7. Building an emergency hospital for the planet with Christoph Gebald

With the industrial revolution, humans spilled billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, doubling the amount of CO₂ from the previous 700,000 years. For about 15 years, scientists agree in stating that 97% of global warming comes from the anthropogenic greenhouse effect, which is triggered by human activities. To limit warming to 1.5°C, global net greenhouse gas emissions from human activity must decline by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, and reach net zero by 2050. This means that in order to "Re:planet", we have to Re:move Co2 from the atmosphere. For humanity to succeed within the short time frame we have, we might have to turn to both nature-based and technology-based solutions. Such a technological solution is exactly what Climeworks is working on. Climeworks develops, builds and operates direct air capture machines using a technology which captures carbon dioxide directly from the air; removing unavoidable and historic CO₂ emissions. They have 15 machines in operation, with the world’s first large-scale plant switched on in Iceland in September 2021. The raw material, pure CO₂ gas, is used by customers in industries such as commercial agriculture, energy, food and beverage and automotive, for uses such as carbonating drinks or for producing carbon-neutral hydrocarbon fuels and materials. By using Climeworks' CO₂, customers can reduce their overall emissions as well as lowering their dependence on fossil energy Christoph Gebald is a visionary entrepreneur, a mechanical engineer (ETH Zürich and UC Berkeley and holds an MSc with distinction and a PhD from ETH Zürich. Together with Jan Wurzbacher, Christoph founded Climeworks in 2009. As an avid skier and mountain lover he has spent considerable amounts of time in the mountains, enabling him to witness first-hand the consequences of climate change. Climeworks is not just about removing a specific amount of carbon from the air, but about creating a movement by inspiring 1 billion people to take action to actively remove carbon from the atmosphere. Just like today it's totally natural for most people to take back with you the garbage that you bring into nature, in a close future it'll be natural to also take back the carbon that you are responsible for releasing. Important to notice is that their solution is not intended to justify the release of more emissions, but rather to remove unavoidable and historic emissions. If you'd like to reduce your climate footprint, you can visit their website and become a Climate Pioneer.