The next few months or couple of years might decide whether the latest scam blocking the path to a decarbonized future gains traction or crashes under its own weight.
The word for the day is “abatement”, and the success of the global fight to get climate change under control might hinge on how seriously governments, investors, international agencies, and other big influencers embrace it as a path to real emission cuts. And, ultimately, on whether abatement technologies can deliver the emission cuts they promise.
Industrial carbon capture and storage (CCS) is in the midst of an extended moment. It’s a realistic way to get climate pollution under control, if you believe the spin, or the latest excuse to keep on increasing oil and gas expansion, emissions be damned, if you follow the evidence. It’s receiving serious attention from decision-makers and serious subsidies from governments. And it’s shaping up as a centrepiece of the fossil industry’s negotiating strategy at this year’s United Nations climate conference, COP 28, hosted by the oil-rich United Arab Emirates November 30-December 12.
On one level, the new obsession with CCS shows how far the public and policy debate on climate change and climate solutions has advanced. In just a few years, the fossil lobbyists and publicists who outright dismissed the reality of the climate emergency and poured lavish budgets into climate denial have realized those positions will no longer pass in polite company.
That’s why they’ve pivoted from climate denial messaging that won’t fly to carbon capture technology that won’t work. Certainly not widely, quickly, or comprehensively enough to deliver the results we need.
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