I’ve come to understand and embrace that a paradigm-shifting, international effort to address the climate crisis is through a coordinated multipronged strategy. This is the only way forward to effectively tackle climate change. The three foundational pillars for climate action are Emissions Reductions, Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), and Albedo Restoration, together form the climate action triad. Understanding the roles, limits, and interactions of these pillars with Earth’s climate system is crucial for achieving meaningful progress.
The Three Pillars of Climate Action
Emissions Reductions
Emissions Reductions focus on cutting the flow of heat-trapping greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere. This is acheived primarily by decarbonizing energy, industry, agriculture, and the transportation sectors. This “net-zero carbon” goal is the backbone of climate action worldwide, forming the core of most national commitments to the Paris Agreement and a focus for industry. The European Union, for example, has achieved more than a 37% drop in emissions since 1990, largely through increased renewable energy and improved efficiency, resulting in reduced dependence on fossil fuels.
- Limits of Emission Reduction: While indispensable, emissions reductions alone are not enough. Even immediate, drastic cuts would still leave dangerous levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere for centuries, continuing to drive warming that results in extreme weather events and rising ocean levels. The myth that Emission Reductions Alone (ERA) can “fix” the climate ignores the legacy burden of past emissions and the sheer scale and inertia of the Earth’s climate system.
We’ve had 40+ years to decarbonize and we’ve not done a good job. It has proven to be slow, difficult, and costly. Think of it like a diabetes patient who did not manage their disease very well, and now has heart and kidney disease, neuropathy in their extremities, early onset dementia, etc. You get the picture. We have planetary co-morbidity problems which require a number of different approaches.
Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR)
CDR encompasses both technological (e.g., direct air capture) and natural (e.g., reforestation, enhanced soil carbon) methods to remove the excess CO₂. Peer-reviewed research and policy reports stress that in addition to rapid decarbonization, the world needs massive new capacity to actively draw down the overabundance of oceanic and atmospheric CO₂. Huge amounts of excess CO₂ and other GHGs have built up in our climate system. Our collective efforts to remove these excess GHGs has been insufficient to date, putting us in this precarious position of addressing dangerous global warming and climate change.
Exceptional growth in the Voluntary Carbon Market is predicted over the next decade. Yet, it is unclear if the predicted 48% CAGR though the next decade represents sufficient CDR for climate restoration. Reducing the current CO₂ concentration of 425 ppm back to 350 ppm (a safe level of CO₂ concentration) represents about 585 gigatonnes. The 2024 voluntary carbon market removed about 40 million tonnes of CO₂. This is only about 0.0068% of the final goal of 585 gigatonnes.
Scale and Challenges:
- CDR solutions, whether biological or technological face major scalability hurdles. Biological approaches (like expanded forestry or soil management) are less costly and offer additional ecosystem and societal benefits but haven’t yet scaled to the needed gigaton levels. Mechanical CDR (such as direct air capture) remains largely unproven at climate-relevant scale. Methodologies, so far, are expensive, and energy-intensive.
- All current solutions are far short of the gigaton-scale removals needed to significantly change atmospheric CO₂ on meaningful timescales. Though currently unproven, perhaps mCDR might hold some promise to scale.
Albedo Restoration: Reflecting Sunlight
Albedo, the fraction of sunlight reflected by Earth’s surface, directly influences global temperature. Decreases in albedo through ice melt, deforestation, and urbanization create positive feedback accelerating warming. Strategies to restore or enhance albedo could include:
- Preserving and restoring snow and ice cover, especially in polar regions.
- Increasing surface reflectivity in urban areas (e.g., via reflective roofs, pavements).
- Avoiding afforestation in high-albedo (light-reflecting) environments where new trees may decrease albedo and offset the carbon benefit.
Peer-reviewed studies are increasingly highlighting that:
- Albedo restoration is largely neglected in mainstream climate policy, even though small increases in reflectivity could have outsized cooling effects.
- Some climate solutions, like large-scale tree planting in boreal or dryland regions, can paradoxically increase warming due to lowered surface albedo, highlighting the need for spatially nuanced approaches.
- Restoration of Arctic albedo could mitigate warming more quickly than CDR or ERA, owing to its immediate cooling potential.
Why Emission Reductions Alone is not Enough and the Case for Albedo
Relying solely on emission reductions overlooks the legacy problem that excess atmospheric CO₂ will continue to heat the planet. Even after we reach “net zero”, CDR is needed to clean up historic emissions. Yet, these solutions are nowhere near the necessary scale and face fundamental limits.
Meanwhile, the neglect of albedo strategies is a potentially catastrophic oversight. As sea ice and snow shrink, less solar energy is reflected, creating a feedback loop as warming begets more warming. Surface albedo restoration, particularly in the Arctic, could slow or partially reverse some of this feedback while other solutions scale up.
Conclusions
- True climate stabilization requires all three pillars: rapid emissions reductions to halt new pollution, massive CDR to clean up the atmospheric legacy, and targeted albedo restoration to buy time and partially offset near-term warming.
- Albedo is critical and under-addressed: strategic albedo restoration may offer immediate cooling, reduce risks of catastrophic feedback loops, and complement Emission Reductions and CDR.
- Myth-busting: Emission Reductions Alone will not “fix” the climate; we need integrated, systemic approaches.
To avoid climate catastrophe, society must rapidly decarbonize, scale up CDR far beyond today’s efforts, and urgently address Earth’s changing albedo, especially in the Arctic and in land use policies, to maximize our chances for a livable future.
“The downward trend in emissions expected by 2030 shows some progress… but we are still nowhere near the scale and pace of emission reductions required to put us on track toward a 1.5 degrees Celsius world. To keep this goal alive, national governments need to strengthen their climate action plans now and implement them in the next eight years.” – United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres (June 2024)