loth to bankroll any of this to tackle cumulative emissions, most of which come from the rich world. The latter would doubtless recoil at footing the bill, preferring to concentrate on curbing current emissions in the mistaken belief that once these reach zero, the job is done. Whether NETs deserve to be lumped in with more outlandish “geoengineering” proposals, such as cooling the Earth with sunlight-reflecting sulphur particles in the stratosphere, is much debated. What they have in common is that they offer ways to deal with the effects of emissions that have already taken place. Proponents of small-scale, low-impact NETs, such as changes to soil management on farms, though, bridle at being considered alongside what they see as high-tech hubris of the most disturbing kind. NETs certainly inspire fewer fears of catastrophic, planetary-scale side-effects than “solar radiation management”. But they do stoke some when it comes to the consequences of tinkering with the ocean’s alkalinity or injecting large amounts of gas underground. And the direct effects of large-scale BECCS or afforestation projects would be huge. If they don’t take up arable land, they need to take up pasture or wilderness. Either option would be a big deal in terms of both human amenity and biodiversity. Another concern is the impact on politicians and the dangers of moral hazard. NETs allow politicians to go easy on emission cuts now in the hope that a quick fix will appear in the future. This could prove costly if the technology works—and costlier still if it does not. One study found that following a 2°C mitigation path which takes for granted NETs that fail to materialise would leave the world closer to 3°C warmer. Mr Geden is not alone in fearing that models that increasingly rely on NETs are “a cover for political inaction”. Academics are paying more attention. This year’s edition of “Emissions Gap”, an influential annual report from the UN Environment Programme, devotes a chapter to carbon-dioxide removal. Mr Henderson is leading a study of the subject for Britain’s Royal Society; America’s National Academy of Sciences has commissioned one, too. Both are due next spring. The IPCC will look at the technology in its special report on the 1.5ºC target, due next autumn. There’s some money, too. Cagineering has attracted backers such as Bill Gates, and now has a pilot plant in Canada. Climeworks has actually sold some carbon-offset credits—to a private investor and a big corporation—on the basis of the carbon dioxide it has squirrelled away at a demonstration plant it recently launched in Iceland. Earlier this year Britain’s government became the first to set aside some cash specifically for NETs research. In October America’s Department of Energy announced a series of grants for “novel and enabling” carbon-capture technologies, some of which could help in the development of schemes for direct air capture. Richard Branson, a British tycoon, has offered $25m to whoever first comes up with a “commercially viable design” that would remove 1bn tonnes of greenhouse gases a year for ten years. All this is welcome, but not enough. The sums involved are trifling: £8.6m ($11.3m) in Britain and $26m from the Department of Energy. The offset sold by Climeworks was for just 100 tonnes. Mr Branson’s prize has gone unclaimed for a decade. A carbon price—which is a good idea for other reasons, too, would beef up interest in NETs. But one high enough to encourage pricey moonshots may prove too onerous for the rest of the economy. Any price would promote more established low-carbon technologies first and NETs only much later, thinks Glen Peters of the Centre for International Climate Research in Oslo.Encouraging CCS for fossil fuels as a stepping stone to NETs appeals to some. The fossil-fuel industry says it is committed to the technology. Total, a French oil giant, has promised to spend a tenth of its $600m research budget on CCS and related technologies. A group of oil majors says it will spend up to $500m on similar projects between now and 2027. But the field’s slow progress to date hardly encourages optimism. Governments’ commitment to CCS has historically proved fickle. Last year Britain abruptly scrapped a £1bn public grant for an industrial-scale CCS plant which would have helped fine-tune the technology. For this to change, politicians must expand the focus of the 23-year-old UN Framework Convention on Climate Change from cutting emissions of greenhouse gases to controlling their airborne concentrations, suggests Janos Pasztor, a former climate adviser to the UN secretary-general. In other words, they must think about stocks of carbon dioxide, not just flows. This is all the more true because emissions continue to elude control. After three years of more or less stable emissions, a zippier world economy looks on track to belch 2% more carbon dioxide this year. That amounts once again to borrowing more of the planet’s remaining carbon budget against future removal. It doesn’t take a numerate modeller like Mr Tavoni to grasp that, in his words, “If you create a debt, you must repay it.” 

12 comments:

LTBL said...

DeShawn McLeod

Whenever experts speak of technology that will curb harmful pollutants, my first question is: who is going to pay for all of this?

I have heard of hundreds of products, cleansing systems, and lifestyles that would positively affect the earth and its environment, but no one is paying me or anyone else to support this cause or to put money towards it. So, who’s going to do the heavy lifting and take on that financial burden?

Is it the public’s job? Is it the government's job? Is it local government, state government, or federal government’s job? Is it all of our jobs?

With all of the debate and high-level discussion about climate change and what we can do now to help alleviate the negative consequences, no one with the capital to support all of this is in on this conversations. Could the government apply subsidies to companies that reduce their carbon footprint and streamline their processes to have less chemical waste?

There seems to be no one true answer to all this and the solutions are endless. But, where’s the money? Who’s putting their money where their mouth is? Not enough people. The capital that’s required to research and build new technology, plus implement it, is immense. For Sweden to make a claim to shift their net emissions is great, but they probably have the infrastructure to change.

The US, on the other hand, has varying terrain, climate, cultures, etc, to consider when trying to implement ways for the country as a whole to operate in a manner that reduces pollutants, has better resource allocation policies, and protects the environment from capitalist exploitation.

Jaquille Ward said...

Jaquille Ward

I respect Sweden's parliament very much for wanting to have "no net emissions" of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by 2045, but I find that to be a very bold request. There are so many factors to take into account in order to fulfill this law and the cost would probably be the biggest factor. To extract more greenhouse gases than the amount you put out into the atmosphere is a difficult task and it's going to be hard to regulate it. There's going to have to be a major reduction in the use of many resources, assets and anything that produces greenhouse gases because it's going to be much harder to scrub that from the air. In order to prevent further warming of the earth, all countries must invest into negative emission technologies, and that is where the big problem comes into play because not many places are going to be able to afford it. Reducing emissions is not going to be enough to prevent climate change from getting worse and continuing to do nothing will definitely not help. Every country must engage in scrubbing greenhouse gas from the air in order to slow down the effects of climate change. This task requires a contribution from everyone because it will not be beneficial if there is still a group of people still adding emissions into the air causing everyone else to work much harder to extract it out. There needs to be an affordable, long-term plan that can successfully stop climate change in its tracks. Everyone has to be apart of the mission to make this happen because climate change is very real and it's getting worse every year we wait to get everyone to realize it and to act on it. Reducing the greenhouse gas emissions needs to be a priority for places that don't have the money to invest in "no net emissions" or "negative emissions" strategies until an affordable, alternative plan becomes available.

Andresious Cyprianos said...

Andresious Cyprianos

Throughout the blog its almost impossible to not notice how many times time the basic economic problem of addressing opportunity costs is addressed. A vast number of technologies each with their advantages can all be implemented but they all have their own loss of potential gain. Its always going to be easy to praise a country for taking on a stance similar to Sweden but just has all empty promises go, if they do not act upon this law, its passing will have been in vain, and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will increase. Just as the blog says, all sorts of emission regulators either end up being extremely costly or create adverse carbon emission problems; these and a number of other factors will definitely affect just how successfully Sweden can deliver on its promise.

The overall implementation of these techniques really fascinates me, because to what extent have scientists taken all the varying climates of the world into consideration? Without having most of not all countries on board this operation positive results in one country could affect another country negatively. Also he simple raising of funds would be a lot easier even though the majority of the funds would still be expected to be from top economic powers such as the U.S and China. This will widely spread costs of the technologies and will allow them to be deemed more feasible. Decisions have to be made soon before we reach a point where its impossible to reverse all the effects we have caused.

Unknown said...

Olivia Gonzalez

Through class lectures and blog articles, I have learned about various efforts that different experts across the country and world are making in order to save and/or maintain the environment. This particular approach is just another in a long list of these efforts. Net emissions are a concept I had not previously heard of. Negative emissions technologies, or NETS are a concept I had not previously been exposed to. Aiming to eliminate net emissions is a large task to take on, but could return very positive results.

The issue with large, bold movements such as these come at a cost. Like many other solutions presented in this course, money invested into a solution that "may" extend the healthy future of the environment is a risk. I understand why this seems like a difficult investment, but if governing bodies do not begin to invest in the future of the earth that we inhabit, the future of our environment is grim.

Unknown said...

The concept of introducing negative-emissions technologies (NETs) is a good one. However, when you really think about how our environment is in today’s society, the ongoing talks, and research, it’s hard to see it becoming a reality any time soon. To expect multiple countries to jump on board with this ideology is asking a lot. Each country has different economic issues that they are trying to solve. Yes, NETs would benefit every country but like it’s talked about it is not cheap. Poorer countries, even rich countries at that, should try different methods before taking on the expensive task of NETs.

In my opinion, I think society can and should really start doing something to fix the damage we have caused to our earth. But I think it should start off with the resources already available to us so we can hopefully avoid falling into a false sense of security with some grand gesture such as NETs. We can’t continue to take and take, we need to start healing out planet in a way that does not further damage us at the same time.

Unknown said...

Brian DelVecchio

Finding ways to directly remove carbon from the atmosphere will in the long term, be crucial to human survival. As humans, we should be taking the necessary steps and efforts to fund, research, and implement new technologies and practices in an effort to removing some of the environmental impact that we have already made. Today, efforts to create as many small to medium scale efforts to reducing carbon emission as possible because in theory, those should be easiest to implement across many different places. Whether it includes improving our soils and waters so that they absorb more, incorporating affixed bioenergy practices into farming and planting, or having park and reforestation projects, there needs to be many small things that can be visible for the common public to be aware of.
By doing this, it will create more of an interest over time from people who may not have necessarily been involved with the environmental community, which could lead to larger scale NETs. By having more support from communities, it could create a greater push for bigger projects like crop fueled power stations that have increased economic costs but are significant improvements to the environment. Technology such as direct air capture are not viable in the current state, which is why there needs to be funding towards improving the technology towards it. The price of solar powered energy has decreased exponentially while the efficiency of them is increasing as well. It would take many years to get somewhere satisfactory, potentially 2050 which many billions of dollars according to Pete Smith of Aberdeen University.
Having governments act how Norway did in 1991, where they told oil companies to either pay for carbon emissions or find a way to take it away from their operations, could go a long way towards reducing carbon emissions. While this can be viewed as just another tax, the best way to influence businesses is to set a standard and make them pay if they don’t fulfill said standard. The benefits will include the taxes gained from this that can go towards environmental projects, or more importantly creates a healthier business environment where companies will take the initiative themselves to reduce their footprints. This goes back to the fact that there are too many externalities in the economy that are not directly accounted for. By assigning some sort of property value to the damage of carbon, all organizations will take carbon emissions more seriously and take efforts to reducing and removing them as much as possible, thus slowing the damage to come.
A worry of mine is that in our finite lives, it is easy for people to have a thought process of “it will not affect me once it is too late” which causes non-environmentalists to be careless about future generations. Many initiatives need to be taken for helping the environment, and finding ways for the general public to be aware and informed of the actions being taken is crucial. The best way to move to a world where we don’t have to worry about a 2 degree temperature rise is to get as many people as physically possible to have vested interest and knowledge on the topics and initiatives at hand.

YANG Peidong said...

Peidong Yang
Since side effects of global warming is becoming more and more serious, its major cause is also getting increasing attention over the world. On one hand, scientists are sparing no efforts to develop new technologies which can effectively reduce the emission of carbon dioxide and explore new resource that can replace traditional fuels which may emit greenhouse gas. On the other hand, international organizations and experts want to reduce the impacts of greenhouse gases by extracting carbon dioxide from air, and they call these methods are negative-emission technologies (NET). This post introduces some NETs, such as afforestation, and bioenergy generation. Afforestation is a quite simple and clear method for all people to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. Actually, this method has already been widely recognized and employed in the world. Money countries, including developed and developing countries put emphasis on the protection of forests and wet lands. Trees and plants are the most powerful natural resources to absorb carbon dioxide, and release the oxygen. More and more governments regulate the use of land and plant more trees. Nevertheless, afforestation also faces come challenges. Planting more trees demand more lands, but the increasing population need for food to survive, which also need more land to support agriculture. Thus, it is critical for scientists to invent new technologies to increase the output of crops with fewer lands. Plus, the growth of tree also need time, which means the afforestation won’t work immediately after samplings are dug into the soil. As for the bioenergy generation, which refers to burry carbon dioxide into deep geological strata, rather than in the air. However, this method isn’t developed enough and can’t reduce the greenhouse gas effectively.
As the basket of greenhouse gas emission is fixed, the more us release, the less spare we leave, and the cost to solve the problem is much expensive than to prevent it. Therefore, we need to put great attention of the cutting emission of greenhouse gas.

Zixuan Song said...

Ziuxan Song

Global warming becomes a really important topic for humans to think about, there are a lot of negative impacts of global warming. The major cause for global warming is greenhouses gases which is released by human activities. The parliament of Sweden has passed a law to make the entire country decreases its emission for greenhouse gases in atmosphere in 2045 towards the such important conditions. There are some scientists believe if humans can invent new technology which will make the reduction for us to use those energies such as gas and carbon. WIth the reduction for using those fuels, we will release less greenhouses gas by our operating activities.

Some experts believe the greenhouses gas can be reduced by extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by using negative-emission technologies. This technology is widely used by a lot of countries. That also becomes very important project for humans to take in. Moreover. the best way to reduce the CO2 emission will be using tree and other plants. That can reduce the level of CO2 down by a huge amount. There are too many population live in our plant now, it's also necessary for government of different countries to reduce the population in order to create the more sustainable living environment for humans.

Unknown said...

Global Warming is a danger to our planet and it is caused by us. We are using so much of our energy and producing so much greenhouse gases that the earth cannot take. Some countries wants to take step in this issue and try to solve carbon dioxide problem however, it is not that easy. For example, Sweden has passed a law that will allow country to produce 0% carbon dioxide by 2045 however, this seems little bit unrealistic to me. First reason is it is very expensive, second one is they cannot regulate everyone so it will be pretty difficult for them to enforce this type of law. I believe, we should first take action by ourselves with reducing the use of greenhouse gases. It will be better if we start using clean technologies like solar panels and etc even though they are expensive and their cost is higher when they produce the clean energy in the future prices might drop and they can start to earn money. At this moment, these kinds of technologies are expensive however, we should take a step in this and start doing something for our world. Our vision should not be limited with short terms but rather we should set up long term plans in order to save our atmosphere and reduce the carbon dioxide from our atmosphere. We can start to try traditional ways like planting trees to reduce carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases. Negative- emission technologies can also be used in this scenario however, it might be costly and not every country would be able to afford to pay for these technologies. As a result, global warming is an increasing issue for us we need to be aware of it and take actions to prevent it happening worse.

Unknown said...

Yunjia Guo

This week's article raises the topic of negative-emissions technology including the methods and technologies different countries addressed for achieve it. This technology mainly requires us to invent new sinks and cut emissions at the sametime while it is always less awared than cutting emmissions.Relying on some technology and science metions I just learned from the post, our countries have more chance to dealing with the current existing pollution substance, which I found very enjoy reading about. On the other hand, some of them seems huge projects and involves big change in our daily life and may spends massive money and labor by working on the technology. I feel it is great that we have some method to dealing with the current problem but we do need more analysis on how can we use NETs and our traditional way of cutting emissions at the sametime to find a balance on the cost and benefits.

Unknown said...

Jordi Isidor

Although environmental economics has been a big topic during the last couple of year, we still need to put more effort in archiving the goals that we have set. As the article, said that "Sweden has passed a law that will allow the country to produce 0% carbon dioxide by 2045." we are able to assume that countries like Sweden are trying to help the environment. However, after looking at the facts, most of our goals are a little extreme, and after reading the article, I was kind of concern if we would be able to meet our goals.

Aside of the goals, there is a tradeoff between agriculture and reforestation, more people need to eat which involve more land to cultive, which it leads to deforestation. Nonetheless if we are really concern about carbon emission we are supposed to think about the future, and be able to sacrifice short term economy growth in order to maintain a sustainability.

Unknown said...

Daniella Antolino

This has been ahuge topic in the past couple of years, we need to set goals and help each other achieve them. We are using so much greenhouse gases that the earth cannot take it. For example, sweden has passed a law that will allow country to produce 0% carbon dioxide by 2045, although this seems extremely unlikely they are still taking charge into fixing the air quality and carbon dioxide in our air. We have a chance to deal with all of these issues with the technology and different methods being proposed. I have really enjoyed this articles and learned a lot. It is also very scary and uncomfortable feeling in the future if we don't change this there could be severe impacts to us and society as a whole. We are going to see a lot of changes in the near future.