Seeking Technological Solutions to the Climate Crisis

To the Editor:

Re “Can We Engineer Our Way Out of the Climate Crisis?” (“Buying Time” series, front page, March 31):

The fact that the fossil fuel industry is seeking to rebrand the concept of geoengineering with terms that sound more palatable should tell us all we need to know about the validity of these foolish, unworkable false solutions to our climate crisis.

“Carbon capture and storage” and “direct air capture” may sound like pleasant, productive endeavors. But the truth is, they are indeed a wasteful distraction, doing more harm than good.

Recent analysis from Food & Water Watch indicates that direct air capture is both preposterously expensive and ultimately pointless. Capturing just a quarter of our country’s annual carbon dioxide emissions would cost around a trillion dollars a year — money much better spent on replacing oil and gas power with clean, renewable alternatives.

And the process of capturing the carbon is extremely energy-intensive itself. Powering a direct air capture operation via traditional methods would create over three times more carbon emissions than it actually captured. Meanwhile, diverting wind and solar energy to run carbon capture facilities would be like using clean water to power a desalination plant — a wasteful loop of stagnation.

Unfortunately, there are no fanciful, futuristic escapes from the deepening crisis we face. There is only this simple fact: In order to avoid the worst of fossil-fuel-driven climate chaos, we need to quit fossil fuels — quickly.

Wenonah Hauter
Washington
The writer is founder and executive director of Food & Water Watch.

To the Editor:

The issue is not “can we” but “we must” engineer our way out of earth’s climate crisis.