Chemists are manipulating carbon dioxide to make clothing, mattresses, shoes, and more.

By Ann Leslie Davis

It’s morning, and you wake up on a comfortable foam mattress made partly from greenhouse gas. You pull on a T-shirt and sneakers manufactured using carbon dioxide pulled from factory emissions. After a good run, you stop for a cup of joe and guiltlessly toss the plastic cup in the trash, confident it will fully biodegrade into harmless organic materials. At home, you squeeze shampoo from a bottle that has lived many lifetimes, then slip into a dress fashioned from smokestack emissions. You head to work with a smile, knowing your morning routine has made Earth’s atmosphere a teeny bit cleaner.

Sound like a dream? Hardly. These products are already on the market around the world. And others are in the process of being developed. They’re part of a growing effort by academia and industry to reduce the damage caused by centuries of human activity that has sent CO2 and other heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere.

The need for action is urgent. In its 2022 report, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, stated that rising temperatures have already caused irreversible damage to the planet and increased human death and disease.

Meanwhile, the amount of CO2 emitted continues to grow. In 2023, the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicted that if current policy and growth trends continue, annual global CO2 emissions could increase from more than 35 billion metric tons in 2022 to 41 billion metric tons by 2050.

Capturing—and Using—Carbon

Carbon capture and storage, or CCS, is a climate mitigation strategy with “considerable” potential, according to the IPCC, which released its first report on the technology in 2005. CCS traps CO2 from smokestacks or ambient air and pumps it underground for permanent sequestration; controversially, the fossil fuel industry has also used this technology to pump more oil out of reservoirs.

As of 2023, almost 40 CCS facilities operate worldwide, with about 225 more in development, according to Statista. The Global CCS Institute reports that, in 2022, the total annual capacity of all current and planned projects was estimated at 244 million metric tons. The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act includes $3.5 billion in funding for four U.S. direct air capture facilities.

Meanwhile, the amount of CO2 emitted continues to grow. In 2023, the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicted that if current policy and growth trends continue, annual global CO2 emissions could increase from more than 35 billion metric tons in 2022 to 41 billion metric tons by 2050.

Capturing—and Using—Carbon

Carbon capture and storage, or CCS, is a climate mitigation strategy with “considerable” potential, according to the IPCC, which released its first report on the technology in 2005. CCS traps CO2 from smokestacks or ambient air and pumps it underground for permanent sequestration; controversially, the fossil fuel industry has also used this technology to pump more oil out of reservoirs.

Author Bio:  Ann Leslie Davis is an award-winning freelance climate journalist with a Master's degree in English Language and Literature/Letters and a Bachelor's degree in Environmental Science. She focuses on emerging technologies for CDR (carbon dioxide removal) like Direct Air Capture, Enhanced Rock Weathering and Ocean Sequestration, along with new ways to utilize CO2 in order to reduce emissions.

Reacting to the latest findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN Secretary-General insisted that unless governments everywhere reassess their energy policies, the world will be uninhabitable.

Unless action is taken soon, some major cities will be under water, Mr. Guterres said in a video message, which also forecast “unprecedented heatwaves, terrifying storms, widespread water shortages and the extinction of a million species of plants and animals”.

Horror story

The UN chief added: “This is not fiction or exaggeration. It is what science tells us will result from our current energy policies. We are on a pathway to global warming of more than double the 1.5-degree (Celsius, or 2.7-degrees Fahreinheit) limit” that was agreed in Paris in 2015.

Providing the scientific proof to back up that damning assessment, the IPCC report – written by hundreds of leading scientists and agreed by 195 countries - noted that greenhouse gas emissions generated by human activity, have increased since 2010 “across all major sectors globally”.

In an op-ed article penned for the Washington Post, Mr. Guterres described the latest IPCC report as "a litany of broken climate promises", which revealed a "yawning gap between climate pledges, and reality."

He wrote that high-emitting governments and corporations, were not just turning a blind eye, "they are adding fuel to the flames by continuing to invest in climate-choking industries. Scientists warn that we are already perilously close to tipping points that could lead to cascading and irreversible climate effects."

Urban issue

An increasing share of emissions can be attributed to towns and cities, the report’s authors continued, adding just as worryingly, that emissions reductions clawed back in the last decade or so “have been less than emissions increases, from rising global activity levels in industry, energy supply, transport, agriculture and buildings”.

Striking a more positive note - and insisting that it is still possible to halve emissions by 2030 - the IPCC urged governments to ramp up action to curb emissions.

The UN body also welcomed the significant decrease in the cost of renewable energy sources since 2010, by as much as 85 per cent for solar and wind energy, and batteries.

Encouraging climate action

“We are at a crossroads. The decisions we make now can secure a liveable future,” said IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee. “I am encouraged by climate action being taken in many countries. There are policies, regulationbly, they can support deep emissions reductions and stimulate innovation.”

To limit global warming to around 1.5C (2.7°F), the IPCC report insisted that global greenhouse gas emissions would have to peak “before 2025 at the latest, and be reduced by 43 per cent by 2030”.

Methane would also need to be reduced by about a third, the report’s authors continued, adding that even if this was achieved, it was “almost inevitable that we will temporarily exceed this temperature threshold”, although the world “could return to below it by the end of the century”.

Now or never

“It’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F); without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible,” said Jim Skea, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group III, which released the latest report.

Global temperatures will stabilise when carbon dioxide emissions reach net zero. For 1.5C (2.7F), this means achieving net zero carbon dioxide emissions globally in the early 2050s; for 2C (3.6°F), it is in the early 2070s, the IPCC report states.

“This assessment shows that limiting warming to around 2C (3.6F) still requires global greenhouse gas emissions to peak before 2025 at the latest, and be reduced by a quarter by 2030.”

A great deal of importance is attached to IPCC assessments because they provide governments with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies.

They also play a key role in international negotiations to tackle climate change.

Among the sustainable and emissions-busting solutions that are available to governments, the IPCC report emphasized that rethinking how cities and other urban areas function in future could help significantly in mitigating the worst effects of climate change.

“These (reductions) can be achieved through lower energy consumption (such as by creating compact, walkable cities), electrification of transport in combination with low-emission energy sources, and enhanced carbon uptake and storage using nature,” the report suggested. “There are options for established, rapidly growing and new cities,” it said.

Echoing that message, IPCC Working Group III Co-Chair, Priyadarshi Shukla, insisted that “the right policies, infrastructure and technology…to enable changes to our lifestyles and behaviour, can result in a 40 to 70 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. “The evidence also shows that these lifestyle changes can improve our health and wellbeing.”

EDITORS NOTE: A longer article but chock full of important and eye-opening information.  If you care about the environment, it is well worth your time to read this and other articles cited in it.

A bottle of water. It looks ordinary enough. But take a closer look and you can almost hear the Jaws music start to play…

This is not your average Evian you can pop to the shop and buy (although you’re probably not doing that because of plastic water bottles’ contribution to pollution and global warming). This is a bottle of melted iceberg and it comes with a potent message: the Arctic is melting. 

As a matter of fact, on the Greenland ice cap alone, 17 million of these bottles are melting every second. 

Over the last 50 years (the equivalent of a nanosecond in the grand scheme of the universe timeline), the Arctic has warmed three times more quickly than the planet as a whole. Widely considered by polar scientists as the Earth's refrigerator due to its role in regulating global temperatures, its own temperature has risen by 3.1 degrees Celsius, compared to 1 degree Celsius for the planet, with each fraction of a degree having a devastating impact. Now imagine we’re the fresh veg inside that fridge… 

The "poster child" for the effects of the loss of sea ice on species is the polar bear, a species that could become extinct by 2100 if Arctic ice continues to melt at projected rates. Walruses and arctic foxes are also losing their homes. 

But, as climate scientists are fond of saying: "What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic." Rising sea levels will force coastal communities inland, seasonal temperature differences will become more polarised, and extreme weather events will become more frequent, which will in turn lead to a refugee crisis, the likes of which we have not seen before. 

Arctic Basecamp is the group that have found themselves taking an unlikely career tangent to water bottling. 

They’ve taken these bottles (as well as a four-tonne melting iceberg from Greenland) and set up camp (literally) at a handful of world events such as COP26, the Davos World Economic Forum, and, in a matter of days, Glastonbury. While they’re there, they hand these bottles to key decision makers to make sure that the Arctic has a seat on the table. 

This year, they’re taking their melted Arctic message to the mother of all green festivals: Glastonbury. Founded with activism at its heart, it’s the perfect place for Arctic Basecamp to set up shop. If you’re heading to Worthy Farm this week, make sure to stop by and say “Hi”, and speak some science to power. They’ll be located in the “Green Futures” field.

Almost 5,000 kilometres away from Glastonbury Festival, the Arctic and its melting icebergs can sometimes seem distant and abstract. So to bring the polar region and its realities closer to home, Arctic Basecamp has come up with the “Arctic Risk Calculator.” Simply pop in your date of birth and it will tell you precisely by how much temperatures and sea levels have risen since you’ve been alive. Then get a ruler out to see what that sea level rise looks like, or imagine what would happen to the produce in your fridge if you turned it down that many degrees…

We met with Prof. Gail Whiteman, founder of Arctic Basecamp, to find out what it’s like going to the Arctic, what melted Arctic ice water tastes like, and why the Arctic is so important. 

Hi Gail, what do you do in a sentence?

I am the Founder of Arctic Basecamp, a not-for-profit science communication platform, and a Professor of Sustainability at the University of Exeter Business School (UK).

Let’s get the important stuff out of the way (joking). Have you been to the Arctic? Do you have to wear special clothing? And what did you eat?

Yes, I’ve been to the Arctic! 

You do need to wear special clothes and have special gear. On a research vessel, you have normal gear but also need to know how to use protective clothing in case you fall in the water.  

My PhD field work was in the sub-Arctic (just at the top of the treeline) when I lived with Indigenous Peoples in northern Canada for two years — the James Bay Cree.

On a scientific research vessel, the food is actually very good!  During my PhD, when I was in the hunting camps, we had to hunt and eat local animals, fish, and in the summer, blueberries.

OK, now for the actually serious stuff. What is Arctic Basecamp? Why did you start it?

The idea of Arctic Basecamp emerged from a scientific trip through the NorthWest Passage on a Canadian research vessel in 2010. It was so clear then that the sea ice was rapidly disappearing and this would cause severe global risks far away from the Arctic. But no one outside academia or outside the regional geography was concerned about that.  

My “task” after that trip was to figure out a way to get this message out of the Arctic and into the discussions of global decision makers. That’s why we set up Arctic Basecamp at the World Economic Forum at Davos. Our mission is to “speak science to power” in order to encourage urgent and transformative climate action. We are a unique science communication platform that tries to convey the science in an understandable way in unusual places. We work with celebrities like Rainn Wilson, who is on our board,

business and policy leaders, scientists, NGOs and youth activists — for example, Greta Thunberg camped with us in Davos in 2019. We bring youth climate leaders from around the world each year with us to Davos, including Indigenous youth from the Arctic.  

But because we want to reach out beyond the elite crowd at Davos, we have also recently launched the online “Arctic Risk Calculator” which identifies the global risks from Arctic change and helps to curate the data into meaningful “alerts” about climate risks.

Why is the Arctic so important?

The Arctic is the poster child for the need to stay below the +1.5C emissions target, and it’s warming at least three times as fast as the rest of the planet. Climate research shows a strong and direct correlation with rising CO2 emissions and loss of Arctic ice. Science also shows that the Arctic is the barometer of global risk — what

happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay there. 

A lot of people will know the ice is melting and that’s bad news for polar bears. But what other impacts is it having?

The science is clear — the dramatic changes in the Arctic region are an irrefutable warning sign of the impending global climate emergency. Yet, there remains a significant gap in public awareness and in-depth understanding of the magnitude and breadth of the global risks as a consequence of Arctic change — from extreme weather, storm surges, and global sea level rise, to changes to global precipitation and snowfall patterns. There is also a large disconnect between scientific monitoring of early warning signs of the impending risks from Arctic change and discussions by key global policy makers, business leaders, and local communities and citizens. 

Arctic warming can cause extreme weather across the Northern hemisphere. The catastrophic and costly storms, heatwaves, wildfires, and other extreme weather hammering the world’s cities and regions have been linked to changes in the rapidly warming Arctic. Between 2010 and 2019, record-breaking storms, floods, and other natural disasters were the costliest in modern history with losses totaling US$2.98 trillion.

Arctic change will also affect global food and water security because of the central role it plays in the world’s climate system. 

Some of the world’s most populated places are on the shores of rising oceans. Seas are rising faster now than over any century in the past 3,000 years. Coastline flooding of low-lying cities and regions as well as devastating coastal erosion will worsen and happen more often in the decades ahead.

Tell me more about the bottled water you took to COP26.

At COP26 in Glasgow, Arctic Basecamp handed out “Arctic Melt” bottles made from real melt water from Greenland. We wanted to put fresh, natural, unadulterated climate facts right under the noses of world leaders, COP26 delegates, climate deniers, and reporters in Glasgow. We brought the Arctic right into the heart of COP26 — “a single serving of alarming climate facts.” Each limited edition bottle contains messages of risk and the advice not to waste these precious glaciers. It was a literal “Bottled Warning” on the need to make bold and ambitious commitments on pledges for emissions reductions and climate action.

How did you actually bottle it? 

We worked with Qajak Brewery in Narsaq, a Greenlandic enterprise, to collect Greenland glacial meltwater at source and the water was then bottled by an independent bottler based in Irvine, near Glasgow. It arrived on a ship from Greenland, via Iceland, and transported along with our iceberg to Scotland where Graeme Lindsay from Uisge Source treated the water and bottled it in his factory. All transportation was offset by Ecologi.

What does Arctic water taste like? 

It’s very neutral tasting because there are no minerals in it. But I don't know how I feel about actually drinking it. The water can of course be drunk but we hope people see it as a symbol of the climate crisis happening in the Arctic right now. 

What was the response like?

People are always astounded to learn that over 17 million bottles of our water melt off the Greenland Ice Sheet per second. That is a lot of meltwater. That's over 13 million litres per second. We also had one global policymaker visit us at COP26 three times!

Why Glastonbury?

We believe that ordinary people have a tremendous amount of power to force politicians and companies to act faster on climate change. 

What’s one thing you wish people knew about the Arctic?

That the changes in the Arctic and the Antarctic will determine the fate of humanity.  

What gives you hope right now?

Some days, that becomes a really hard question to answer. I had a big dip when I watched Don’t Look Up and felt crushed by the similarity with climate science and the dangerous lack of global action. But eventually I got my hope back because at the end of the day, there is love and there is ingenuity in the world. We can do this! But we have to face the facts and find the courage to make the impossible possible. 

Finally, how much have the Arctic temperature and sea levels risen since you’ve been alive?  

I was born in 1965 and here are my shocking climate numbers:

• Global temperature rose 1.32 °C | 2.37 °F
• Arctic temperature rose 3.45 °C | 6.22 °F
• Sea level rose 138.60 mm | 5.46 inches
• September Arctic sea ice declined by 53.34 %
• CO2 in atmosphere rose 98.88 ppm | 31.17 %

Global Citizen is partnering with Arctic Basecamp to amplify the call for action to tackle the devastating impact that climate change is having on the Artic, and on vulnerable and marginalized communities around the world. Head over to our Climate Action NOW page and see how many actions you can take today to defend the planet. You can also download the Global Citizen app, and take Challenges that help drive climate action in your own life, and call on world and business leaders to take urgent climate action now. 

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