I was a curious kid, always drawn to science. I mainlined episodes of The Magic School Bus, and even though I came from an immigrant family with little money, I begged my parents to buy me chemistry kits filled with test tubes and colour-changing pH strips. Those early chemistry lessons were the gateway to my understanding of climate change. I couldn’t yet grasp complex concepts like greenhouse gases and the carbon cycle, but I did know that the tools and technologies humans created had an impact on our environment. We could make messes, but we could also help clean them up.
I was in university when I first heard about direct air capture, or DAC—the idea that you could collect carbon dioxide that had already reached the atmosphere, instead of at sources of emission, like factories or power plants. The world’s first DAC technology was developed by research groups at the University of Calgary and ETH Zurich about a decade ago. I was in grad school at the time and started researching it myself. After completing my Ph.D. at the University of Toronto in 2018, I became the youngest-ever director at the National Research Council Canada, in charge of a $60-million program to find ways to convert captured carbon into plastic.
Direct air capture involves a multi-step process: first, large fans mounted on the sides of steel or aluminum cooling towers pull in the air. It then passes through a filter, made of a liquid (like potassium hydroxide) or a solid (like metal organic frameworks, which are similar to the activated carbon in Brita filters). Clean air goes back out into the atmosphere, but the CO₂ stays behind. It is removed from the filter using energy-heat, electricity or steam then compressed into a liquid, pumped and stored two kilometres underground, in ancient ocean beds made of porous sand.
Denne historien er fra July 2024-utgaven av Maclean's.
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Denne historien er fra July 2024-utgaven av Maclean's.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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So You've Been Hacked - A new generation of ultra-sophisticated cybercriminals are targeting governments, corporations, hospitals and libraries and laying bare how ill-equipped Canada is to fight back
A new generation of ultra-sophisticated cybercriminals are targeting governments, corporations, hospitals and libraries and laying bare how ill-equipped Canada is to fight back.On a July morning in 2022, Brad Hynes, the IT manager for the town of St. Mary's in southwestern Ontario, was backing up the town's computer systems when things went haywire. File names became unintelligible strings of characters. Desktop icons went blank. File after file was impossible to open, a string of digital duds. The background wallpaper on Hynes's screen disappeared, replaced by the red-and-black logo of a Russian ransomware gang called LockBit. A line of all-caps text appeared: All your important files are stolen and encrypted!
Bill of Health - I spent years with excruciating hip pain, languishing in Canada's health-care queue. I finally paid for private surgery-in Lithuania.
My hip pain started around 2015, when I was in my mid-30s. It began as stiffness, then the odd pinch or tweak. I live with my wife, Barbara, and our three kids on an acreage in Sturgeon County, Alberta, where we raise a handful of cows and some chickens. Our lives are very active. I'm also a maintenance supervisor at a nearby provincial park. That's a physical job, too-overseeing buildings, outhouses and campsites. I'm not exactly used to sitting still, so when my hip started to hurt, I pushed through it. I figured it was something minor and did some extra stretches. Instead, it got worse.
Green Scene - Montreal's Théâtre de Verdure stages plays and musical performances against a naturally beautiful backdrop
Théâtre de Verdure is a setting straight out of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream: a thespian's paradise in the middle of a lush woodland. Since 1956, the open-air stage has occupied an island in the middle of Montreal's Parc La Fontaine, exposing park-goers to regular, accessible (read: free) and dazzling productions.
Log Off To Find Love - Apps have gamified meeting and mating-and affected our social skills for the worse. The real future of dating is offline.
In 2017, after being single for a few years, I wanted to get back into the dating game. I was newly sober at the time, so I wasn’t super-confident about venturing into my local bar scene in London, Ontario. Instead, I leapt into the world of digital dating via Bumble, which, back then, required women to send the first message. I thought, That’s feminist. I’m a feminist. Let’s try it! My first few months online provided me with an emotionally exhausting education.
"I escaped Gaza and sent my family to Egypt. Now, my goal is to reunite with them in Canada."
Bombs destroyed my neighbourhood and killed my loved ones. I hope my family and I can find refuge in Quebec.
TIDAL WAVE
Susan Lapides chronicles her family's summers in a tiny New Brunswick fishing town
THE NORTHERN FRONT
In Ontario's hinterlands, a battle is brewing between First Nations, prospectors and the provincial government over a multi-billion-dollar motherlode of metals. Inside the fight for the Ring of Fire.
THE CULTURE WAR IN THE CLASSROOM
Several provincial governments now mandate parental consent for kids to change pronouns in Schools. Who gets to decide a child's gender?
THE JACKPOT GENERATION
Canada is in the midst of the greatest wealth transfer of all time, as some $1 trillion passes from boomers to their millennial kids. How an inheritance-based economy will transform the country.
My Child-Free Choice
For a long time, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to become a parent. The climate crisis clinched my decision.
