At the Sustainability Group's first session in August, we discussed the findings of two recently released Australian government periodic reports which provide updates on issues we have previously discussed. These are the CSIRO ‘mega-trends’ report, which was first published in 2012, and the Environment department's 2021 edition of its State of the Environment report (generally published every five years). In the CSIRO's view there are two key new mega-trends that did not feature in its 2012 report; the need to adapt to the impacts of climate change and significant changes to the geo-political environment in the Indo-Pacific region. With the state of the environment report there was a general trend downwards in almost all categories which include 12 issues such as Antarctica and air quality through to marine and urban environments.
At our second session we took a dive into options to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This is predicated on the expectation that achieving 'net zero' greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 only deals with emissions being produced today. But if we want to return atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations to levels to that which existed around the beginning of the industrial revolution, then we need to come up with techniques that remove large volumes of carbon dioxide from the air. We looked at a variety of nature-based and 'mechanical' means of removing carbon dioxide from the air and either turning the carbon component into long-lived products (such as concrete), burying the gas in stable geological structures or improving the environment (such as increasing soil carbon).
John Lane
At our second session we took a dive into options to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This is predicated on the expectation that achieving 'net zero' greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 only deals with emissions being produced today. But if we want to return atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations to levels to that which existed around the beginning of the industrial revolution, then we need to come up with techniques that remove large volumes of carbon dioxide from the air. We looked at a variety of nature-based and 'mechanical' means of removing carbon dioxide from the air and either turning the carbon component into long-lived products (such as concrete), burying the gas in stable geological structures or improving the environment (such as increasing soil carbon).
John Lane
