Climate change is here, causing catastrophic wildfires, flooding and other natural disasters.
To limit the crisis, it’s not enough to stabilize the Earth’s temperature by merely cutting emissions, argues Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson. We also need to restore the atmosphere, removing greenhouse gases.
He used to believe that talk of “hacking the atmosphere” — by sucking greenhouse gases out of the air — distracted us from the real job of cutting emissions. Now, because of inaction, we’re running out of time, he says. So we need to do both: reduce emissions and remove greenhouse gases.
His new book on climate solutions, Into the Clear Blue Sky (Scribner and Penguin Random House), takes us on a tour of both kinds of climate solutions under development. Some removal technologies are natural, such as restoring forests and soils. Others are technological. Jackson’s book will be published at the end of July.
At Stanford, his lab examines the many ways people affect the Earth, such as the effects of climate change and droughts on old-growth forests. He also is chair of the Global Carbon Project, an international research effort to study the global cycles of greenhouse gases and find opportunities to reduce them.
A guitar player, Jackson turns to music when he needs a mental recharge. He is also a poet, with recent or forthcoming poems in the journals Southwest Review, Cortland Review, Cold Mountain Review, Atlanta Review and LitHub, and has written two books of children’s poems, Animal Mischief and Weekend Mischief. His photographs have appeared in many media outlets, including The New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today.
This month, Jackson is an “artist in residence” at Djerassi, a 583-acre cattle ranch turned into an artists’ retreat in the hills above Woodside that offers the uninterrupted isolation that sparks creativity.
Q: What inspires your work?
A: Abstract temperature targets of 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius (2.7 to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) aren’t motivating people to change. We’ve rushed to the precipice of a 1.5 degree Celsius global temperature increase — putting lives and livelihoods in peril — and need a different narrative for success.
The Endangered Species Act doesn’t stop at saving plants and animals from extinction. It mandates their recovery. When we see gray whales breaching on their way to Alaska each spring, grizzly bears ambling across a Yellowstone meadow, bald eagles and peregrine falcons soaring on updrafts, we celebrate life and a planet restored.
Our goal for the atmosphere should be the same — restoration.
Q: That feels overwhelming. Where do we start?
A: We start at home with methane — switching from natural gas in our homes to cleaner electricity and eating less beef — for our health and our climate. Pound for pound, methane is ninety times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming the Earth two decades after its release.
If we could eliminate all methane emissions from human activities, including agriculture, waste, and fossil fuels— a big if — methane’s concentration would return to preindustrial levels in only a decade or two.
That’s what I mean by “restoring the atmosphere.” Restoring methane to preindustrial levels would save 0.5°C of warming and could happen in your lifetime—and mine. No other greenhouse gas gives us this much power to reduce warming over the next decade or two.
Q: Is there an example of a promising strategy to remove carbon dioxide?
A: The simplest and cheapest place to start is by restoring our forests and soils and the carbon they contain.
But the more fossil carbon pollution we emit, the more industrial carbon removal we’ll also need. I met some of the leaders doing this work. One is Iceland’s Medusa-scientist-CEO Edda Sif Pind Aradottir of the company Carbfix, which is turning carbon dioxide pollution to stone, like magic. Another is the Swiss company Climeworks, which is generating power while pumping carbon dioxide pollution underground.
Q: What are some strategies to remove methane?
A: No company sells methane removal today, but start-ups are forming.
Engineers are testing catalysts that can convert methane in the same way that chemists use catalysts to turn methane into methanol, a chemical feedstock. Scientists are trying microbes, which eat methane for energy naturally. Other researchers are studying how chlorine-rich mineral dust from the Sahara destroys methane in the open air.
Methane removal is more concept than reality today, but it’s a field of research I am pursuing and helping to found.
The most important thing we can do is to stop emitting methane. That will always be cheaper than methane removal.
Q: Is it easier to remove methane or carbon dioxide? Or can we do both?
A: Neither is easy, but carbon dioxide removal is easier because there’s more carbon dioxide in the air and it’s easier to react chemically.
However, you need to remove billions of tons of carbon dioxide for the same climate benefit as removing “only” millions of tons of methane.
Reducing methane in the atmosphere provides the biggest bang for our climate buck.
Q: Are new technologies needed?
A: Of course. We need new technologies for greenhouse gas removal and for keeping fossil pollution out of our air to start with. We still can’t capture or destroy methane at concentrations at which most emissions occur.
While researching this book, I met inspiring people all around the world. There are CEOs like Sweden’s Martin Lindqvist of Svenskt Stal AB, who is using clean energy to make the world’s first green steel near the Arctic Circle. In Finland, Snowchange Cooperative is turning ravaged peatlands back into resilient systems. People are restoring landscapes — saving forests — from the Amazon to the Arctic.
Q: Would new regulatory mandates or market incentives help?
A: Yes. When the polluter pays, many climate solutions are possible.
Our air quality is better today than when I was a boy, but pollution from coal and cars still kills a hundred thousand Americans a year. One in five of all deaths worldwide is attributable to breathing fossil fuel pollution, when cleaner, safer fuels are available. That’s ten million senseless deaths a year.
If climate doesn’t motivate us to act, perhaps the health benefits will.
Q: Is there a place that inspires you?
A: I’m an immigrant to the U.S., so my country inspires me — despite our problems.
Q: When a young person asks: “Should I have a child in this precarious world?” how do you answer?
A: “Yes. You should.” Nothing has brought joy like my family and children. Don’t let pessimism about the world keep you from living fully.
Rob Jackson
- Title: Professor and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and at the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University
- Age: 62
- Birthplace: London, England
- Residence: Stanford, CA
- Education: Chemical Engineering, Statistics, and Ecology and Environment. B.S., Rice University; M.S., Utah State University; Ph.D., Utah State University,
Five things to know about Rob Jackson
- A published poet, he says poetry “provides illumination, introspection and a way of remembering. Wallace Stevens called a poet ‘The scholar of one candle.’ ”
- A cherished posssession is a vintage Nikon FG film camera and 35 mm lens, because that’s what he bought with his first paycheck after college. Soon after — a fly fishing rod and camping gear.
- Two favorite adventures were trekking the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal and hiking 10,000 feet down into the Amazon basin from Peru’s Puna grasslands.
- He finds peace in the hectic Bay Area among the region’s trails, ferns, redwoods and clear blue skies.
- Recommended summer reading: Underland by Robert Macfarlane, a journey into what lies beneath the surface of both place and mind, traveling through “deep time” from the birth of the universe to a post-human future.