Climate change mitigation entails reducing greenhouse gas emissions by either decreasing their sources or increasing sinks for these emissions. Regenerative agricultural practices and energy efficiency measures also play a role.
A recent report states that world leaders must intensify efforts to prevent catastrophic climate breakdown and safeguard people’s health, including reevaluating our global food systems and transitioning towards clean renewable energy sources.
Biological Carbon Sequestration
Carbon sequestration refers to the process of extracting, sequestering and storing carbon dioxide from Earth’s atmosphere in order to avoid its release into the air, where it could trap heat and contribute to climate change. Carbon sequestration offers great potential as a method of significantly reducing human-generated greenhouse gas emissions.
This natural process occurs in grasslands and forests, soils and oceans and can be supported through various biological and geological means.
Wetlands such as swamps and bogs also possess the capacity to store carbon. They often contain peat – an organic material accumulated over time – as a store of organic matter.
Indirect biosequestration involves conserving and improving existing forests, plantations and natural landscapes that naturally sequester carbon through photosynthesis. Direct biotic sequestration techniques include reforestation, encouraging use of less polluting fuels like wind or solar power generation and adopting farming practices like reduced tillage that build soil organic carbon storage.
Carbon Reuse
Climate change mitigation requires reducing carbon dioxide emissions to zero. One method to do this is carbon reuse, in which captured CO2 can be converted into products with economic value that have uses.
Carbon dioxide capture and utilization technologies (CCU) are being trialed by some companies as ways of creating low or no emissions fuels, building materials or other goods.
CCS processes involve extracting carbon dioxide from industrial emissions and compressing it before injecting it into suitable geologic formations for long-term storage. The captured CO2 may also be chemically transformed into products such as fertilizers or cement or used to generate electricity, or used as part of other processes to make new products such as fertilizer and cement.
Reusing CO2 to manufacture high-demand products such as fuels and construction materials helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with their extraction, production and transportation. Furthermore, this strategy helps offset the expense of carbon sequestration, which is one key aspect of carbon neutrality; that goal being reached by removing existing GHGs from the atmosphere before either using or permanently storing them again.
Carbon Storage
Carbon dioxide emissions from industrial sources are captured, then permanently stored underground geological formations for permanent disposal. Leading energy forecasts such as those by the International Energy Agency, Bloomberg New Energy Finance and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change depend heavily on carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) technology in meeting their respective global temperature targets.
CCS works by compressing CO2 to supercritical form so it behaves like liquid before injecting it into rock formations for storage. Common sites of storage may include saline aquifers, depleted oil and gas fields and unmineable coal seams located 0.62 miles (1km) beneath the ground surface.
Logistic growth models can help identify minimum rates of storage demand that align with climate change mitigation trajectories. Such models, which take into account historical technology development and storage capacity constraints, reveal that many scenarios can be mitigated using existing technologies; any remaining gaps could be filled through BECCS combining carbon capture with bioenergy production.
Adaptation
Adaptation is a response and mitigation strategy to climate change impacts that cannot be avoided, from sea level rise prevention to decreasing wildfire risk and restoring habitat restoration. Adaptation efforts occur at local, regional and national levels with ongoing efforts needed to safeguard people and ecosystems against its risks and vulnerabilities.
Human-caused climate change results from the accumulation of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, creating radiative “forcing”. Thus, controlling emissions is vital in order to stave off global warming’s most harmful consequences.
As highlighted by the 2023 Lancet Pathfinder Commission Report, world leaders must increase efforts to mitigate climate change to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown and protect people and planet. Many climate mitigation strategies also have health-related benefits; encouraging healthier lifestyles by switching to active forms of transportation or moving development away from flood-prone areas can have additional positive effects; while conserving open spaces helps prevent flooding in developed areas while simultaneously helping ecosystems absorb storm surges or droughts more easily than their carbon dioxide emissions can.