We’re All in This Together
Climate Restoration: A Needed and Hopeful Goal
By David Kunhardt
Have you ever worried that efforts to mitigate climate change are not enough? I was in the solar industry from 2007 through retirement in 2020, and I was proud of helping customers save money while they were lessening the damage of fossil fuels. But it was not enough.
We have already put 50% more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than was present for the last three million years.
That CO2 is not going away. Already we see dire consequences of this volume of greenhouse gases. Unless we take steps to draw down their levels, climate disasters will get worse. So, what do we do?
The Foundation for Climate Restoration has recommendations worthy of our attention.
First, set a goal of restoring the clear blue health of our atmosphere to the way it was before we started to pollute it. That’s a vision we can all agree on, yes? Second, encourage methods of carbon dioxide and methane reduction that are scalable, permanent, and financeable. There are thoughtful strategies to do this, the most promising of which involve natural processes and biomimicry, and some also involve technologies.
A forthcoming book, “The Climate Restoration Imperative” by Peter Fiekowsky with Carole Douglis sets out some encouraging GHG reduction strategies, for example growing seaweed, seeding the oceans with an iron compound that will grow phytoplankton and enhance fish populations (while producing oxygen and capturing CO2), embedding and mineralizing CO2 in layers of basalt underground, and curing concrete with CO2 to lock it up. We should add the use of cross laminated timber, another construction method that locks up carbon for a century-plus.
Does this mean that our efforts to mitigate emissions can be set aside and fossil fuel companies can continue to pollute?
No; we need both. Let’s pass a carbon fee and dividend law, to place a cost on every ton of CO2 equivalent in fossil fuels as they are mined, and share that revenue with everyone, equally. Then we also need to sponsor activities that render CO2 reductions. It is time for “both/and,” not “either/or.” We need to step up mitigation, so we reduce the causes, and at the same time stimulate the means of a cure: Climate Restoration.
To learn more, see the FoundationForClimateRestoration.org website, as well as CitizensClimateLobby.org
David Kunhardt of Scarborough is a retired solar executive and a volunteer with CCL Portland, and with F4CR.org.
We’re All in this Together is a monthly Climate Justice column provided by the Portland chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby.
