I caught some portions of the CNN Future Summit earlier, and a quick feature on synthetic trees got my attention. Host Richard Quest did say that trees do a “jolly good job” of sucking up CO2, but they’re not enough. Hence, synthetic trees!
Global Research Technologies, LLC and Columbia University’s Klaus Lackner have developed “air extraction” devices designed to capture carbon dioxide from the air.
Unlike other techniques, such as carbon capture and storage from power plants, air extraction would allow reductions to take place irrespective of where carbon emissions occur, enabling active management of global atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. The technology shows, for the first time, that carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles on the streets of Bangkok could be removed from the atmosphere by devices located in Iceland.
Hey, anything that will give the world cleaner air is fine by me! I certainly hope this works and that there won’t be any sort of objection to it, and could therefore be a solution everyone will be happy with. (And perhaps they could come up with a seamless design that wouldn’t be a blight on the landscape anywhere on the planet?)