The carbon solution

摘要

FOR a device meant to represent the future, Klaus Lackner's mechanical "tree" looks more like a 19th-century machine than a 21st-century tool for scrubbing carbon dioxide from the air. Fortunately this prototype, the highlight of a new Science Museum exhibition on removing CO_2 from the atmosphere, will be superseded this summer by more elegant commercial versions akin to giant Alexa speakers. Seeing the original up close brings home how desperate the climate crisis has become. Failure to cut our emissions fast and deeply enough means we need to remove so much CO_2 from the atmosphere that using forests alone won't cut it. We need technological and engineered approaches like this too.