The G7 Summit is over. Whatever transpired at it did not in any way slow or even promise to slow the rapid melt of our glaciers, the changing of our weather patterns and or reduce the uncertainty of maintaining reliable water resources brought about by the accelerating heating of the global atmosphere. Once again, the world just kicked the climate can down the road.
Those of us committed to responding to the global climate emergency were blindsided by the re-election of U.S. President Donald Trump, and blindsided again by the emergence of the climate realism movement his administration has spawned and its unholy capacity to persuade leaders across the entire political spectrum. Given that the goals of the Paris Climate Accord are simply too difficult, expensive and not to say inconvenient to achieve, the default is to simply abandon them and rely on unproven and unperfected technologies to miraculously re-stabilize the climate after overshooting the carbon dioxide reduction targets that would have prevented the world from warming by three Celsius or more before centuries end.
That narrative is mere wishful thinking, an obvious dodge. The story that, if we want a future, must replace this cop-out is that it will not only be ecologically catastrophic if we fail to address the global climate emergency, but it would be far, far more expensive not to try to meet the emissions reductions goals of the Paris and other like climate accords.
The scientific facts demonstrate that relying on these technologies to somehow mature in the 2030s or 2040s as a justification for overshooting carbon emissions reductions targets or, worse yet, claiming that those targets can be abandoned altogether with the full confidence that somehow miracle technologies will emerge just in time that will allow us to re-stabilize the climate, is a Ponzi scheme that has the potential to become the greatest intergenerational injustice ever imposed upon the future of humanity, a risk no rational leader has the moral licence to take.
There is overwhelming evidence to back this up. The famed Climeworks project in Iceland, which was promoted as a model of carbon capture technology viability, has completely failed in its promise, and is now heralded as a turning point in confidence, not just in this technology, but in the entire class of false solutions it represents. In 2024, the Climeworks Iceland plant captured only 105 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2). To put that into perspective, that is roughly 1/1000th of what the company claimed the plant was built to remove. Here in Canada, Carbon Engineering’s project in Squamish, B.C. similarly captured only a fraction of the carbon dioxide it promised over several years of trying to validate the technology.
Moreover, the energy requirements of attempting to take the CO2 out of the air are huge. If these technologies actually worked – and there is now suspicion that they were ever meant to – would require thousands of these plants and an energy demand equivalent to the electricity use of a midsize industrial nation.
Then there is the question of the extent to which it would be possible to scale these technologies up to make a difference. At present, global carbon dioxide emissions are around 40 billion tonnes a year. To date, across all companies and all technologies and all years combined, direct air capture has removed only 20,000 tonnes or 0.00005 per cent of annual global emissions.
We have listened to the noise long enough to know that the math doesn’t add up. At best, carbon capture was a bold experiment. At worst, a loss leader in which the global Petrostate spends millions generating false hope that they can contribute to the solution of the climate crisis, so they can make billions while the world continues to prevaricate on meaningful climate action.
So, where does this leave these technologies? It has been worthwhile, if not necessary, to explore their feasibility, but we now know they won’t work at scale. While perhaps helpful in offsetting emissions in overshoot circumstances in specific localized situations where waste heat and storage capacity are located, to promote them as a pillar of a global decarbonization strategy is mere fantasy.
Unless we actually believe in climate alchemy and consent to support it with endless public subsidies, we need to wake up. We are hurtling toward a cliff, safe somehow in the certainty that when the time comes, we’ll learn to suck the air out of the air. The real solution is simpler. We need to stop lighting carbon on fire, because that is the only removal that will save us. Until we do, count on continuing to watch our glaciers disappear, our snowpacks decline and forests and homes burn right before our very eyes.
Bob Sandford is senior government relations liaison, Global Climate Emergency Response at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment & Health. Bob lives in Canmore.
