Greenjobs Blog

The future of Earth probably rests on new, unproven technology, unless our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are much more successfull than they are right now. That means if we don’t stop CO₂ emissions reductions will be focused on fancy inventions from unproven technology, in order to cool the planet.

If we can’t reduce our emissions the only choice would be to use new inventions such as giant CO₂ scrubbers which will clean the air. Another solution could be to throw water into clouds so they become more reflective. More ideas go through installing giant mirrors into space so that solar rays cannot reach the Earths surface. We could even store CO₂ under the ground to prevent it reaching the atmosphere.

Probably they sound just like science fiction, but actually some of these are technically possible, according to the UK Royal Society. They could even succeed in reducing CO₂ in the atmosphere, but some can take decades to do so, and we still don’t know their impact on the environment nor their real economic cost.

Probably all those words can relief people and governments, but this doesn’t mean we have the luxury to stop our efforts to reduce emissions, there should still be further research and development in order to look for low risk and efficient solutions. We can think of these extreme solutions as a punishment for failure to fight climate change when we had the chance to do so.

It’s obvious that current CO2 emissions will destroy a lot of ecosystems. But what most people don’t know is that even with our current targets and current plan, we will still kill some ecosystems and coral reefs as well. We still need to improve and modify our expectations, or economic losses would be substantial.

Coral reefs have already been seriously damaged

Some studies support that the economic value of coral reefs is upto $100bn annually. Also, the cost of forest lost each year is between $2 and $5 trillion.

Coral reefs have already been seriously damaged by the current CO2 rates: oceans on the world have absorbed about 50% of CO2 coming from fossil fuels combustion. Seas disolve a portion of CO2 too, which makes waters slightly more acid. Forests also play an important role absorbing greenhouse gases: they absorb 20%, which is a very cheap way of reducing CO2.

Indeed a major focus of the climate conference in Copenhagen this year will be to consider solutions to protect societies from the impact of climate change.

Current targets such as keeping the temperature no higher than 2 degrees above the pre-industrial level, means carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere can’t surpass 450 parts per million (ppm). The current annual rate of  increase is 2ppm per year, and the current level is 387ppm. However these levels are already causing serious damage and anything above 350ppm may damage coral reefs, said Pavan Sukhdev, secondment to the UN Environment Programme.