MOTHER CARBON

The Horizon

A long climb, and the century that decides it.

In 1964 the astronomer Nikolai Kardashev proposed that civilisations might be ranked by the energy they command. One of the first type would draw on all the energy that reaches its home planet. Carl Sagan, refining the scale, placed us at about seven tenths of the way to that first threshold.

The climb

For most of history we lived on the sunlight of a single year.

Wood, grain, muscle and wind: each season's light, spent in its season. Then we learned to burn the sunlight of a hundred million years at once, and in two centuries the world was remade. Light, warmth and distance were democratised; so too was the air's burden.

The next stretch of the climb asks that we carry more energy than ever while drawing down none of the inheritance beneath it. That is a problem of engineering, and it is equally a problem of finance.

The interval

The world has already agreed that money must move.

Making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.Paris Agreement, 2015, Article 2.1(c)

Finance stands beside temperature and adaptation as one of the agreement's three aims. Since then the pledges have multiplied: buyers now contract for carbon removal years ahead of delivery. What remains scarce is capital willing to build against those pledges before the first payment arrives.

In 2024 buyers contracted 7.96 million tonnes of durable removal; 0.32 million tonnes were delivered. The distance between those two numbers is the ground MOTHER exists to cross.

Source: CDR.fyi, Durable CDR Market 2024: Year in Review, February 2025.

The keeping

An ethic for those who will never meet us.

  1. Nowunder way

    The first bridge

    • Carbon removal pledges, examined gate by gate
    • Three of eight gates answered in Intelligence
    • The Register, keeping every signature

  2. Nextin preparation

    The full examination

    • The remaining five gates, each built with care
    • Monitor, watching each delivery
    • The reviewers' circle becomes a guild

  3. Thenon the horizon

    Beyond carbon

    • Other contracted revenue of the transition
    • More partners, more places, one method
    • The guild holding MOTHER to its word
How a mother would conduct it
“Act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life.”Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility, 1984