Climate change will challenge this country and exert global pressures, which too will impact. A key challenge and opportunity would be to initiate the leadership, development and part financing of a multi sector international team. This team would be challenged to find novel ways of capturing and redesigning CO2 into an environmentally safe product. Opportunity Covid has brought together many disparate yet visionary people to solve problems for the collective good. For example quick solutions to ventilator shortage and the finding of “old”drugs to mitigate covid effects. We have learnt and become world leaders in vaccine development and roll out. When the call went out to help, our country turned its flexible hand and switched gear into problem solving, building upon the bedrock of talents already within our people.
Climate change will challenge this country, flooding and drought for example, and it will exert global pressures that too will impact: famine, flooding and translocation of peoples. It presents an opportunity to be a global leader in a global problem that can be signed up easily by all countries (not all financially). It would have no call on less developed countries being exhorted to move away from the energy production it chooses currently. This could be a collective of world countries all taking part to resolve this global issue.
This is the idea of how to make it happen.
It would require leadership and a technologically supportive base, funding, people and a starting point.
Leadership and Base – let it be the UK. Building on from visionary investment in vaccine development and production and other technologies.
Funding. In an agreement brokered by the UK, funding to be sourced through international G8 or the Paris Agreement collective.
People. Pull together an elite multi disciplinary global wide team to work together based within the UK. The mission; to develop three approaches to the problem of excess CO2 in the earths atmosphere and the consequential heating up of the planet. These approaches would be the capture, collection and redesigning of CO2.
To give an example of CO2 capture I suggest the team look firstly an idea of “novel brushes / nets / feathers” attached to aeroplane wings that can sweep and collect CO2 in the air. It may sound crazy but aircraft travel is a global resource and any plane could be fitted to theoretically clean the air, if workable technology were developed. I believe industrial chimneys due have a scrubber system to capture excess CO2. There may well be other current CO2 capture systems that could be built upon.
To give an example of CO2 collection, the aim would be to develop a novel brush /net /feather to capture CO2. These technologies would be designed to fit onto aircraft. These “brushes/nets/feathers could be part and parcel of every plane and “turned around” in the same way as soiled materials are removed, and in the same way as fresh food is placed on board the replacement clean novel brushes/net/feathers would be re-sited.
To give an example of CO2 redesigning. The brushes etc would need to go through some small system again in airports or services ancillary to airfreight to convert into a secondary product for use on site or within each country. Perhaps condensing in a corrugated way to form another product.
This would build upon the science and innovation ability shown already in this country and in other nations. It would undoubtably further our aspiration to be world leaders in problem solving and technology. It could if successful solve emerging problems of extreme weather events, flooding of land and bring the nations of the world together.
It is positive, resilient and innovative.
1550-11