🛁 Is it time to drop the bathtub analogy for carbon removal? 🛁

😒 I’ve heard it countless times: we need to turn off the tab (= stop emissions) and pull the plug (= remove emissions). Somehow, it never resonated with me.

Hear me out:

🚰 Like it our not, we cannot fully turn off the tab. In fact, 5-15% of the tab will keep running (= hard-to-abate emissions) no matter what we do.

💦 A bathtub has a single overflow point, whereas emissions cause disasters continuously. Basically the water keeps overflowing even if it hasn’t reached the top.

🌡️ The water already in the bathtub will keep heating up the atmosphere at unsustainable levels. Somehow, this danger isn't really conveyed with a nice cozy bathtub.

🗣️ Clear communications around carbon removals are essential. And I'm all for analogies that make it simpler to explain what we're doing and trying to achieve.

🤔 So my honest question to all of you: is there a better analogy?

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