Can We Reverse Global Warming?

Abstract

Without mitigation, Climate Change is expected to costs large amounts of money, cause vast amounts of human suffering and death and threatens the survival of countless species. Rising global temperatures alone are expected to cause a drop in GDP of 30 – 70% for many countries with already high temperatures. In combination with other factors (population growth, increasing water stress, coastal flooding, loss of coastal land, increasing forest fires, loss of wildlife areas and insufficient wild-life corridors), Climate Change could lead to a collapse in ecosystem services, estimated at almost twice the global GDP. For humans, these combined factors would increase poverty, famine, starvation and cause mass migration. Under the Paris Accord, countries agreed to limit Climate Change to 1.5 degrees. This limit was not set because it was a “safe” for biodiversity or humanity, but because lower limits were considered “unachievable”. However, a relatively quick reversal of global warming would minimize all damages that would occur over the next centuries under Climate Change. Besides the return to pre-industrial atmospheric conditions, minimizing loss of human lives and minimizing damage to wildlife areas and the biodiversity these represent, this would also allow a gradual restoration of mountain snow and ice caps, restoring melt water flows, reduce water stress and minimize coastal flooding. Governments treat the changes needed to transition to a carbon neutral world as “costs” instead of “investments”. Here I show how the use of renewable energy (especially roof PV solar), ground source heat pumps and electric cars combined with massive application of direct air capture and sequestration of CO2 (DACCS) can reverse global warming in 40 to 60 years while saving massive amounts of money (about 3.62% of GDP). A critical element in doing this is the use of the Impacts Measurement and Conservation System (IMACS) as the business model. The IMAC system puts consumers, retailers and organizations in general in charge of selling and buying incrementally less damaging and more sustainable products and services, while being rewarded for their actions. Under IMACS, current and historic damaging impacts are calculated and assigned to participating products, services and individual labor. For participating sellers, damaging impacts and associated sustainabilities are accurately calculated per product and service per sales location (and daily adjusted) using automated and low costs methods. For non-participating competitor products, the impacts cannot be calculated accurately and are set to the statistic upper damage limit for each damage type for the product group. Sellers who start participation will therefore almost always see large reductions in damaging impacts and large increases in reported sustainabilities for their products and services. This could dramatically accelerate the rate of change towards a sustainable world. Participation in IMACS is voluntary and cost-free for individuals. In order for products to become (more) sustainable, damaging impacts like greenhouse gas emissions must be eliminated or must be offset by CO2 sequestered in permanent storage locations. For the society as a whole, becoming carbon neutral saves large amounts of money compared to not doing so, even when the costs of CO2 sequestration are included. Under IMACS, the purchase of neutralizing amounts of sequestered CO2 are paid for during the product purchase with an electronic voucher provided by the retailer. This only applies to participating products and services sold by participating retailers to participating customers. For a 40-year global warming reversal period, the average DACCS costs for the base and conservative DACCS cost scenarios are respectively 0.65 – 1.78% of GDP, but drop to 0.26 – 0.73% of GDP over 100 years. For carbon neutral sellers, the average DACCS costs (neutralizing historic emissions) are 0.92 – 2.56% of sale, but reach 1.58 – 4.39% of sale for the peak year. The ratio of cumulative energy cost savings over cumulative DACCS costs for a 40-year global warming reversal are 1.6 - 4.4 over the 40-year period and 4.5 – 12.4 over 100-year. Early participating sellers will receive all or most of these savings. Since under IMACS, the saving from carbon neutral operations throughout the supply chain go hand in hand with the DACCS payments for remaining and historical CO2 emissions, the DACCS costs can be paid out of the savings from carbon neutral operations. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the DACCS industry, as needed to reverse global warming, is in line with the currently expected CAGR for the DACCS industry between 2023 and 2032 (42 – 70% on production basis). A 63% growth rate under default model conditions maintained for 26 years would lead to global warming reversal in model year 41. By participating in IMACS, individuals and organizations can eliminate current CO2 emissions, neutralize historic CO2 emissions, save money and improve their competitive position. Becoming sustainable can be simplified from a political to a marketing challenge. IMACS, by assigning the costs of conservation (protection and restoration) to individuals and organizations responsible for the damage done, can effectively address and solve the classic “tragedy of the commons”.