Editor:
I’m glad that the short talk that Paul McKendrick and I gave at the Canmore Public Library in late February is generating public debate on solutions to climate change.
In his letter in the March 16 edition of the Outlook “Work remains for carbon capture and storage viability,” Bart Robinson cites various people who dismiss the viability of different technologies to capture and store carbon dioxide. According to Robinson, they say ‘no, in fact, you almost certainly can’t do it.’
But the world’s top climate scientists say ‘yes, in fact, we can and almost certainly must do it.’
When mapping out ways to keep warming to safe levels, the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – the body of top climate scientists that informs governments about the state of knowledge on climate change – includes carbon capture in six out of its seven mitigation pathways.
In its just-released summary report for policy makers, the IPCC called one form of carbon capture – carbon capture and storage (CSS) – “a critical mitigation option” for the power, chemicals and cement sectors and a “mature technology” for gas processing. Whether or not we should use it to decarbonize fossil fuels like natural gas is a separate question.
IPCC scientists arrived at these and other conclusions after an eight-year process to determine the current state and future trajectory of the Earth’s climate. To be clear, carbon capture is no climate panacea, and it’s bloody expensive, but it’s very likely a tool that we’ll need in our climate solutions toolbox, especially for some heavy industries.
So, let's retire old falsehoods and focus the conversation on where to use it, where not, and how to pay for it.
Ed Whittingham,
Canmore
