We need to find better ways to communicate the necessity of carbon removal
What air pollution, garbage and climate disasters teach us about how people respond to things they can tangibly see affecting them. Not so much the case with invisible greenhouse gases.
Yes, the science tells us we need to remove carbon from the atmosphere, in addition to widespread economic decarbonisation. While the science is clear, finding ways to communicate this effectively to the general public is arguably less so. Awash with the typical argument against investing in carbon removal solutions for issues of moral hazard (developing solutions to remove atmospheric CO2 reduces the ambition to decarbonise), leaders in the carbon removal ecosystem often turn to references of preventing bathtubs overflowing (yes, I’m guilty of the same), and comparing carbon removal to a waste management problem. These analogies are flawed for a number of reasons.
For starters, I’m no communications expert, but I believe there is always a balancing act in delivering a message - especially when it comes to climate change. One can go down the Extinction Rebellion route and alarm people into paralysis, or the climate change denier route and pretend everything’s rosy and that it’s just nature doing its thing. While extremes exist and each movement will attract its share of attention and noise, I generally believe most people find themselves somewhere down the middle, and increasingly in the camp of ‘I want to do more about tackling climate change but don’t really know how or where to start’.
This is where these carbon removal bathtub and waste management analogies start breaking down. Pulling the plug on an overflowing bathtub is a very good visualisation of the problem we need to solve, but doesn’t capture the magnitude or scale of the challenge (is carbon removal a trillion dollar mop?). An anthropogenic emission fuelled forest fire or flood a few years away from destroying your house (and the bathtub) is probably more apt, but then we’re getting close to XR territory. That said, there is a growing body of evidence which indicates that concern about climate change increases after individuals experience extreme weather events like hurricanes, flooding and forest fires. A communication strategy which brings the emotional aspect of climate concern (and subsequent action) forward, while integrating the scientific necessity of carbon removal is needed, and I’m not sure if a bathtub does that.
This brings us to the ‘waste management’ analogy. Yes, carbon emissions are an example of a market failure which needs to be addressed ASAP. But unlike garbage which you can see building up on the side of the road if the binmen don’t come for a couple of weeks, carbon emissions invisibly waft up into the atmopshere and have their greenhouse warming effect without us necessarily seeingly that molecule of CO2 ever again. People can’t see nor easily visualise their gradual accumulation and so will struggle to think of it as a waste management problem unless constantly reminded that it is the case.
I’m reminded of what people often say when I tell them I’m working on capturing CO2 from the atmosphere in China. “Ahh, that’s a big problem there!” Errr no, it’s a big problem everywhere. What they’re referring to is air pollution - predominantly of the visible ‘smog’ kind made up of soot from sulphur dioxides (SOx), nitrogen oxides (NOx), ozone and other pollutants due to the combustion of fossil fuels. Unfortunately, we can’t see carbon emissions or methane billowing from power plants or cow burps, otherwise we would have probably already done something about it. Unmitigated SOx emissions saw this fate from the early 20th century. The health and pollution problems associated with SOx emissions from large coal-fired power plants in England became a matter of public concern in the 1920’s. By 1931, the first major flue-gas desulphurisation (FGD) unit was installed at Battersea Power Station in London, and slowly the mandated control of SOx emissions turned global - especially with the passing of the Clean Air Act (CAA) in the US in 1970. Just imagine for a second what position we would be in if the regulation of CO2 emissions was also included in that Act over half a century ago. Before anyone claims the technology didn’t exist to do it, I should mention that the first patent demonstrating the capture of CO2 was issued way back in 1930.
I’ve digressed somewhat, but the point I’m trying to make is that it’s much easier to deal with and rally support around a problem we can actually see. Runaway carbon emissions are not just a recipe for climate disaster, they’re an unmitigated mess from a communications perspective too. Firstly, they’re as abstract a thing as it comes. They’re invisible to the naked eye and the problem they cause materialises over decades in a way nobody can predict for certain (models are getting better and better though). This is why communicating the necessity of carbon removal not merely from a scientific perspective is extremely difficult, and when did science or data ever win hearts and minds over an emotional message.
The science indicates that carbon removal is no longer a nice to have but is more like an important piece of stabilising the climate at 1.5°C of warming - much in the way decarbonising the energy system and purchasing electric vehicles is (they should absolutely be the priority). This should be the starting point of communicating carbon removal and eliminating any argument of moral hazard. Then comes the difficult act of persuading billions of people to have an emotional connection with an invisible enemy. Initial research suggests we haven’t got off to a very good start on the communication front, and particularly engineered carbon removal is at risk of becoming the next nuclear energy: technically necessary but socially unacceptable.
Unfortunately I haven’t come up with better ideas as yet, but adopting some lessons from how we dealt with the hole in the ozone layer appears to be a good start. We couldn’t see it, we didn’t feel it’s impact on our lives - it was equally as intangible and abstract as the excess carbon in our atmosphere is - but yet the world came to an agreement around how to fix it. When it comes to a communication strategy for carbon removal, something tells me we need something better than bathtubs and garbage trucks.
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