What’s after a billion tons?

I was talking with another AirMiner last week about the possibility of removing a billion tons of carbon dioxide by 2030.

The question came up, "Will adopting lower-cost options now take away funds from long-term research for more affordable and scalable solutions?"

This is not just a crazy race to remove a billion tons of carbon dioxide.

When I say remove a billion tons by 2030, it's towards a vision of thriving human civilizations with Earth at 280 ppm by 2050. How we get to the first billion determines where we go after.

So that invites an update to our mission. Our current mission is to remove 1 gigaton of CO2e from the atmosphere by 2030 cumulatively, leveraging at least 10 companies and 5 different methods. We aim for no single company or method to exceed 30% of the total, ensuring a diversity of successful solutions.

We care about this because it reduces the risk for the world. Imagine if one company removed the billion tons by themselves. What if the company then went bankrupt or that method mysteriously stopped working. It's a brittle solution. Similarly, imagine if we had a million companies each remove 1,000 tons. In that situation we're probably not really learning what we need about scaling those solutions. That's why a diversity of solutions is needed. Stable climate. Thriving human civilizations.

Removing the first billion tons is about exploring, experimenting, and scaling. What we learn is as important as what we remove.

Tito

P.S. three months ago I invited AirMiners to share weekly updates. Here's a sample of what's being shared:

• Unlock the Trillion Dollar IRA by Neesha Mirchandani

• Individual (climate) action towards systemic change by David Contreras