The COP26 climate conference in Glasgow has been a failure. There have been a few agreements here and there, but nothing very impressive for a conference that was supposedly "make or break" for humanity.
This shouldn't surprise anyone. COP26 merely confirms what we've known for a long time: nations won't agree to cut back on profitable fossil fuel extraction and politicians don't dare promise to do anything that will annoy their constituents. This has been true for decades and it's still true.
If I were your benevolent dictator, here's what I would do:
- Aggressively roll out wind, solar, and nuclear power. This would probably get us about halfway toward our goal of net zero carbon emissions.
- Pour trillions of dollars into R&D looking for new technologies to reduce atmospheric CO2. This would include things like cement production and chemical manufacturing that don't benefit from green electricity, and carbon capture, which is a necessary part of meeting our goals.
- Begin seeding the atmosphere with aerosols. If we start now, it could be done very slowly while we test for larger effects on the planet. If, instead, we wait until 2040 or 2050 to do this, it will be an emergency operation with unknown impacts.
I understand this is not a popular proposal. Hell, I don't like it much myself. But all the evidence in the world suggests that nothing else has any real chance of success. It's time to face up to that.
How much more aggressively can we roll out wind and solar though? And we aren't just not rolling out nuclear, we are scaling it back!
Solar and wind farms get a lot of NIMBY pushback and don't even get started about nuclear. How many cities would approve one of those today (even though, realistically speaking, it's the only non-carbon alternative we have given the amount of energy our economy requires)?
jte-
Why not build nukes on or directly adjacent to military bases? They would be protected against attack, its already federal land and its probably already full of pollutants.
I'm talking away from the coastline
Lackland AFB
Fort Hood
Fort Bragg
Meade
Heck you could build one in Bremmerton Wa right next to the Navy Base there. Build it 1/2 mile inland - you would already be a couple of hundred feet above mean high tide and not affected by sea level rise..
Added bonus - you have all those nuclear propulsion trained techs coming and going as well.
Just keep them dispersed throughout the country.
Nuclear power plants are nearly always built near large bodies of water, because they have very high cooling requirements.
I get that. It is also part of their down fall as a source of electricity.
I wounder if a Desal plant would help them out?
Nukes need cooling water. Those photos of big plumes of "smoke" coming out of the towers that every story about "pollution" has are water vapor.
On site construction is another cost problem.
Nothing will be done until there is mass death. 10x, or even 100x that of Covid. That and mass migration on the order of billions.
It does NOT need drinking water. It just needs water
Thats why there are so many plants along the sea shore world wide.
THIS is the problem. A Nuke disaster is bad enough in and of itself but to put it near the worlds biggest food source is just plain nuts.
Why not a dedicated desalinization plant to feed it cooling water? It doesn't have to get ALL the salt out like they do for drinking water and the nuclear plant could supply it with electricity.
On a side note. At one time a republican governor here in NC wanted to allow for oil exploration off our coastline - within just a few miles from shore. It was going to be visible. Now that Biden has opened up the coastline for wind farms I wonder if those same "view purists" will come out of the wood work to disparage just the sight of wind turbines?
Also I read the other day that a European country was building the LARGEST turbine ever? It was supposed to be exceedingly tall as well. Supposed to be able to fully power 24,000 homes? That's interesting if the figures are correct
Here's a fairly old story about GE's turbine in Rotterdam.
It's not behind a pay wall
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/01/business/GE-wind-turbine.html
From what I have been reading they want to go higher than 1,000 feet with these things which puts it in a fairly consistent wind situation
Our grid is designed to deliver electricity from sources that provide a fairly constant output of electricity. Variable sources such as wind and solar present problems of distribution and allocation. Those problems are hardly insurmountable, but I don't think we are investing enough to address them.
Before we do a real big buildout of nuclear, we need to do some R&D to design reactors that don't melt down if the internal power delivery systems fail, as happened in Fukushima. If you're going to have a lot of these machines, you better make them extra-safe.
But building out fission plants that breed fuel, esp. fuel that can't be used to make atom bomb, and that can handle power failures, seems like is mandatory to get CO2 emissions under control.
And Kevin is right -- switching the entire planet to CO2 free energy and manufacturing strikes me as a job that's going to take way more than 10-20 years. So we better be learning how to do geo-engineering, and fast.
That was the original intent of the "3rd Generation" reactors.
However they turned out to be uneconomic. Given the construction economics, it's better to have more MW - up to 1300 MW (1.3 GW) in the "Third Generation Plus" reactors.
AFAIK no 3rd Gen were built. It's all 3rd Gen+.
UAE is just turning on its new reactors. There are working examples in China. However the EPR (the French contender) has yet to work in practice - both Oluotu in Finland and Flamanville in France are late (over 10 years in the Finnish case). UK is building one (Hinkley Point C - 2.6 GW in total).
US cancelled 2 3G half built (in South Carolina) but Southern Company is pressing on with 2 in Georgia (Vogtle I think?). Again way over budget and late. Those are APR1000 from memory (Westinghouse design).
mini reactors are a sort of Holy Grail that has appeared every decade in the nuclear industry. No one has built a commercial one yet.
Our grid is designed to handle a nuclear power plant going off line. That's not exactly "constant".
A core need for almost all countries is grid reinforcement (as well as non-carbon intenstive base load so yes nuclear) and also maximising grid scale - the wider the scale the more distributed the intermittancy issue for RE.
RE intermittancy is a genuine problem - or shall we say a genuine challenge.
Could you please tell me if you know of anyone anywhere who has presented a fool proof plan on how to store nuclear waste safely for the timespan needed.
We Swedes are claiming we have but just yesterday did some heavyweights on corrosion ask some serious question to the consortium supposed to handle it on their data concerning corrosion resistance on the capsules supposed to be used
Subduction trenches in the ocean?
Have you seen anyone who has investigated your idea?
People advocating nuclear power seems to “forget” this issue
Wikipedia: "According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the contiguous United States has the potential for 10,459 GW of onshore wind power.[40][41] The capacity could generate 37 petawatt-hours (PW·h) annually, an amount nine times larger than current total U.S. electricity consumption.[42] The U.S. also has large wind resources in Alaska,[43] and Hawaii.[44]"
We can roll out wind and solar *a lot* more aggressively.
Also, there are about 200GW of geothermal that can be rolled out worldwide using current technology: https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2017/Aug/IRENA_Geothermal_Power_2017.pdf
The cheapest thing would probably be for humanity to just move underground where it's more temperate. Sure our C.H.U.D. future isn't all that glamorous, but it's not a carbon tax!
Are you an Eloi or a Morlock?
+++
Could try to convince all those Zoomers that are self-proclaimed saviours of the environment that they could, you know, not take Ubers and Lyft's everywhere.
If only they'd buy their own SUVs and pick-ups.
If we're talking about "Zoomers" based in the USA, only a tiny percentage have transit or walkability options. How else are they to get around if not by car?
That said, though, Uber/Lyft ought to come out with an option to allow users to select "EV Only" for their rides (my apologies if they've already thought of this). I bet a lot of self-conscious Uber/Lyft passengers would pay a premium for a greener option, at least when they're not in a hurry.
If we see the atmosphere with aerosols and keep temperatures down that way, nothing will be done about CO2. So emissions will keep rising, CO2 levels will reach life-threatening levels and I mean all higher forms of life, and on the day the aerosol pumping ceases, because no civilization or political/economic system lasts forever, goodbye beautiful planet.
We have no right to make life on Earth itself dependent on the neoliberal order.
Well, it's not just the neoliberal order (whatever that means). Nations throughout Asia and the Indian subcontinent want all the things that the west has had for decades. Just when those things are within grasp, the west calls a halt and slams the door. Think that's gonna work?
I think we should build a giant space parasol and position it between the Earth and sun.
Better yet, build an energy pipeline directly to the sun...but, you know, do it at night so it won't burn up.
Life itself dependent on Neoliberal order?? Good lord that's ridiculous Lefty Greeny cant.
CO2 is not going to reach "life threatening levels" - that is unscientific nonsense.
CO2 can reach Human Agriculture Threatening levels, but life (versus human civilisation comfortable climate conducive to agriculture) is not threatened. Life has gone through far far far worse than anything humanity can produce.
This Gaia Greeny nonsense mistakes the problem - the extistential threat is not to Life. It is to human civilisation.
Exactly. Without success in carbon capture and/or geoengineering, we are on track for global resource wars by mid-century.
CO2 is not going to reach "life threatening levels"? Depends if you are a dinasour or not.
If we see the atmosphere with aerosols and keep temperatures down that way, nothing will be done about CO2.
No reason we can't do both. If we can muster the will to do large-scale geoengineering, I'd say it's likely we can muster the will to decarbonize.
You can pry Kevin's gas stove, ICE automobiles and on-a-whim travel from his cold, dead hands...
For me this was an eye opener. Even if the US (via magic) went to zero green house gasses tomorrow, within seven years, world CO2 levels would continue to rise at a pretty rapid pace. The real challenge is both places like China, India and emerging countries such as Indonesia, Brazil, Turkey, Mexico etc.
"In 2019 China is estimated to have emitted 27% of world GhG, followed by the United States with 11%, then India with 6.6%. In total the United States has emitted a quarter of world GHG, more than any other country."
Yeah, I've seen those graphs -- China and India's emissions grow enormously, as do "others" (all but India, China, EU and US). So, on top of coming up with solutions, we have to get them adopted across dozens of countries.
This just isn't going to happen in time. That's why geo-engineering, although in some ways a terrible idea (we don't know what we're doing), will almost certainly be required to keep the impact of all these CO2 emissions to anything close to reasonable.
China and India have much higher population densities than the U.S. You can't increase coal burning in these countries at the projected rate because even if you don't care about the peasants, the rich people want to be able to breathe too. China and India have stronger motivations for turning off the GHG pumps.
* Their citizens are becoming richer and more demanding of heathy environments.
* The new energy technologies are cheaper. Especially in emerging countries where grid infrastructure is unreliable and diesel generators can be replaced with solar.
* The emerging countries will suffer more from the ill-effects of GHG, because they lack the money to be more resilient.
If I were Kevin’s Vice Dictator, I’d add aggressive geothermal energy and ocean nutrient seeding as well. Kevin’s already written some on the benefits of geo plus could create jobs for displaced oil drillers Nutrient seeding has the potential to sequester carbon. That’s how today’s oil reserves were created. There’s also some research that this would promote whale repopulation as well.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/11/whaling-whales-food-krill-iron/620604/
Win-win!
Huge +1 to ocean seeding! Enhanced weathering, too.
Beat me to it!
😉
You'll need to ban whaling, or at least cut back on it a lot, to make the iron seeding self sustaining.
Beyond small aboriginal whale hunt, the only two whaling nations I know of are Japan and Norway. It should be possible to either shame them, or buy them off, or do a bit of both.
“Begin seeding the atmosphere with aerosols.”
What could go wrong? [choking on pollutants causing cancerous growth in lungs]
The idea is to inject the aerosols into the upper atmosphere, where they will stay for decades. However, just to be on the safe side we could choose non-toxic aerosols. Pure water, for instance, would work well, although at the very low air pressure at the altitudes we're talking about, ice crystals would sublime rapidly. Salt water is another candidate. An aerosol mist of salt water released high in the stratosphere would rapidly dry to very fine salt crystals that would reflect sunlight very well and would be non-poisonous when they eventually returned to the surface.
Don't be rational, oppose all action!
I don't know enough to say whether it's a good idea or not. But I will point out there are a lot of non-poisonous things that cause lung diseases when inhaled.
Upper atmosphere aerosols are completely irrelevant to your choking on anything, but this is a nice illustration of the illiteracy in science that will block all action
there is a cure for that. it's called education.
Education makes liberals. It must be stopped!!
But all the evidence in the world suggests that nothing else has any real chance of success. It's time to face up to that.
Nothing in the world has any chance of success at all.
The only thing that can happen is to assume the worst and begin massive anti-desertification and desalination programs.
I really mean massive desalination programs, enough to replace rainfall everywhere.
Rainfall isn’t going to stop. It very well may move. Considerably.
Raining in the middle of the oceans doesn't really help.
Britain has had of late, incidences where a month's rain fell in 24 hours. In one case more than that.
Best guess seems to be we will have longer and dryer hot spells. But also more severe downpours and storms.
Doing the R&D is important. Follow on with changing regulations to use the low-carbon technologies. Work with the construction industry and zoning codes to make low carbon concrete and steel a standard. Make sure the use of these gets taught in engineering schools. Require their use in Federal contracts.
If your project requires a low carbon concrete then even if it is made in China it will be reducing the worlds carbon in the air.
NREL should publish solutions for the electric power industry to use distributed batteries to smooth out power from wind and solar. There are relatively cheap, but heavy, batteries that could be buried, one for every 100 homes for example, to absorb and give back wind and solar power as needed.
I have no idea of the exact size of the placement, that is NREL's job. Think of it like planting a forest to absorb sporadic rainfall and feed that to rivers to keep their flow constant.
3. Begin seeding the atmosphere with aerosols.
Vote NO! on Prop 3.
Aerosols are ivermectin when what you want is a vaccine.
#3 is what the fossil fuel biz wants. After years of denial, they want to shift to "It's too late." If we surrender now, efforts to convert to clean energy will fail even more miserably and the Earth in the end will be in worse shape. Better we focus on conversion to clean energy -- and investment in helping developing countries bypass fossil fuels -- and more. We need to accelerate action, not give up because you don't think we'll do enough. You really don't know.
Unfortunately, it probably *is* too late to just eliminate CO2 emissions. You're talking about changing the entire planet's energy production scheme, and a lot of manufacturing as well. Oh, and transportation -- did I forget trains, planes and automobiles?
Kevin gets grade of 33%! Only correct answer is #1, and it's lacking BATTERY STORAGE! We needed invent any new tech to solve this problem, it's all a problem of politics. The tech for green electric is here, green transport is here, green steel is here, green cement is here, it's just a matter of some things getting marginally more expensive, while electricity will drop in price in 30 years.
On the aerosols....we have already engineered a warmer climate, no denying that, but I do agree that doing it will pretty much stop any transition to green everything.
Solution, never elect republicans ever again!
I don't agree with the necessity of pouring money into emerging technologies to directly reduce atmospheric CO2 and other GHG, and here's why:
Instead, we need to pour that money into development of fission. Focus on fission and GHG production will be slashed rapidly -- as in overnight -- sooner than later. Atmospheric GHG can be removed with existing scrubber technologies -- no need to pour billions into a one-time technology that will not be needed after we hit targeted CO2 levels. In fact, by developing technology to scale CO2 scrubbing, we're bailing out GHG producers, allowing them to stick around indefinitely.
The only other things we need to be concerned about are the components of manufacturing of modern materials that rely on petroleum and its byproducts, and/or finding substitutions for those modern materials. Look all around you and the buildings we're building right now: EPS, XPS, PVC, CPVC, and PEX all rely on petroleum products/byproducts.
Carbon that's turned into PVCs, etc. isn't going to cause global warming, right?
Yeah, you could research new nuclear and then build the power plants. Or you could build out wind and solar every year at continually decreasing prices for the next twenty years while waiting for the nuclear to be built.
I think we’ve decided that breaking humanity is ok.
The first scientific report on climate change is dating from 1896 . Today is the first time “fossil fuel “ is mentioned in an international document on how to handle the worst crisis in the history of mankind.
WOW! PROGRESS!
Just give us another 125 years and they will add “must be phased out immediately “ Do anyone truly expect we , in the global north, will be able to handle climate breakdown without sacrificing some of our privileges?
We who are having it all are the ones who have caused climate breakdown, we who are living as if we are living on a planet with infinite resources and we who living as if tomorrow doesn’t exist.
Remember, even low income groups in countries like USA is extremely wealthy in a global perspective
We are used to be able to travel hundreds of miles in all directions in just hours at an affordable cost. We are used to be able to fly to romantic remote islands just for fun at any time we choose. We who are able to buy new outfits at any time.
If some politicians or some activists are implying we need to scale down , pay a little more for gas or electricity, in order to save the future for all coming generations are we freaking out and calling them prophets of doom and we are instead turning to politicians who are ensuring us that they are going to handle climate without demanding us to sacrifice anything . They are promising us to reach “net zero”(net zero is a scam) in some distant future and that will be sufficient to save the future of the human race
They are lying!
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CWJIXVclzC4/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
An inconvenient truth from a Swede
No one is actually arguing that we need to pay more for gas or electricity. It's pretty much the opposite. We can deploy cheaper wind and solar and run-of-river hydro, which become even cheaper the more we deploy them, AND gain cleaner air, AND avoid the increasing costs of fires, hurricanes, and tidal flooding.
You do realize it the US itself got rid of ICE, batterized planes and nationalized coal putting scrubbers on all plants, us co2 would be 80% lower......don't you.
80% drop globally in 100 years would start seeing global temperatures dropping. Lazy idiots.
Silly SOG, the scrubbers on coal plants don't remove CO2, they remove SO2. Or are your talking about the yet unproven CO2 scrubbers?
Why would we nationalize coal and put scrubbers on the plants? The point is to generate electricity cost-effectively.
1. Stop shutting down nuclear plants early, unless there is a design problem or specific issue with a given plant. Update them.
2. As mentioned earlier, iron-seeding parts of the ocean to "re-wild" them.
3. Infrastructure--and build out wind and solar (and tidal?).
4. Carbon capture. Not direct carbon capture, but on processes like making cement. Indeed, there were some recent reports of feeding the CO2 back into the cement to cure it and lock away the CO2. If there is a safe way to secure CO2, then burn biomass.
5. Aerosols in the upper atmosphere? They all have a fairly short lifetime up there, so we better be able to commit to it for 50 to 100 years--as long as we wean ourselves off fossils fuels in the interim. It's like starting a war--you don't want to do it unless you have an end-game.
1. But they're all well past their design lifetimes, and under heavy neutron bombardment, reactor components don't last forever. Also, there's been a lot -- a LOT -- of deferred maintenance, because it boosts profits. And running up the power output above specs. Shut 'em all down, and make their sites where their radwaste resides, permanently. Nowhere else is going to accept somebody else's radwaste. Get used to it.
Three decades ago...
Here’s what we should do instead. Nothing. Not a darn thing. What is the goal of reducing emissions? This is an honest question. Because if the goal is to achieve some thing many decades in the future… in 150 years or more, it is silly to incur a cost today. It’s just silly. If you know what you want life on this planet to be like 8n 150 years, then tell me. How many people? At what standard of living compared to today? With what life expectancy? To argue we must sacrifice something today for those humans who might (might!) be living in 2150 or 2200 is really just not something I’m willing to do.
Look around. Half this country hates the other half. We spend trillions on weapons and war without a debate then panic over some change 8n tax policy or government benefits as if they pose a mortal threat. Inflation! Good grief.
We daily attack, kill, and destroy our so called enemies and they wish to do the same to us. People literally blow themselves up trying to kill other people. And then this government retaliated by killing children by mistake. (Sure… it was a mistake. 😂)
Tell me… what is it about this that you wish to preserve?
When humanity learns to stop hating and killing, then talk to me about the future.
As near as I can tell, climate change mass death and population reduction is a mercy killing. Don’t have kids.
Well, y'know, the humans you hate so much aren't the only living things that are being killed off. Millions of other plant and animal species are going down the drain into extinction. You happy with that?
salamander-
They survived previous climate change cycles.
It's "natural" that climate changes. Animals adapt or die. The fact that we have them today tells me they survived the previous catastrophe's with some adaptation.
We humans are still "new" to the planet.
Will we adapt? Will we be able to adapt? to Climate change.
If it happens over the time spans of previous ones yes we will. The problem is hype on both sides. We do need to calm down a bit.
We have grossly over-populated the planet. This has lead to multiple pollutants being put into the air at very high rates just to keep that population explosion comfortable. Those very same humans are taking earth resources at a astonishing rate. The loss of those resources, especially forests are making GHG emissions even worse because we no longer can absorb as much as we are putting out.
Climate change will not happen overnight, in the next decade or in the next century. It is not something you wake up to in the morning saying "Damn honey the climate has changed".
We are adding to the speed of the change but did not cause the change to start - that happens cyclically. We cannot stop it. We can only try to reduce the speed in which its happening.
IF we want to try to reduce burning of fossil fuels we can do it.
It will take a variety of approaches and it will take time.
Stop the hype - it's not too late - why? Cause its gonna happen anyway. We can only slow it down, if that. Humans apparently love reproducing more so than being able to live comfortably.
BTW - anyone see the article out of Purdue University? They have conceptualized a method of charging EV car batteries in 5 minutes. They "think" they have solved the cable heating problems that come with trying to charge EVs too fast. If this is true it could be the "spark" that conversion to EVs might need to win over the public (sorry poor electrical pun)
One flaw in your argument is that we aren't arguing that anything needs sacrificing.
@Justin:
I'm not as concerned about people living fifty or a hundred years from now as I am about what's happening right now today. We've been in a drought for twenty years in the western US, and we have the violent and deadly wildfires to prove it. "Hundred-year floods" are happening around the world every couple of years. South Pacific island nations are threatened with imminent destruction from rising sea levels. Hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons of biblical proportions are occurring every year. As many as a million species are on the verge of extinction this year. All of this is happening today.
I know that with the oil lobby spreading lies about the situation, it may seem hopeless to try correcting our path, but it's really only hopeless if you give up hope. There are a lot of good, thoughtful ideas just in this comment thread, let alone among climate scientists and engineers around the world.
As for your incessant doomsday trolling, you've made your point repeatedly. I get it: As long as you're comfortable, you don't care about anyone else. You think you can't stop climate change. But millions are trying to help, and you can't stop that, either.
From today's Washington Post, one suggestion, not a full solution:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/11/10/cop26-peat-carbon/
Ocean fertilization and aerosol spreading will have uneven effects across countries. Severe droughts or collapsed fisheries are a real possibility for some regions and both the ocean ecosystem and atmosphere/climate are chaotic systems that are difficult to model 'down' to regional scales. Both make me nervous as they could really kick off some international crises.
Nuclear power in the near term to me seems like the best option with the dual requirement of waste reduction and safety. We could deal with the waste now but the public has been wildly misled by the dangers of waste and so the politics are a nightmare.
But R&D could go a long way and make nuclear safer/irrelevant. Get the engineers pointed in the right direction and let them go. We could get this done.
Wind and Solar are cheaper than Nuclear and their price is falling faster. But, yeah, if you want to spend money the Stupid Way, Nuclear is a great option.
Misled: Creating and storing highly toxic chemicals is not a robust strategy.
In a perfect world, renewable energy would be viable. It is not currently (intermittent, storage, delivery) as has been demonstrated in the real world. When Japan and Germany shut down their nuclear reactors after Fukushima, coal and natural gas usage skyrocketed. These sources of energy produces megatons of toxic waste (not just CO2) each year that kill hundreds of thousands of people and poison our air, soil and water. Methylated mercury from coal will be with us for centuries. It is because this poison hasn't been hyped by Hollywood and the media that we tolerate it.
Breeder reactors coupled to thorium-based nuclear would dramatically reduce waste. This would be part of the 'deal' for future nuclear. It would be coupled to renewable energy and provide the base-flow and emergency power needed, also reducing nuclear waste as it would not be the sole source.
You can be realistic about what is viable or play 'if I were dictator' games in your head. But there are serious, smart people working on this and you can educate yourself. I encourage you to do this!
There is more carbon in the earth's soil than in plant matter and the atmosphere combined. We need massive programs to reverse desertification and increase carbon in the soil.
Plants remove CO2 from the air and put it into the soil as well as their bodies. It's not rocket science - we need to maximize plant cover. Once you get the ground covered, the benefits start to multiply. Trees can create rain, but in most brittle environments, deep rooted grasses are the best choice. Ruminants are key for the re-creation of grasslands in dry brittle environments - the best place for creation of the material content of fertile soil is inside a ruminant. (I'm talking manure, for the obtuse.)
Check out what China accomplished in the Loess Plateau: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-PLbGp123M
^^ this PBS video is less than 3 minutes long - check it out. If you can spare only one minute, start at 1:30 and watch to 2:30. You will be impressed at what can be done with human effort and ingenuity.
We need to stop obsessing on our footprint and think about our handprint. It's not enough to stop burning fuels, we need to restore damaged ecosystems. The key fact, though, is that it can be done. Listen to John Liu, to Willy Smits, to Geoff Lawton, to Sepp Holzer.
I wish this were true. The ability of natural, or managed ecosystems, to store soil carbon is simply not adequate. We suspect it is a small piece to the puzzle and we simply do not understand the soil carbon cycle well-enough to predict the stability or trajectory of what you are proposing. Right now this 'ecosystem solution' is being used by corporations to green wash their carbon footprint .
I suspect this post might derive from Allan Savory's dream world, who does not publish his research and misrepresents the research of others. He does give a nice talk though, which is what has gotten him this far.
But restoring ecosystems is an awesome idea regardless of the CO2 benefits. What is being done to our planet's biota should make us all heartsick---Anything to turn that around is a net benefit.
If I were dictator:
1) Put a price on carbon.
2) Building codes so that most new housing is electric, architected and built for solar (south facing roof).
3) Set a date for the end of selling ICE cars.
That's a policy matrix a lot of countries are following.
The UK is not a dictatorship but has done 1 & 3 (2030 although will still allow plug in hybrids ie PHEV). 2 is probably coming. Germany and the EU are doing something similar (the motor industry is a huge economic and political force in Germany so there may be some backlash against EVs as costing German manufacturing jobs).
It doesn't take a dictatorship, it takes a democracy with a focus of will. US politics are pathological on this one (so are Australian). It's hard when you have embedded fossil fuel interests in politics.
Some interesting thoughts
https://cepr.net/imagine-if-stopping-climate-change-was-more-important-than-making-climate-change-billionaires/