Cooling the Planet

Ending fossil fuels, however fast it happens, will not be enough. The atmosphere already holds more carbon dioxide than at any point in at least 800,000 years, and much of the damage is locked in. Cutting emissions is necessary, but the world will also have to take carbon back out of the air, measure the atmosphere honestly, and have the science ready on every option. This mission builds that capacity.

The Mission will:

• Build a domestic direct air capture industry. A growing fleet of plants that pull CO₂ from the air and store it deep underground, financed by the RFC and paid by the government for every verified ton removed. Each plant runs on its own dedicated clean power, and no plant or storage site goes anywhere a community objects. The goal is to turn a handful of subsidized pilots into a real American industry, remove well into the millions of tons a year by 2039, and drive the cost down from the high hundreds and low thousands a ton toward the mid-hundreds, with tens of thousands of jobs in former fossil fuel regions.
• Replant forests and verify the carbon nature stores. A reforestation program funded on a polluter-pays basis restores forests and degraded land, while the soil-carbon work on farms, paid for through the Farming and Water missions, is measured and verified so every ton counted is real.
• Build a Planetary Dashboard. Satellites, ocean buoys, stratospheric balloons, and ground stations that measure the atmosphere and oceans in real time, verify every ton of removal the government pays for, and publish every reading free to the world.

It will also fund open, international research into ocean-based carbon removal, but will not bet on it. It will be studied honestly and deployed by no one, and is not a priority of the Manhattan Projects.

Carbon removal complements the managed fossil fuel wind-down detailed in the Fossil Fuels chapter. It does not replace it.