Road towards Carbon-Neutral Future

2023 marked the 50th anniversary of World Environment Day, with this year’s theme centred around ‘Solutions to Plastic Pollution.’

- Anil Pratap Singh

Concurrently, World Ocean Day 2023 has adopted the theme ‘Planet Ocean - Tides are Changing,’ aiming to ignite a new wave of understanding regarding the crucial role of the ocean. The focus is on raising awareness for its protection and promotion. This is because the planet’s greatest carbon sink, the ocean, absorbs excess heat and energy released from rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions trapped in the Earth’s system. Hence, appropriate action is exceedingly desirable in order to take important step towards addressing issues of climate change. Ocean mitigates global-warming effects by absorbing about one-quarter of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions.

Reaching Climate Goal by the Midcentury

Though strategies to reduce emissions are imperative but are still insufficient in reaching out climate goals by the midcentury. Albeit, natural as well as technological strategies exist to eliminate carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) from the atmosphere and stockpile the same in trees and plants, soils, underground reservoirs, rocks, the ocean, etc. Even so, world obligatorily requires large-scale investments in new technologies that can remove carbon from the atmosphere.