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Best plants for carbon sequestration12/29/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Through photosynthesis, a type of carbon fixing, they pull in more than 860 gigatons of carbon dioxide each year from the atmosphere, storing it in their leaves, shoots, and roots. But these technologies are expensive to develop and implement, and environmental groups are concerned that they will prolong our dependence on fossil fuels.īut plants do something similar, albeit temporarily, capturing carbon dioxide after it has entered the atmosphere. Tax credits for implementing carbon-capture technologies, such as those passed as part of the 2018 US Congressional budget, could provide incentives. Energy researchers are pursuing a mix of technologies known as “ carbon capture, utilization, and storage,” or CCUS, which entail capturing carbon dioxide from industrial emissions before it can be released into the atmosphere and converting it into something useful or storing it deep underground. Which is why there have also been serious efforts to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Reducing carbon emissions would be one way to stop global warming, but efforts to do so have run into economic, technological, and political obstacles. (Canada and Russia may be able to grow more crops than they currently do, if arctic soils are fertile enough for large-scale agriculture. Countries in Africa, South America, and South Asia will be particularly hard hit, with the United States adversely affected as well. A 2010 World Bank report, Development and Climate Change, forecast that climate change would depress agricultural yields in most countries by 2050, assuming current crop varieties and agricultural practices remain the same. Within decades, the changing temperature will have a negative effect on agriculture and by extension food security. Scientists are even contemplating what the world might be like at 3 or 4 degrees of warming or higher, temperatures that would lead to substantial species extinctions and areas where it is too hot to live outside. So far, Earth has warmed by 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, and 2 degrees of warming within this century are very likely, bringing drier weather, rising sea levels, and damaged ecosystems. Humans are a factor: We put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, where it contributes to the warming of the planet, by burning fossil fuels. The carbon dioxide level in Earth’s atmosphere reached its highest level in human history last month, at 410 parts per million.
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