Climate tech to save the planet: Out of thin air
FT News Briefing
Forhecz Topher
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 6 November 2022
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Direct air carbon capture - taking carbon dioxide straight out of the air around us - sounds like science fiction. In this episode of Tech Tonic Pilita Clark visits Iceland to meet the engineers and scientists at the forefront of this new tech. Can carbon capture scale up quick enough to have an impact on climate change, or is it just an excuse to allow fossil fuel companies and emitters to keep polluting?
Check out stories and up-to-the-minute news from the Technology team at ft.com/technology
Tech Tonic is presented by Pilita Clark. Edwin Lane is senior producer. Produced by Josh Gabert-Doyon. Executive producer is Manuela Saragosa. Sound design by Breen Turner and Samantha Giovinco, with original music from Metaphor Music. The FT’s head of audio is Cheryl Brumley.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The FT News Briefing is supported by Equinole, the UK's energy partner. |
| 0:06.3 | Learn more at equinole.co.uk |
| 0:11.2 | The FT's Tectonic podcast is back. |
| 0:13.7 | The new series focuses on climate tech and asks tough questions like, |
| 0:17.6 | can technology scale up fast enough to make a difference in the fight against climate change? |
| 0:22.5 | As COP27 kicks off, long-time FT climate journalist and columnist |
| 0:26.7 | Polita Clark will take a deep dive into the science and challenges we're facing. |
| 0:31.5 | You're going to hear the first episode of this season of Tectonic now. |
| 0:34.8 | It's about a machine in Iceland that sucks carbon straight out of the air |
| 0:39.0 | and it has the potential to reverse the effects of climate change. |
| 0:42.6 | Pretty cool, right? So here we go. Here's this episode now. |
| 0:46.0 | Sometimes I ask myself what the hell am I doing, you know, studying this very unexciting molecule of CO2, |
| 1:03.5 | spending all my time thinking about that. |
| 1:06.5 | Kari Helgerson is a 39-year-old scientist working in Iceland. |
| 1:11.3 | You're unlikely to have heard of him. He's not famous. |
| 1:14.4 | He hasn't won any Nobel Prizes, but who knows. |
| 1:17.4 | He might one day because when it comes to climate change and the problem of all that |
| 1:22.0 | excess climate altering CO2 in the atmosphere, he matters. |
| 1:26.9 | Still, getting into climate science was never really Kari's life ambition. |
| 1:31.2 | It's also a question of, you know, not what you want to do or what you need to do. |
| 1:36.5 | In fact, as a teenager, Kari was inspired by the astrophysicist Stephen Hawking. |
| 1:42.0 | He admired Carl Sagan. And like them, Kari's gaze was firmly turned up to the stars. |
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