I once knew a man who applied varnish without a mask, trusting that his body would adapt. His health declined until he understood that he needed a filter. The planet is no different: it needs filters to help it do what it can no longer do alone. That is why carbon dioxide removal has to scale up, and fast.
The numbers, plainly
- Before industrialisation the air held about 280 parts per million (ppm) of CO₂.
- 350 ppm is a reference proposed by Hansen and colleagues in 2008 to reduce climate risks, not a universally accepted safety threshold.
- In April 2026 it measured 431 ppm, and it rises by about 2.6 ppm every year.
- Each year we emit around 42.2 billion tonnes of CO₂ from fossil fuels.
- Every extra ppm is roughly 7.8 billion tonnes of CO₂ in the air. Going from 431 down to 350 means removing on the order of 630 billion tonnes.
The planet is no different: it needs filters to help it do what it can no longer do alone.
How long carbon dioxide removal takes at today’s pace
Conventional CO₂ removal, mainly through land-based activities such as reforestation, reaches approximately 2.2 billion tonnes a year. Meanwhile, our emissions are about 19 times greater. New technologies that capture CO₂ removed just 2 million tonnes in 2025 (State of CDR, 2026). At that rate, cleaning up the excess would take hundreds of thousands of years.
Scenarios that limit warming to 1.5 °C require removing billions of tonnes of CO₂ a year by 2050, combining natural and technological solutions (State of CDR 2026). Dividing the excess CO₂ by what we remove gives an idea of the scale of the challenge, but the real time would be longer: as the concentration falls, the oceans and ecosystems would release part of the carbon they have absorbed. That is why the first step is to stop adding more. It is our grandchildren’s lives. It is within our reach.
What carbon dioxide removal will take
- Research into enhanced trees and machines that do the work of millions of trees.
- Building them at scale, the way we build cars today.
- Stop burning what we don’t need to burn: share rides, consume less, produce clean energy at home.
Your part
The Earth Clock runs this calculation live. Move the slider and see how many years we save when capture is multiplied. Then take the “Where do you fit in?” quiz: we need people who research, who spread the word, who fund, and who act in their own neighbourhood.
Keep reading: Our Trash Flows to the Sea: How to Turn the Tide, Inventing the Future: The Age of Electricity for All and Movosfera: A Lighthouse to Save the Earth.
Sources
Simplified estimates to understand the scale of the challenge (1 ppm ≈ 7.8 billion tonnes of CO₂).