Until 300 ppm Co2, let's forget about competition and making money

The climate crisis, as the Guardian describes it, has now finally reached the minds of the rest of the population. Although there are still some pockets of oil-subsidised deniers, even the Russians now admit that pumping and burning oil will cause more damage to their country as trying to stop CO2 output: the melting of the permafrost would cause most of Siberia’s infracstructure to sink and would have to be rebuilt. Again and again.

The last time more than 400 ppm CO2 was floating in the atmosphere, the water level was 15 to 20 meters higher. This will happen again. The only remaining question is how long it will take before the water will have risen 20 meters. Some say 2 centuries, but every prediction of the rising of water level until now is accelarating. First estimates were 50 cm until 2100, 2019 it was 80 up to 150 cm, who knows what it will be in 5 years tune, We need to act faster and on a larger scale than we ever thought.

So how do we accomplish that first, we stop pushing CO2 into the air, and second, we start pulling CO2 out of the air to a level (300 Ppm) that was pre-fossil-fuel aera.

300 PPM CO2 gave us gletchers, Antarctic and arctic icecaps, that atlantic water belt that kept Europe warm enough in the winter, and prevent more and more typhoons, hurricanes and water-deluges that damages the land in such a way that agriculture is collapsing.

There are numerous ways to stop filling the air with CO2, but as the situation stands now, there are some big limitations to get there as fast as possible. And we have to be as fast as possible. Because the restoration to 300 Ppm will take a lot of time. This is a project that should get a higher priority as a man on the moon within a decade, even the Manhattan-project that created an atomic bomb in 4 years should dwarf to this enterprise.

So lets first see what lessons we have learned from projects like the Manhattan-project, the Moonshot project or the internet project.

• Corral resources When the second world war became into full effect, companies that used to make sofa’s suddenly may find themselves constructing airplane wings. Textile silk factories made parachutes instead of dresses. Motor companies started churning out tanks, jeeps and trucks. We have to get the same amount of prioritizing to get the CO2 output in check.

• Forget Patents Patents are nice in a time when we can concentrate on making money. But this is no time for making money. This is a time to Save Our Souls. So if any person comes up with a brilliant idea, the first step should not be to go to the patent office, but to publish it as fast as possible, and let it be scrutinized by the world. When we are back at 300 Ppm, we can look back and see who should be honoured with life long free food, lodging and transport.

• Do all approaches
  In a world where we pretend to be economical, we tend to try only one approach that seems to give a biggest result. But we have no time to lose, and we must corral all resources and attempts to get back on the 300 Ppm path. So instead of trying the most optimal approach, we should behave more like nature behaves: try a whole variety of approaches, keep doing it for a while and see what sticks, and even keep different approaches viable in case on of these approaches stops working.
  Do wind power, nuclear fusion, solar power, earth warmth, wave power, isolation, planting of trees, create concrete from something else as cement, build easy transportable housing and infrastructure, build easy to repair stuff, create artificial meat, kelp factories, bio-reactors, prime-edit bacteria to create CO2 harvesting creatures, try geo-engineering technology.
  Just do whatever it takes. If the amount of money that has been spent -in the last 50 years- on optimising CO2-spewing engines would have been spent on replacing these engines with CO2-neutral approaches, we already could have been in a CO2 neutral economy and could have started the path towards a 300 Ppm world. The amount of investment that still goes into fossil-fuel investments is criminal. I remember a story of a guy that he told when the internet grew exponentially. He told that at a certain moment, he knew he would need 4 times faster central routers in 2 years. And 8 times faster the year after. And 16 times faster the year after that. He had 3 companies telling him that they might give him that kind of growth in their products. He did not choose between any of these. He gave each one of them the assignment. ‘I cannot risk that the one company that I choose cannot keep it’s promise: better to have 3 solutions, just in case two of them do not work.’
  That is the situation we should see ourselves in now.

• Share results
  There is a world where someone can get competitive advantage by withholding information that could lead to more optimal results. But now one’s loss is everybody’s loss. If we do not get the amount of CO2 back to 300 Ppm, we can expect the destruction of the human race.

There are lots of people that say they want to save the planet. I don’t want to save the planet. The planet takes care of itself. It has seen humans, dinosaurs, slime, vulcanoes, ice-ages, epoch changing asteroid impacts. The earth will continue to exist, with 400 Ppm CO2, with 500 Ppm CO2, or with 200 Ppm CO2. As for humans, with the current trajectory, we will go the way of the dodo, the dinosaur or the neanderthal.

Don’t save the planet.

Save Our Selves.