Yucky fumes, foul the air and clog your lungs,
but the worst part
is that the carbon dioxide that's been
floating around in those smoky clouds
is heating up the planet.
Government leaders around the world have been
trying to stop the amount of carbon dioxide
released into the atmosphere,
but one scientist from
Australia's science agency CSIRO
has an even better idea.
Dr Stevens - "What I'm attempting to do
is investigate the possibility 
"of converting carbon dioxide into a fuel."
Now that might sound far fetched.
It's called Blue Sky Science,
or in other words,
a great idea that seems ridiculous
but how do you know if you don't try.
Using the knowledge that plants store
the energy of the Sun's rays
by making carbohydrates from
carbon dioxide as they grow,
Dr Stevens decided to investigate
this process of photosynthesis.
What if he could use carbon dioxide
to store solar energy?
Dr Stevens - "I think probably
"the figure is that about half the
petroleum that's in the ground
"has already been dug up and burnt.
"So there's one problem of
the fact that that's running out
"and the second problem is the build up
of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
"So the idea here would be to find a
way of recycling carbon dioxide
"from the atmosphere and at the
same time making a kind of a fuel."
Dr Stevens has plans for storing solar power
by recycling carbon dioxide,
to create a fuel commodity
out of an earth-destroying gas.
It's obviously not going to happen overnight,
but when it does,
what an ingenious solution
for a global problem.
