The other is to restore the pre-industrial climate by 2050 by removing legacy CO2.

Carbon-dioxide removal (CDR)) tops the tech headlines with increasing frequency, leading to the impression that we are rapidly developing a multitude of mostly industrial options for creating a safe climate.

What many miss is that the vast majority of “carbontech” CDR approaches are designed to develop the carbon-offset market. By definition, offsets only compensate for continued emissions. They do not touch the 1,000 gigatons of legacy CO2 that is causing most of the climate havoc.

In fact, CDR today serves two distinct policy purposes. Each has merit, yet achieving the two goals requires quite different approaches and budgets and would create strikingly different results.

The two goals of CDR are:

Developing a CDR industry that underpins the carbon-offset market—thus adhering literally to the 1992 United Nations goal to “stabilize” greenhouse gas levels. Today this means stabilizing at dangerous levels never before experienced by our species. This is of course now called “net-zero emissions;” and

Following what appears to be the original intent of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change: to restore GHG levels proven safe for humanity and nature as we know it. Restoring historically safe GHG levels is commonly called “climate restoration.”