Can carbon dioxide removal really help save us from ’global boiling’? The U.S. government is intensifying its push to find out

There are several existing or potential carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies out there, ranging from old-fashioned tree planting to capturing greenhouse gas from the air and storing the carbon underground. All come with big potential downsides, with many coming down to a lack of evidence that they can work affordably at scale—critics say CDR could be a distraction from renewable energy technologies that we know do work, like solar or wind, and they fear it could be used to excuse the continued burning of fossil fuels.

With last month having been the hottest on record, and with the United Nations declaring that “the era of global boiling has arrived,” it’s clear that task number one is to stop pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. However, especially as that isn’t going to happen overnight, we also need to urgently explore CDR as a mitigation option, and that’s what this program should help achieve.

According to Heatmap, the U.S. government will become the first in the world to pay for the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, with the Department of Energy wielding tens of millions of dollars for the program. As with JPMorgan’s big CDR announcement back in May—the bank promised to buy over $200 million in CDR credits—the aim is to stimulate the scaling-up of such technologies by providing startups with major customers.

The government is already funding some CDR schemes by other means, but Heatmap notes that this procurement program would, for the first time, allow federal cash to flow to startups trying newer techniques, such as turning the carbon into rocks.

Separately, but remaining on the subject of innovation in the name of survival, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have achieved “ignition” in a fusion-energy experiment for the second time—the first success came in December. This means they have now twice managed to get more energy out of the experiment than they put in.

We could still be decades away from seeing nuclear fusion (that isn’t taking place in the sun) becoming a reliable source of energy at scale, and that outcome may still never come to pass. But there’s certainly every reason to try. As with CDR, we are not talking about technologies that are likely to immediately rescue us from the chaos that’s unfolding. But, if they are proven to work at scale, they would certainly help us become a cleaner species down the line.

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David Meyer

NEWSWORTHY

Adobe’s Figma hitch. The EU’s top antitrust enforcers have opened an in-depth investigation into Adobe’s $20 billion Figma buy. The European Commission is worried that the deal could harm competition in the design tools market. According to Reuters, the Commission will decide by mid-December whether to allow the deal to go ahead.

Musk’s legal bill promise. Elon Musk says X will fund the legal bills of anyone “unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform.” As The Verge’s Sean Hollister points out, Musk himself has repeatedly had employees punished for criticizing him on what was then Twitter. Meanwhile in other news, X has delayed paying creators under its new Ads Revenue Sharing program, because, per Musk, interest “has far exceeded our expectations.”

Google antitrust suit. A major U.S. antitrust case against Google over the way it pushes its search business in browsers is due to begin next month, but a judge just narrowed it significantly. The Wall Street Journal reports the judge kicked out an element of the case that would have targeted Google for downranking local search rivals such as Yelp and Tripadvisor in its main search service.

ON OUR FEED

“Not holding my breath.”

—Mark Zuckerberg expresses skepticism that his cage fight with Elon Musk will take place on Aug. 26, as the Meta CEO had proposed. Zuck says he’s “ready today.” Musk claims to be “lifting weights throughout the day, preparing for the fight,” but he needs an MRI before he can participate.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

PayPal launches stablecoin after pausing development amid regulatory scrutiny, by Ben Weiss

Zoom cashed in on work from home—but even this firm is telling employees to return to the office now, by Nicholas Gordon

Mark Zuckerberg is copying Snapchat again—but this time it’s because of Apple, by Rachyl Jones

How a 21-year-old influencer incited a riot in Manhattan by promising to give away loads of video gaming equipment, by Steve Mollman

D&D fans turned off by A.I.-generated art spurred a Hasbro unit into banning it: ‘We are revising our process,’ by the Associated Press

Elon Musk wants to avoid another ‘rock tornado’ next time Starship launches. SpaceX just tested a way to prevent it, by Bloomberg

BEFORE YOU GO

A.I. architecture. The Guardian has a very interesting piece by its architecture writer, Oliver Wainwright, about how A.I. is rocking the building world. In it, Wainwright interviews Wanyu He, founder of Chinese architecture A.I. startup XKool, and He demonstrates how her software can quickly produce detailed plans for a large structure. The golden paragraph:

I applaud He on what seems to be an impressive theoretical exercise: a 500-room hotel complex designed in minutes with the help of A.I. But she looks confused. “Oh,” she says casually, “that’s already been built! It took four and a half months from start to finish.”