Brian Lehrer on WNYC now turns to our climate story of the week.

With a question, should oil and gas pipelines

be replaced by carbon dioxide ones,

America's first carbon capture plants are now open,

prompting the question, can the technology capture, move,

and bury enough CO2 to be worth the risks.

So we will examine risks and benefits in this segment.

Here's a little background.

New startups that aim to capture CO2 emissions that contribute to climate change

have been in the news recently.

One company in California takes the carbon dioxide, it pulls from the air, and seals the

gas permanently in concrete.

Another uses smushed plants to make bricks that get buried

underground. But there's a lot of doubt and there are a lot of questions about

whether either approach is cost-effective and also about risk. questions about

risks.

Scientists agree though that to mitigate some of the most severe effects of climate

change in the future, at least some carbon needs to be captured from the atmosphere.

Now the International Energy Agency estimates that the world will need to be able to capture

1.2 billion tons of CO2 per year by 2050.

Right now we're pretty far away from reaching that benchmark.

The total carbon capture worldwide amounts to just 4% of that goal.

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