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SWEEPING things under the carpet can be a bad idea. But what do you do when the floor is so thick with dust that any reduction would be an improvement? Swap dust on the floor for carbon dioxide in the air, and the carpet for the seabed, and that’s a dilemma world governments now face.

In other words, as an interim measure until renewable energy replaces fossil fuels, should we start soaking up CO2 from fossil-fuel power stations, the largest producers of CO2, and bury it where it can’t contribute to global warming? Given that the alternative…

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