Most efforts at combating climate change have focused on reducing carbon emissions or trying to eliminate them, but many climate scientists believe we may have already passed the point of no return. That’s why Noah Deich wants to pull carbon out of the air.

“Not only can we stop making a mess, we can clean it up.”Deich is the founder of a nonprofit called the Center for Carbon Removal; its goal is to bring together scientists, political figures and leaders in the energy industries to find the best way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. “Not only can we stop making a mess, but we can clean it up and hopefully prevent all of the damages scientists expect will happen if we don’t clean it up,” he says.

Carbon removal schemes aren’t new, and they aren’t entirely supported by the scientific community, either. Some groups of scientists are working on the problem, and documents like the one published by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change urge developing this kind of technology in the future. One major barrier is cost. Technology already exists to remove CO2 from smokestacks at a reasonable price, but taking it out of the air raises the price — just how much, though, is disputed.

“It’s not a question of if we can take carbon out of the atmosphere, but I think the question is if all of the technologies that can take carbon out of the atmosphere do it in a cost effective, sustainable and scalable way,” Deich says. He believes we can find a cost effective method.

One thing is for sure: the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is risingOne thing is for sure: the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is rising. Currently, the level of CO2 is just over 400 parts per million — so 400 CO2 molecules for every million gas molecules. It doesn’t sounds like a lot, but scientists say that small changes in the balance can have major impacts. Concentrations of carbon dioxide are projected to almost double to 750 parts per million by 2100, according to research from MIT. Those levels are alarmingly high, since carbon dioxide was at 280 ppm before the industrial revolution picked up in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

The UN’s goal for CO2 emissions is currently unrealisticThe UN’s goal is to keep CO2 from going over 450ppm in the next century, in the hopes of avoiding the likely catastrophic effects of climate change. That goal currently appears unrealistic, thanks to a lack of investment in the technology and the continued global reliance on fossil fuels, according to many climate scientists. Deals among members of the United Nations could help, but they will have to be swift and unyielding to prevent catastrophic consequences. The largest industrial nations will not just have to promise to try to cut emissions by large numbers, they will have to meet those goals and even try to exceed them.

In terms of technological help, a machine made to pull carbon dioxide out of the air is crucial, says Deich. Recently, just such a machine made headlines: it pulls CO2 out of the air, processes it and combines it with hydrogen to make hydrocarbons so the CO2 can be used as fuel. There are also ideas for storing carbon in soils that can absorb it. “This is really an untapped area for technology innovation,” Deich said.

Lackner believes his methods could help stop climate changeOne method for carbon removal, created by Klaus Lackner, who is the director at the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions, uses sodium carbonate and a resin material to suck up carbon from the air like a plant’s or tree’s leaves do. The resin soaks up the CO2 like a sponge, and the carbon can be removed by adding water in a vacuum sealed container. Then, the CO2 can be pumped underground, in a process called sequestration.

Lackner believes his methods could help stop climate change. He says it’s not likely the atmosphere can handle “800 or 1,000 ppm of CO2, and we will likely get there this century if we don’t do anything about it,” Lackner told The Verge. “We will need to balance the system out and find a way to get negative emissions.”

Much of the scientific community doesn’t especially care for carbon capture. Many researchers who are working on promoting green energy or planning on capturing the CO2 directly from smoke stacks don’t want a technology that lets people pollute as much as they want so it can be captured later, Lackner says. But plenty of fossil fuels are burned without carbon capture — in planes, ships, and automobiles, for instance — so we will eventually have to capture what’s already in the atmosphere, he says. The real issue is affordability.

The real issue is affordabilityPeople like Lackner are hopeful that carbon capture can be made cheap quickly. But that may not be possible. For instance, there’s Sherwood’s plot, a graph that shows how much it will cost to handle a certain volume of material based on how diluted it is. It’s a straight line upward for cost as the material is more diluted. CO2 is 300 times more diluted in air than it is in a smoke stack, according to Lackner. With the cost of taking it out of a smokestack running around $80 to $100 per ton of CO2, it would conceivably be incredibly expensive to take it out of the air. Most estimates for the cost of open air carbon capture range between $200 per ton and $1,000 per ton of CO2.

Lackner wants to find his way around the plot’s skyward trajectory. He agrees with the basic idea behind Sherwood’s plot — that a more dilute substance costs more to capture — but he thinks he can disrupt the linear growth in cost. The way to do that, according to Lackner, is by not forcing the machine to actively seek out carbon dioxide. His device lets CO2 come to it, instead of grabbing everything around in an attempt to find CO2, as its first step of the process— think of it as standing in the wind, rather than sucking in large volumes of air. Designs that allow this type of airflow could get the cost down to $5 or $10 per ton of CO2 captured, Lackner says.

But Lackner’s estimates sharply contrast what some studies of carbon capture devices, which usually estimate capture’s minimum cost as around $200–$400 per ton. Howard Herzog, a senior research engineer at MIT, was one of the researchers who helped conduct a 2011 study that looked at the cost of capturing carbon from outside air. His team based their research on the devices that would capture carbon from smoke stacks, and using Sherwood’s plot, they found an open air machine would likely cost $1,000 per ton of CO2 captured at this point. However, Lackner’s device isn’t the same as the device used to get CO2 from smokestacks, so this estimate may not directly reflect that cost.

There are ways that cost can be driven down, but the overall volume of the air that needs to be handled and how diluted the CO2 is makes it an expensive process, Herzog says. “If you have basically free electricity [for the device], then that changes things, but I just don’t see that happening anytime soon,” he says. One of the biggest issues is how much energy a machine needs to capture carbon, so very cheap electricity will be key. Even technologies that are often called free energy, like solar panels, typically cost at least 12 cents per kilowatt hour — and that’s still too expensive. It’s important that the air capture device be running on energy not created by burning much fossil fuels, otherwise you’re just “chasing your tail,” Herzog says.

Cost is the biggest hindrance to carbon captureCost is the biggest hindrance to carbon capture — everyone agrees on that, even if they disagree about how expensive it will actually be. Once some groups have built their devices to scale and fully tested them in a large area, the reality of these devices will be a little clearer. Right now, prototypes have only been tried out in test facilities, with little reported but estimated costs and basic efficacy. Initial tests show many devices capture at least half the CO2 they come in contact with, but they’re still pricey to develop and use. But these devices haven’t been tested much, so that’s hardly the final word. Proponents of carbon removal devices claim they are a necessity to help clean up our mess — but necessity doesn’t determine a technology’s success. As more prototypes are tested, we may actually find out if we can clean up after ourselves — and at what cost.

The first time I tried 2C-B, I was at a punk rock show; I threw back the pills as we walked to the venue. 2C-B was both mild and intense, depending on the moment. “The lights dimmed and brightened, forcing a woman’s leopard-print coat to feather and contract with the shadows,” I later wrote of the night. “An image decorating the wall of a woman with her hands pushed forward seemed to reach out and grab at the crowd.” I experienced light psychedelic visuals, moments of paranoia, euphoria, and at one point anger, when an idiot playing pool kept getting in the way of the concertgoers. My body felt warm, electric, and sensitive to the touch, and the objects and people I looked at seemed to expand and contract in a moment.

The 2C family of drugs has a complex and sometimes controversial pastI first heard of the 2C family of drugs when a friend came to visit me while I was living in Portland, Oregon. He was a veteran in the psychedelic drug world, and he told me 2C drugs are closely related to substances like MDMA; I’d get a similar effect to MDMA but with increased psychedelic visuals and feelings. There are many versions of 2C drugs, from 2C-I to 2C-B to the infamous 2C-P, which allegedly keeps you high for as long as 24 hours. Each one has its own unique chemical properties and particular effects.

The 2C family of drugs has a complex and sometimes controversial past. They are synthetic psychedelics in the phenylethylamine class. They were first synthesized by the late Alexander Shulgin around 1974, who is known for popularizing MDMA. Like MDMA, 2C drugs were first utilized for therapeutic purposes among Shulgin and his colleagues and later became known as club drugs. No official clinical trials were done, but there was some experimentation. Rumor has it that a German company distributed 2C-B in the 1980s for use as an aphrodisiac called “Eros.” If this is true, there are no records of it.

The increased interest in MDMA may revive research on 2C drugsShulgin and others have long speculated 2Cs could be used for therapeutic purposes, but a lack of basic research creates a catch-22: without any information, there’s no reason to conduct a study, says David Nichols, founding president of the Heffter Research Institute, which studies psychedelic drugs. 2Cs are known to have certain effects and dangers, but the kinds of trials a scientist would do to get a better understanding of those elements are missing. Because clinical trials are expensive, it’s hard to provide enough justification to study this family of drugs in any serious way. That means we don’t even know what dosages are dangerous. But an increased level of research interest in MDMA, the 2Cs’ older cousin, may revive interest in the drugs.

(Lukas Kästner)

When MDMA was banned in the US in 1985, 2C drugs became a quick replacement in the club scene. As was the case for many synthetic drugs, 2C drugs’ existence wasn’t well-known among government officials — which meant they weren’t illegal for some time. The main 2C varieties were eventually named as Schedule 1 drugs and became illegal around 1994. Also, like many synthetic drugs, renegade chemists began creating slightly different versions of the drugs so they could claim to sell a legal version.

When MDMA was banned in the US, 2C drugs became a quick replacement

Since the 1990s, a lot of other illegal drugs — MDMA, marijuana, LSD, and psilocybin — have been more widely studied by the medical research community. The 2C family has been an exception, though. At least in part because of a lack of knowledge around the family, some compounds have caused overdoses that can end in death. Some experts claim the deaths associated with the original 2C varieties should actually be attributed to tainted versions of the drugs, as investigators may have misidentified what kind of 2C it was — but problems can happen when too much of any 2C is taken. Altered versions of the original 2C types can also be significantly more potent, and one known physiological effect is a dangerously elevated heart rate. Problems can also occur when 2C drugs are taken with other substances.

Overdoses related to the derivative 2C-I-NBOMe have been widely publicized; users apparently often thought they were taking LSD. Some experts told The Verge it’s easier to overdose on drugs like 2C-I than it is drugs like MDMA, since it’s more potent. But with the correct dosage, 2C-I is typically regarded as being as safe as MDMA among Erowid users — a group with an interest in psychoactive chemicals.

“Smiles” is a term the media uses for 2C-I, though I’ve never heard anyone from the psychedelic community use that nameMost people know the family through lurid headlines like this one: “Johnny Lewis, ‘Smiles,’ and the Latest Designer Drug Panic,” a story from Grantland when a Sons of Anarchy actor died in 2012. “Smiles” is a term the media has used for 2C-I, though I’ve never heard anyone in the psychedelic community refer to the compound that way.

Around 2000, three deaths were recorded related to the 2C-T–7 derivative. Shulgin, who was still alive at the time, expressed his frustration over what amateur chemists were doing to his promising creation. “I’m disturbed by the fact that you get someone who wants to make a pile of money and doesn’t give a damn about the safety or the purity,” he told The Guardian at the time. “It’s a motivation that I’m uncomfortable with. People using psychedelics, I’m not uncomfortable with. I consider it a very personal exploration. But I’m very disturbed by the overpowering of curiosity with greed.” Shulgin’s creation, which he believed had serious therapeutic potential, became the synthetic killer of its time.

(Erich Ferdinand)

MDMA-assisted psychotherapy has shown promise as a treatment for disorders like PTSD and anxiety in clinical studies. Shulgin always believed 2C drugs could provide similar benefits. “[2C-B] is, in my opinion, one of the most graceful, erotic, sensual, introspective compounds I have ever invented,” he said during an interview with the Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics in 2003. “For most people, it is a short-lived and comfortable psychedelic, with neither toxic side effects nor next-day hangover. Its effects are felt very much in the body, as well as in the mind, and thus it has found clinical use as a follow-up to MDMA.” MDMA could be used to help people identify their problems during therapy — then 2C-B could be administered to help them open up the “emotional, intuitive, and archetypal” areas of the brain to help them solve those problems, Shulgin said.

Studying clinical uses would require toxicity studies — which likely will cost $200,000The main issue with the 2C family of drugs continues to be the void of information on their effects and dangers. Much more research has been done on MDMA than any 2C compound. “To study any possible clinical uses would require first carrying out toxicity studies, likely at a cost of around $200,000,” Nichols says. “To justify that cost to a private investor, one would have to have a good idea that the compound to be studied actually would prove to have beneficial medical effects.” The evidence isn’t there yet.

That’s because when 2Cs were born, no one did any major investigations regarding medical uses of the class — or even toxicity. Even though MDMA and other compounds are relatively under-studied, enough information existed to suggest they might benefit some people. But because no similar studies have been conducted on 2Cs, there’s no hint the drugs may have therapeutic benefits.

It’s possible things could change, and once again, MDMA may lead the way Right now, the information void makes for polarized rhetoric — think of the chasm between the deaths from overdose and Shulgin’s hopes. But it’s possible to imagine that could change, and once again, MDMA may lead the way. If MDMA-assisted psychotherapy gains acceptance, doctors may consider ways to alter or heighten that therapy with other compounds, says Brad Burge, director of communications and marketing at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. And given Shulgin’s thoughts on the class, the 2Cs seem like a natural choice for combination therapy. “That’s the future of psychedelic therapy research,” Burge told The Verge. “Once MDMA-assisted psychotherapy is legal and approved, therapists and patients will want to know how to maximize these tools.” Now that MDMA is starting to break free of government restrictions, perhaps Shulgin’s dream of using 2C drugs as medicine will be realized.