Trump's climate plans are despairing most Americans. This Swiss plant is reason for hope.
Today in America, Donald Trump decided to leave the most significant climate treaty of the 21st century.
At a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden, the president announced that the U.S. would begin the process of pulling out of the Paris Agreement, which requires signatories to strive to limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius.
Meanwhile, in Switzerland, two engineers unveiled this baby:
Photo by Julia Dunlop/Climeworks.
As the U.S. plans to keep pumping out biggie-size amounts of carbon dioxide, the Swiss will be sucking the noxious planet-cooking gas out of the sky.
The Swiss plant, operated by Climeworks, is powered by waste heat and can capture 900 metric tons of CO2 annually, according to its designers.
The plan is to sell the trapped carbon to a local greenhouse for use in fertilizers.
"Highly scalable negative emission technologies are crucial if we are to stay below the two degree target of the international community," Christoph Gebald, co-founder and managing director of Climeworks, said in a press release.
The rest of the world is moving forward on climate change, and nearly 70% of Americans agree that we should too.
Unfortunately, with a climate change skeptic in the White House, repping the only major political party in the world that denies the effects of climate change, our government apparently plans to continue desperately sifting through various elements, rocks, and viscous liquids to see what else we can burn.
When America was apparently great. Photo by Gene Daniels/U.S. National Archives/Flickr.
Meanwhile, China and India — two of the world's largest non-U.S. polluters — are on track to blow past their Paris-mandated emissions targets. Yesterday, the European Union and China committed to remain in the agreement, regardless of U.S. action.
At the same time, the cost of solar energy is plummeting in the developing world, making it more affordable than ever. In India, solar power is already cheaper than burning coal in existing coal plants.
Climeworks plans to sell the CO2 captured in their plant to companies producing carbonated beverages and carbon-neutral fuel in the hopes of making carbon capture economically attractive.
Climeworks founders Christoph Gebald and Jan Wurzbacher. Photo by Julia Dunlop/Climeworks.
Because the plant captures CO2 directly from the air, it doesn't have to be located near a source of emissions — and can be installed virtually anywhere.
Innovations like these will continue to green the Earth and and grow the economy.
Occasionally, they even make their creators rich in the process. That's something America's free-market-loving political leaders — especially those who campaigned on running the government like a business — should be able to get on board with.
Slowly but surely, the world is realizing that uncooking the planet isn't just the right thing to do, it creates jobs, drives growth, and spurs investment.
Even the United States' biggest cities and states are moving forward, despite the Trump administration's decision to stay put. That's reason to hope.
Trump may be in favor of getting off the climate change train.
The rest of the world is saying, "All aboard."



A Generation Jones teenager poses in her room.Image via Wikmedia Commons
An office kitchen.via
An angry man eating spaghetti.via 
Gif of baby being baptized
Woman gives toddler a bath Canva


An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
- YouTube youtube.com
Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.