Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

by Jason Hickel

This technology is known as BECCS: bio-energy with carbon capture and storage. When Obersteiner published his paper there was no evidence that the scheme would actually work; it was just speculation. But the sheer possibility of it captivated those who were looking for politically palatable ways of staying under 2°C. The idea was that we can get by with making relatively minor reductions to CO2 emissions – nothing that would pose any significant threat to economic growth – so long as we manage to get BECCS up and running. We’ll overshoot the carbon budget, but that’s OK because BECCS will pull the excess carbon back out of the atmosphere later in the century, bringing us back into the safety zone. Emit now, clean up later.