HEIDI WIDEROE/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES
THE CARBON QUANDARY
for Prosperity, during a press conference ahead of Obama’s speech
last month.
Herzog says that for all of the
continued static, he remains optimistic that reasonable minds
will ultimately prevail in the climate wars — though he adds he’s
not holding his breath for policy
breakthroughs anytime soon. By
way of explanation, he recalls
the last wave of enthusiasm surrounding carbon-capture technology, as a newly elected Obama
was entering the White House and
promising a national effort to develop cleaner sources of energy,
curb carbon pollution and aggressively tackle climate change. The
HUFFINGTON
09.15.13
U.S. House of Representatives had
passed a historic climate bill, the
2009 U.N. climate conference was
in full swing in Copenhagen, and
hopes were high that real progress
on the climate problem — including an increase in CCS — was imminent, Herzog says.
But the Copenhagen talks ultimately fizzled, the U.S. climate bill
died in the Senate, and a crushing
recession re-focused many minds
on the bottom line. And once
again, commercial development
of carbon-capture technology was
nudged further into the future.
“We realized,” Herzog says, “this
was going to take a lot longer than we thought.”
Tom Zeller is a 2013-14 Knight Science
Journalism Fellow at MIT.
The
Mongstad
oil and gas
refinery near
Bergan,
Norway.