A new way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere | Jennifer Wilcox

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 14 August 2019

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

Our planet has a carbon problem -- if we don't start removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, we'll grow hotter, faster. Chemical engineer Jennifer Wilcox previews some amazing technology to scrub carbon from the air, using chemical reactions that capture and reuse CO2 in much the same way trees do ... but at a vast scale. This detailed talk reviews both the promise and the pitfalls.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to a special archive presentation of TED Talks Daily. This talk features chemical engineer Jennifer Wilcox, recorded live at TED-2018.
0:14.2	400 parts per million. That's the approximate concentration of CO2 in the air today.
0:21.7	What does this even mean?
0:23.5	For every 400 molecules of carbon dioxide,
0:27.1	we have another million molecules of oxygen and nitrogen.
0:31.5	In this room today, there are about 1,800 of us.
0:35.7	Imagine just one of us was wearing a green shirt
0:39.0	and you're asked to find that single person.
0:42.6	That's the challenge we're facing when capturing CO2 directly out of the air.
0:48.7	Sounds pretty easy.
0:50.5	Pulling CO2 out of the air?
0:52.7	It's actually really difficult.
0:55.7	But I'll tell you what is easy. Avoiding CO2 out of the air, it's actually really difficult. But I'll tell you what is easy.
1:05.3	Avoiding CO2 emissions to begin with. But we're not doing that. So now, what we have to think about is going back, pulling CO2 back out of the air. Even though it's difficult, it's actually possible to do this.
1:14.6	And I'm going to share with you today where this technology is at and where it just may be heading
1:19.6	in the near future. Now the earth naturally removes CO2 from the air by seawater, soils, plants, and even rocks.
1:31.4	And although engineers and scientists are doing the invaluable work to accelerate these
1:37.1	natural processes, it simply won't be enough.
1:41.3	The good news is we have more.
1:43.6	Thanks to human ingenuity, we have the technology today
1:46.9	to remove CO2 out of the air using a chemically manufactured approach. I like to think of this as a
1:54.8	synthetic forest. And there are two basic approaches to growing or building such a forest.
	...

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