New facility in Iceland will capture 4,000 tons of carbon out of atmosphere per year

Most scientists agree cutting our future CO2 emissions won't be enough to stop global warming from causing catastrophic impacts. A new industry hopes to supplement that by removing from the atmosphere CO2 emissions that already exist. CBS News senior environmental correspondent Ben Tracy has the details.

Each weekday morning, "CBS Mornings” co-hosts Gayle King, Tony Dokoupil and Nate Burleson bring you the latest breaking news, smart conversation and in-depth feature reporting. "CBS Mornings" airs weekdays at 7 a.m. on CBS and 8 a.m. ET on CBSN.

[bekindist]

There's two types of people, those who only find problems with everything and those who try to find solutions. I'm glad there are people out there who are trying to find solutions.

[AKrn]

The world emits over 36 BILLION tons of CO2 per year so we need 9 million more of these.
Get crackin'!

[TheAzmountaineer]

So we need 10 million of these to neutralize the carbon emissions each year, plus, say, another 10 million to reduce the amount already in the atmosphere. No problem.

[KevinP]

isn't that like using a squirt gun to fight a forest fire the size of North America?

[aarononeal]

CBS needs to talk about ecosia they are a search engine that plants trees .

[cjsrescues]

My only concern is this, how will it effect ground water and the soil around it. I'm optimistic but I have my questions.

[GrizzBeaver]

No one talks about the TREES being cut down that captures carbon naturally. Imagine an earth filled with machines instead of trees.

[Drpermer]

Swiss huh, so they are making a profit somehow from this. The Swiss don't do anything where they can't take advantage of someone.

[avking]

Every country that’s Financially right should take a part in making this

[jimas]

4K compared to 40 billion….okay, talk about starting off with a small scale experiment….good luck-

[fixerupper]

This is fantastic....We need more of this!!!

[terryjp]

UNICEF says 367, 000 children born ea day. Nothing else matters until that is addressed, period.

[Jim_]

They should reuse hydroelectric plants to power stations like these, while moving the grid towards Nuclear energy. Also, to those in the comments section berating carbon capture technology, I would point out that no amount of trees is going to capture all the carbon we burned from deposits in which it was stored safely for millennia. One plant over a short period of time won’t fix the problem, but it’s a start.

[vjmappy]

Wouldnt they rather put that in the middle of a congested city?

[digiacomtech]

Hmmm, one facility that only makes a 0.00001% dent (4k removed vs. 40 billion added) in the annual carbon emissions. Which means we need 10 Million of these facilities, or fewer if they are dramatically larger.

[bob-thebuilder]

That's like Removing 790 cars from the streets ..

[petarpetrov]

No carbon = No plants = No Humans
Good plan Rotchild

[DennisJohnsonDrummer]

I can sleep better at night now. Thanks!

[phoque]

I did the math on it... they mention that that plant captures 4.000 tons, and that global emissions are at 40.000.000.000 tons. That means we would need 10 million of those just to neutralize current emissions (starting at 10 million and 1, we would start removing the excessive CO2 that is already out) 😬

[tomlydon]

Wouldn't it be more effective to use this clean energy to replace some dirty energy production somewhere else in the world, and instead capture carbon via afforestation?