To reach current climate targets, we cannot rely solely on slashing future emissions. We must also develop the capacity to remove existing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it underground at gigatonne scales. The ‘great endeavor’ to capture all this carbon will involve the construction of the largest engineering project in human history, and the development of a new infrastructure equivalent in size to that of the entire global fossil fuel industry. This is our generation’s moon landing, a mobilisation of workers and resources on a planetary scale that would only be possible through international cooperation to an extent never achieved.
The Great Endeavor approaches this challenge with radical optimism, collaborating with a network of scientists and technologists to create a short film that captures the design, construction, visualisation, and drama of what it might look like to build this infrastructural imaginary, transforming airborne carbon into a liquified gas to be pumped deep beneath the ocean floor or mineralised into the desert rock. Featuring workwear created in collaboration with Hollywood costume designer Ane Crabtree and set to the score of a new planetary workers’ song composed by vocalist Lyra Pramuk, the film celebrates a new technological sublime, chronicling the coordinated action to decolonise the atmosphere in our last great act of planetary transformation.
To reach current climate targets, we cannot rely solely on slashing future emissions. We must also develop the capacity to remove existing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it underground at gigatonne scales. The ‘great endeavor’ to capture all this carbon will involve the construction of the largest engineering project in human history, and the development of a new infrastructure equivalent in size to that of the entire global fossil fuel industry. This is our generation’s moon landing, a mobilisation of workers and resources on a planetary scale that would only be possible through international cooperation to an extent never achieved.
The Great Endeavor approaches this challenge with radical optimism, collaborating with a network of scientists and technologists to create a short film that captures the design, construction, visualisation, and drama of what it might look like to build this infrastructural imaginary, transforming airborne carbon into a liquified gas to be pumped deep beneath the ocean floor or mineralised into the desert rock. Featuring workwear created in collaboration with Hollywood costume designer Ane Crabtree and set to the score of a new planetary workers’ song composed by vocalist Lyra Pramuk, the film celebrates a new technological sublime, chronicling the coordinated action to decolonise the atmosphere in our last great act of planetary transformation.
