This is the first installment of the Foundation’s Solution Series, which examines a diverse portfolio of natural and technological approaches that can remove CO2 from our atmosphere and return us to safe, preindustrial levels of carbon. In this paper, we explore Direct Air Capture (DAC) through a climate restoration lens. We use a US-based exemplary focus while recognizing the global strategy needed to restore the climate. We discuss DAC’s capacity to achieve scalable, financeable, durable, and equitable outcomes and then provide ways for readers to advocate for its safe and thoughtful implementation.
Climate change is a universal problem that has already and will continue to be felt earliest and hardest by those individuals with the least means to confront the intersectional crises it exacerbates and whose actions contributed the least to the problem.
This paper, published in March 2022 by Delaney Pues, Director of Solutions, Equity & Stewardship at the Foundation for Climate Restoration, aims to educate the public about the role that climate restoration and carbon removal will play in addressing climate change as it relates to justice and equity, while also serving as a reference point to approaching and assessing equity within CDR development, deployment, and solutions through the work of the Solution Series.