Twenty five years ago, on this day, March 8th, 1999, an “audacious” idea is unleashed on the world…
Klaus Lackner posits Direct Air Capture 24th Annual Technical Conference on coal Utilization & Fuel Systems, March 8-11, 1999 Clearwater, Florida
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 367.4ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that for the previous 10 years, technology types had been thinking about carbon capture and storage as a technofix for the socio-technical problem of greenhouse gas emissions and atmospheric concentrations increasing. And all sorts of ideas had been put forward, mostly around making coal burning more “efficient”, getting more bang for the buck, decreasing the intensity. And along comes the idea of direct air capture.
What I think we can learn from this is that ideas which seem very new often usually have a long pre-history. It’s worth knowing that, at least at outline level, so that you will not be so easily seduced by shiny promises.
What happened next DAC really stayed on the backburner for about another 15 years. From about the 2015 Paris Agreement onwards, people start paying money and pretending to take it seriously. We’re just not going to do DAC at the scale that would require; it’s insane. It’s just another dream of technosalvation.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Also on this day:
March 8 – International Women’s Day – what is feminist archival practice?