The Earth’s carbon cycle is a complex system that has been in balance for a long time before human industrial activity began to disrupt it. This natural system regulates the flow of carbon between the atmosphere, the oceans, the soil, and the biosphere. For most of Earth’s recent history, the planet has maintained a relatively stable climate, allowing life to flourish. But since the onset of the fossil-fuel age, we have been injecting vast amounts of carbon into the atmosphere at a rate far beyond what natural systems can absorb. The result has been a buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide, rising temperatures, and cascading impacts on ecosystems, weather systems, and sea levels.
To restore this balance, we need to dramatically reduce carbon emissions while also enhancing carbon sequestration through natural and technological means. But conventional economic and political frameworks have failed to incentivize this transition at the scale and speed required. This is why we must now look beyond traditional tools and consider radical innovations in both finance and climate intervention.
The Promise of the Global Carbon Reward
One of the most visionary proposals for addressing this crisis is the Global Carbon Reward (GCR), a concept developed by Delton Chen. Between 2015 and 2019, I had the opportunity to work with Delton and co-author Joel van der Beek on the foundational papers that introduced this idea. Our work, subsequently cited by Kim Stanley Robinson in his novel The Ministry for the Future, proposed a global incentive system to reward verifiable carbon mitigation.
At the heart of the GCR is the Carbon Coin—a form of money issued not for producing goods or services, but for removing or avoiding greenhouse gas emissions. Rather than punishing carbon polluters through taxes or cap-and-trade schemes, the GCR would pay carbon savers. The concept is funded by “Carbon Quantitative Easing” (CQE), in which central banks create money to buy Carbon Coins from verified mitigation providers. This introduces a direct, transparent economic incentive for carbon removal and sustainable practices.
Delton’s work received accolades from institutions like MIT’s Climate CoLab and has gained increasing attention from climate economists and systems theorists. The idea is bold: transform the financial system itself to align with the regeneration of the biosphere. Instead of extracting value from nature, we would reward those who restore and protect it.
The Challenge: Unrealized Potential
Despite its promise, the GCR has yet to be adopted at scale. The barriers are not technical but political and institutional. Financial conservatism, entrenched fossil fuel interests, and the inertia of existing economic paradigms have slowed progress. Governments continue to subsidize carbon-intensive industries while carbon prices remain too low to drive deep transformation. Without bold action, the GCR and other innovative proposals remain hypothetical.
Geoengineering as a Last Resort?
Because the needed emissions reductions and removals are not occurring fast enough, some scientists, including Dr. Mike MacCracken, have argued that we must begin seriously researching solar radiation management (SRM) and other geoengineering approaches. These include technologies that reflect a small portion of sunlight back into space, temporarily cooling the planet.
In interviews and writings, Dr. MacCracken emphasizes that while geoengineering is controversial and carries significant risks, it may be necessary to reduce the rate of warming in the near term, buying time for carbon removal strategies like the GCR to take hold. He warns that stabilizing global temperatures at 2.5 to 3°C above preindustrial levels is not viable; we are on a dangerous path toward ecological breakdown, and all serious options must be considered.
SRM is not a substitute for emissions reduction. It does not address ocean acidification or remove carbon from the atmosphere. However, in a world where mitigation is stalling and tipping points are looming, it may be the least bad option. The key is to approach such interventions with humility, transparency, and global cooperation.
A Systems-Based Approach to Climate Restoration
What unites proposals like the Global Carbon Reward and the cautious exploration of geoengineering is the recognition that we need a new systems paradigm—one that values planetary health and long-term human flourishing over short-term profit. This means redesigning our economic frameworks, rethinking what we reward, and aligning human activity with the Earth’s capacity to sustain life.
We have the knowledge. We have the tools. What we lack is the courage and coordination to act. The carbon balance will not be restored through incremental adjustments to a broken system. It requires a transformation as radical as any scientific revolution—a shift not only in policy, but in worldview.
We must reward what restores, and refuse to profit from what destroys. We must learn to see the Earth not as a resource to be exploited, but as a living system to be healed.
Only then can we hope to restore the carbon balance—and with it, the future of life on Earth.
Addendum (July 2025)
Can We Count On Nature-Based Climate Solutions? — What the new PNAS Nexus study adds to the picture
Hilary Brumberg, Margaret Hegwood, Waverly Eichhorst, Anna LoPresti, James T Erbaugh, Timm Kroeger, Global analysis of constraints to natural climate solution implementation, PNAS Nexus, Volume 4, Issue 6, June 2025, pgaf173, https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf173
The Brumberg et al. paper (2025) is the first to map—country‑by‑country and pathway‑by‑pathway—the barriers that stall “natural climate solutions” (NCS) such as forest protection, re‑wetting peatlands, agro‑forestry or coastal‑wetland restoration. From 352 peer‑reviewed sources they classify four broad constraint types—economic, informational (know‑how & monitoring), governance/political, and socio‑cultural—and show that every nation faces all four, but in very different mixes. Globally the most cited roadblock is lack of finance, followed by knowledge gaps, weak policy enforcement, and local distrust or equity concerns. Wetland projects hit information barriers hardest, reforestation hits equity worries (land & food security), while existing‑forest protection is hobbled by enforcement failures. (phys.org)
From diagnosis to support: five levers
| Barrier category | Practical support measures (with examples) |
|---|---|
| 1 . Finance gaps | Blended public–private funds that de‑risk long‑term restoration (e.g., Tanzania’s RAFI peat fund); sovereign “nature performance bonds” pegged to verified carbon & biodiversity gains; redirect $600 bn yr‑¹ in harmful ag‑forestry subsidies toward NbS. |
| 2 . Information & MRV | Invest in open‑source remote‑sensing platforms, low‑cost soil‑carbon sensors, eDNA monitoringso that local cooperatives can generate—and own—the data needed for carbon crediting and adaptive management. Pair every large NbS grant with a local extension‑training budget to close the know‑how gap that hobbles wetland and agro‑forestry projects. |
| 3 . Governance & enforcement | Strengthen tenure security and Indigenous co‑management—the cheapest way to keep existing carbon in place; embed NbS targets in Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) with hard legal triggers (e.g., Brazil’s “Amazon Fund 2.0” payment‑on‑delivery model). |
| 4 . Socio‑economic equity | Design NbS as “cash‑crop plus carbon” mosaics: intercropped shade trees, silvopasture, mangrove‑aquaculture that let farmers earn today while trees mature. Use payments for ecosystem services that reflect opportunity costs and are paid in advance of carbon delivery to avoid small‑holder risk. |
| 5 . Cross‑sector coordination | Create NbS “implementation accelerators” at the watershed or bioregional scale (government, Indigenous authorities, land trusts, insurers, ag‑input firms) to bundle permits, knowledge, and capital so that each village or landowner is not reinventing the wheel. |
What the findings mean for expectations
- Biophysical potential ≠ near‑term delivery. The headline that NCS could supply “one‑third of mitigation to 2030” remains valid, but Brumberg et al. suggest effective potential is lower until the multi‑constraint tangle is addressed.
- Money alone won’t cut it—but it is the first unlock. Finance influences all other barriers (data, enforcement, equity). A rule of thumb from existing NbS portfolios is US $10–12 per tonne CO₂e is needed simply to bridge the funding gap.
- Local context determines which lever matters most. For peatland re‑wetting in Indonesia, the binding constraint is cheap satellite‑to‑groundwater proof; for Appalachian riparian buffers, it is farm‑bill incentive stacking; for Kenyan agro‑forestry, it’s women’s land tenure.
- Monitoring credibility is the make‑or‑break issue for carbon markets. Without robust, transparent MRV the study warns that scaling uncertain pathways could “undermine” trust in all NCS. Open‑data platforms and third‑party audits must become standard costs of doing business.
- Co‑benefits keep projects moving even when carbon prices sag. Resilience to floods, biodiversity gains, and livelihood diversification often matter more to local partners than the carbon cheque; funding schemes should pay for these explicitly, not as incidental perks.
A realistic support horizon
- 2025‑2030: “Unblocking decade.” Redirect at least 10 % of global climate finance (~US $65 bn yr‑¹) to grant‑style early‑stage NbS, prioritising projects that tackle both finance and information gaps.
- 2030‑2040: “Scaling decade.” With MRV costs falling and legal frameworks mature, blended‑finance NbS could credibly deliver 2–3 Gt CO₂e yr‑¹—roughly half the oft‑cited technical ceiling, but still a climate wedge on par with global heavy‑industry decarbonisation.
- Beyond 2040: “Maintenance era.” The mitigation curve flattens; value shifts to adaptation, water security, and biodiversity services. Long‑term stewardship funding (trust funds, green sovereign wealth funds) becomes more important than carbon offsets per se.
Bottom line
The PNAS Nexus evidence does not say nature‑based climate solutions are a mirage; it says they are political‑economic projects first, ecological‑technical projects second. Support them by matching finance with credible data, pairing protection with local prosperity, and wiring enforcement into law; otherwise, the large theoretical climate wedge will stay on paper.
(This summary and the conclusion were AI-generated, then further edited to emphasize the most important arguments.)
The credibility of this analysis only strengthens the case for some form of solar radiation management and possibly other forms of geoengineering. Those who oppose these measures must address the very real obstacles to implementing mechanical carbon capture, achieving emissions reductions, and scaling up nature-based solutions. Undoubtedly, we will make some mistakes with geoengineering—but then we already have, during many decades of industrial and technological development that were not intentionally designed to manage the planet.