Exhibition puts on show the tech we need to avert the climate crisis

By Adam Vaughan

For a device meant to represent the future, Klaus Lackner’s mechanical “tree” looks more like a 19th-century machine than a 21st-century tool for scrubbing carbon dioxide from the air. Fortunately this prototype, the highlight of a new Science Museum exhibition on removing CO₂ from the atmosphere, will be superseded this summer by more elegant commercial versions akin to giant Alexa speakers.

Seeing the original up close brings home how desperate the climate crisis has become. Failure to cut our emissions fast and deeply enough means we need to remove so …