Climate Change: an Inevitable Ending or a Quick Fix?

Over the past years climate change has become a hot topic of discussion for world leaders and politicians. At the G20 meeting in 2018 climate change was a major part of the discussions. This is because the growing fear of an inevitable change happening, is growing. At this point, scientists believe that by 2050 many populated cities and even countries could become uninhabitable. While this growing issue appears to be an unavoidable issue many others believe we are one step away from fixing it.

In fact, a recent break-through discovery from a research team in Australia has many scientists believing that global warming can be slowed, and ultimately subdued. In February, 2019 the group of researchers extracted carbon dioxide (the most harmful and abundant greenhouse gas) from the atmosphere and converted it into coal.

This is achieved through a process called carbon sequestration, in which the carbon dioxide is pulled from the air, then inputted into an electrically charged vessel and then goes through a reaction to ultimately transform into coal. This allows for the harmful carbon dioxide to be viewed as a recyclable source instead of a non reusable one. A statement from one of the brilliant scientists working on this study, Dr. Torben Daeneke, says “While we can't literally turn back time, turning carbon dioxide back into coal and burying it back in the ground is a bit like rewinding the emissions clock”. Although this process has only been performed on a small scale, to this point, many scientists see no reason why this can not be used worldwide.

Ultimately, this discovery appears to be the first step to a quick fix of climate change. Although, the CO2 levels are still rising steadily this experiment, along with the use of restrictions on carbon dioxide output could solve the issue of climate change. So, while these world leaders and politicians are arguing over the inevitable end of climate change, new inventions such as this one will aid in the slowly and subsequent solving of the issue.

Written by Matt Hayward