Kudos to the stories covering high-tech, carbon dioxide-removal projects funded by the Department of Energy in Louisiana and Texas. If successful, each project will remove a million metric tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide every year — for starters.

To ensure a safe climate for a child born today at UW Hospital, we’ll need to increase global atmospheric carbon removal from today’s few thousand tons each year to millions of tons in the 2030s, and billions by the 2050s.

The problem is this: Left to Mother Nature alone, too much carbon will stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years. Safe and economical carbon removal is a vital piece of missing climate technology. These technologies can immediately help humans stop further warming. And by 2050, they can help Mother Nature cool us to safe levels.

Government support for technology innovation has traditionally enjoyed bipartisan congressional support. And it doesn’t require treaties or global cooperation to get the job done.

Dick Smith, Madison