Page 37 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 25
P. 37
The Environment
Carbon Capture &
Storage (CCS)
CCS seeks to extend
fossil fuel extraction
and consumption
by storing
carbon emissions
underground. There
is no certainty that
they would stay
there (see Carbon
Capture). A variant
on this is carbon
capture, utilization
(use) and storage
(CCUS), in which
carbon dioxide (CO2)
eoengineering refers The biggest driver of the is captured to make feedstock
to a set of proposed climate crisis is the fossil fuel for manufacturing. The
Gtechnologies to Industry – big oil, coal and emissions become embedded
deliberately intervene in and gas. This is the same industry in the products and would
alter Earth systems on a mega- cluster that has funded climate eventually be released when
scale. In a desperate, potentially change denial for decades the products are incinerated or
catastrophic attempt to roll back and fought every attempt to decompose. CCUS has gained
some of the effects of climate limit pollution. The fossil fuel considerable ground in recent
change, geoengineering seeks industry is among the biggest energy legislation.
to change the way the planet funders of geoengineering. For
functions. To do this, techno- big oil, geoengineering looks Ocean Iron Fertilization
fixes would be deployed at like a way to keep profiting
a massive scale. Whatever while seeming to address the This means dumping iron
impacts may emerge, now or climate devastation it has particles into large areas of the
in the future, cannot be reliably caused. Some of the richest men ocean to encourage plankton
predicted or tested. The only on Earth, including Bill Gates blooms that are supposed to
way to find out what will happen and Jeff Bezos, are funding increase the amount of CO2
is to carry out testing at scale, at geoengineering. absorbed by oceans. This runs
which point it may be too late to the risk of causing harmful
turn back. Among the proposed schemes algal blooms, which would
Who is Behind Geoengineering? are: endanger human and marine
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