We can't always think circularly
Circular economy has been a massive trend in recent years. Waste is no longer just waste, but a resource. Instead of depleting nature and the planet by extracting new materials, we can use the waste from our massive consumption as inputs for new products. Sludge, leftovers, and old building components are keys to building a more sustainable society. In most cases, this is a good thing. But in one area, we need to stick to the good old linear thinking.
The challenge answered by the circular economy stems from the past 50 years of prosperity. Apparently, without much critical thinking and with significant blind spots, people in the Western world have made a historic effort to deplete our Earth and ecosystems. We have plowed, logged, and produced. We have bought, used (a little), and discarded enormous amounts of waste. It has been more economically rational to dispose of items rather than repair them, and much easier to produce from raw materials than from recycled materials. We have not understood the consequences.
A crucial factor throughout all of this has been fossil energy. Therefore, this economy has not only dark sides in terms of resources and waste. In every step of production for any product, in the wake of each process, an imprint is left in the atmosphere. Fossil CO2 is causing trouble.
We are increasingly feeling the consequences on our bodies. Even here in Norway, we occasionally notice it. We, who are world leaders in climate denial, who live high above sea level and mostly desire drier and warmer summers. The greenhouse effect may be good for tomatoes and grapevines here in the north, but the heat retained on Earth by the "glass ceiling" of greenhouse gases disrupts the fragile balance on which nature is built.
One of the winning arguments of the circular economy is that we need to go back to nature's way of working. Everything in nature operates in cycles, and waste is a foreign concept. The same applies to nature's relationship with carbon—it does not distinguish whether the carbon comes from fossil sources and should not be there or whether it is "biogenic." Carbon is carbon, and it circulates between the air, trees, flowers, soil, air, oceans, and so on. Nature's circular systems will therefore not be able to handle all the fossil carbon we keep pouring in on their own.
It is about time to help nature act linearly.
Or rather, nature will manage. In the long run. It's worse for us who live here. If we want a future without massive refugee flows, enormous insurance disputes, endless rounds in the legal system, food insecurity, and other challenging issues, we must start removing CO2 from the air. We have to take it out, and we have to store it. For a long time. Linearly, out of the circular carbon cycle.
There are technologies to do this. They are called NETs (negative emissions technologies), CDR (carbon dioxide removal), or "karbonfjerning" in Norwegian. BioCCS, DAC, biochar, mineralization are words and abbreviations you will hear more about in the coming years. In all the pathways of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) towards a maximum temperature increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius, carbon removal is a significant effort alongside emissions cuts.
What they have in common is that they linearly remove carbon from the cycle for long-term storage. What they also have in common is that a massive effort is required to achieve the scale and volume needed. Carbon removal is not just about offsetting, and certainly not about buying the right to continue as before. Carbon removal is about taking responsibility. It requires collective efforts from individuals, businesses, and politicians to avoid a long-predicted catastrophe.
When it comes to carbon, circularity is not the solution. We have to do what we know works, and we have to start now. We must remove carbon from the atmosphere. Linearly.