In the summer of 1858, a putrid odor of raw sewage arose from the river Thames in London and choked the city in its sickly grip. The Great Stink, as it came to be known, spurred Britain's lawmakers to rush a bill through Parliament to provide the money to build a modern sewer system-one that would discharge sewage downstream from the river's drinking water intake. Construction of similar structures in the same era in a number of European and American cities, including Paris and Chicago, ended epidemics of typhoid and cholera, which victims contracted by drinking water contaminated with feces. If the Victorians could eliminate these diseases through careful disposal of human waste, why can't we counter climate change by extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and burying it where it can do us no harm?
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