Decarbonising the Atmosphere

Removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is becoming technologically feasible, but will it ever be commercially viable at the scale needed to halt climate change?

Ed Butler speaks to Louise Charles of Swiss-based Climeworks - one of the companies that claims it is already turning a profit from the direct capture of carbon from the air. They're selling the CO2 to greenhouses. But what the world really needs to do to stop global warming is bury the stuff in the ground, and who is willing to pay money for that? Ed asks Princeton ecology professor Stephen Pacala, and Gideon Henderson, professor of earth sciences at Oxford University.

Producer: Laurence Knight

(Picture: A Reykjavik Energy employee stands next to a carbon capture unit designed by the Swiss company Climeworks; Credit: Melanie Stetson Freeman/The Christian Science Monitor via Getty Images)