Nature has been doing carbon capture for literally billions of years, and evolution has made them damn good at it. Plants absorb carbon dioxide from the air and build their bodies and food out of it. They even pump carbon-rich compounds into the earth to feed diverse communities of microbes. This has the effect of taking carbon out of the air and storing it safely away in the soil.

You can create a stable carbon capture system by genetically engineering plants to grow more extensive roots and pump more carbon compounds into the soil. The larger roots will bolster the soil structure, making it less likely to churn and release its captured carbon back into the atmosphere.

The carbon compounds pumped into the soil will feed microbes and fungi, which live and die in the low-oxygen environment deep underground. The lack of oxygen means that when they decompose, the carbon within their bodies isn’t metabolised and released as carbon dioxide. Instead, it is retained within the soil, effectively turning the mucky brown stuff beneath our feet into a near-limitless carbon storage facility.

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