The Original Climate Solution

Just as the world gets to grips with the urgency of limiting global warming to beneath 2°C, the official UN body charged with climate science (the IPCC) has been charged with understanding potential impacts if temperatures rise 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and how we might limit emissions to stay beneath this threshold.

For those familiar with the complexities of climate change - and the communication challenges it faces - the 1.5 number is not new in and of itself - scientists have long stressed the need to keep warming levels to ‘well below’ 2°C. And as 130 countries sign the Paris Agreement - the world’s first fully comprehensive climate agreement which lays out a collective goal of keeping global warming to below 2°C, it also contains sentiment to pursue efforts to limit the temperature rise to 1.5C.

Understanding the importance of this difference of 0.5 degrees requires a thesis in its own right, and many commentators are concerned with how we might get there.

Emerging consensus is leading to a growing focus on the need for ‘negative emissions’ technologies. In other words, how do we take CO2 out of the atmosphere once it’s been created? It can refer to myriad controversial and technically difficult technologies, and often mean the large-scale deployment of carbon capture and storage technologies which bury CO2 deep undergrou

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