It’s exciting that Elon Musk @elonmusk wants to incentivize research into carbon removal technologies.

However, be careful here. This CANNOT be seen as a substitute from eliminating primary emissions from fossil fuels, land use & agriculture, and materials today.

Done right, carbon removal could help us 20-30 years from now, either by offsetting the last, truly difficult GHG emissions the world still emit. Or it could help remove our historic emissions, brining GHG levels down to safer levels.

That’s it.

They are NOT an excuse to delay phasing our emissions.

We need to phase out tens of billions of tons of GHG emissions per year, as soon as possible (in this decade) to avoid dangerous climate change.

There are *no* removal technologies ready to do this at this speed or scale.

Our first and primary job to address climate change is to reduce emissions as quickly as possible.

Then maintain existing natural sinks.

Third, knowing it will take decades and never be big enough by itself, additional carbon removal technologies.

Yes, we need them all, but make sure prioritize things correctly:

(1) Reduce GHG pollution as quickly as we can

(2) nature keep removing what it does already

(3) Add new carbon removal technologies to (2) over time

*Help nature