{"id":34077,"date":"2018-05-08T08:18:29","date_gmt":"2018-05-08T13:18:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=34077"},"modified":"2018-05-08T08:18:29","modified_gmt":"2018-05-08T13:18:29","slug":"negative-emission-technologies-can-we-learn-from-the-ancient-egyptians-how-to-manage-the-global-commons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=34077","title":{"rendered":"Negative Emission Technologies: can we learn from the Ancient Egyptians how to manage the global commons?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Negative Emission Technologies: can we learn from the Ancient Egyptians how to manage the global commons?<\/a><\/h3>\n
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The ancient Egyptians knew how to manage the commons. A single central authority managed the Nile river<\/a>, to make sure that everybody had enough water for their needs. Could we do the same for our atmospheric commons? Above, a Pharaoh (probably Ramses II) receives the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. <\/i><\/div>\n

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Before I went to hear Klaus Lackner in Les Houches<\/a> in March 2018 (image on the right), I had a very poor opinion of direct atmospheric capture (DAC) and negative emission technologies (NET).\u00a0 If you had asked me, I would have said that there is no need for these technologies: why can’t we just avoid emissions, instead of trying to remedy a situation that we didn’t need to create? And, besides, if you were to tell me about “artificial trees,” I would have told you that Mother Nature spent some 350 million years to develop trees, and She knows better than us how to remove CO2 from the air.<\/i><\/p>\n

Well, I changed my mind. I came out of Lackner’s seminar convinced that DAC\/NET may give us a fighting chance to survive. Consider that it is perfectly possible that we already passed the “tipping point” that will lead Earth’s climate to move to a different climate state. In that case, reducing emissions or even zeroing them will not help us. And, in any case, we are not doing that fast enough.<\/a> So, DAC\/NET as the last hope to save civilization? (*) Possible and even likely. Let me explain.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Negative Emission Technologies: can we learn from the Ancient Egyptians how to manage the global commons? The ancient Egyptians knew how to manage the commons. A single central authority managed the Nile river, to make sure that everybody had enough water for their needs. Could we do the same for our atmospheric commons? Above, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[20075,10777,20076,20077,2692],"class_list":["post-34077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-ancient-egyptians","tag-cassandras-legacy","tag-emissions-technology","tag-global-commons","tag-ugo-bardi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34077"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34078,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34077\/revisions\/34078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}