More than 70 nations have committed to net zero emissions by 2050 or earlier, but is society fully aware of what that entails? The IPCC says achieving this requires not only big emissions cuts, but also removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a scale that has never been tried before. Many CO2 removal approaches have been proposed, including nature-based solutions, and technological approaches. But none are ready to be deployed at the scale and the speed necessary, and in all cases would bring risks, costs, and trade-offs, as well as potential benefits. There is currently insufficient international governance to manage the difficult decisions ahead. Governments and civil society are not paying sufficient attention to the challenge of governing CO2 removal at scale. At COP25, Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative (C2G) and leading experts argued for more urgency in global discussions to plug the governance gaps in CO2 removal: Thelma Krug, Vice Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); Claire Fyson, Research Analyst, Climate Analytics, and co-author of the report Governing Large-scale Carbon Dioxide Removal: Are We Ready?; Bindu Bhandari, Youth Campaigner and En-ROADS diffusion team member at Climate Interactive; and Janos Pasztor, Executive Director C2G, and former UN Assistant Secretary-General for Climate Change.

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