Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies may be needed to meet climate change targets. A full understanding of public attitudes towards such approaches is currently lacking. Here we report a mixed-methods study on public perceptions of CDR in the United States and the United Kingdom, focusing on bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, direct air capture and terrestrial enhanced rock weathering. A discourse of climate urgency had a substantial impact on perceptions, with CDR seen as offering too slow a response to the climate crisis. CDR also fails to reflect long-term hopes for a sustainable world, being interpreted as not addressing the root causes of climate change. A social license to operate may therefore depend on resolving these temporal dilemmas regarding both the short- and long-term implications of technology development. While research under well-controlled conditions is likely to be acceptable, at-scale deployment without corresponding efforts to reduce emissions may represent a red line for many people.

为了实现气候变化目标，可能需要使用二氧化碳去除（CDR）技术。当前缺乏对公众对这种方法的态度的充分理解。在这里，我们报告了关于美国和英国公众对CDR的看法的混合方法研究，重点是生物能源，包括碳捕获和存储，直接空气捕获和陆地增强的岩石风化。关于气候紧迫性的论述对知觉有重大影响，CDR被视为对气候危机的响应太慢。CDR也未能反映出对可持续世界的长期希望，被解释为未解决气候变化的根本原因。因此，社会经营许可证可能取决于解决有关技术开发的短期和长期影响的时间难题。