In May 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced the seemingly impossible goal of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade, even though the technology to do so wasn’t even remotely ready. Eight years later, on July 20, 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong walked on the moon—arguably, the single greatest technological triumph in human history. It was the first "moonshot."
An article in
Nature
commemorating the 50 year anniversary of the Apollo Mission noted that the moonshot framework—defining a problem, supporting it with money and cross-disciplinary expertise and attempting to solve it in a given timeframe—is being applied to more-complex challenges that we might call “earthshots.” But an earthshot like solving climate change is more difficult than a moonshot by far. Not only does it involve massive scientific and technological challenges, but it also must contend with the inevitable tradeoffs of a complex global marketplace and conflicting geopolitical demands.
This issue of Energy Today explores audacious, Blue Sky decarbonization ideas. Los Angeles, for example, wants to build a hydrogen-fueled power plant, but it’s never been done before. Stanford University researchers have created a new catalyst that can turn carbon dioxide into fuel, but they’ve still got to figure out how to reduce the harmful byproducts. Some believe we have to geoengineer the planet and others want to transform the entire oil and gas sector.
The technological problems of decarbonization are daunting. The human conflicts that must be overcome make this earthshot seemingly as impossible as the original moonshot.