Growing up in South Florida and Costa Rica, I was constantly surrounded by nature. Whether it be the unique Everglades wetland of South Florida or the biodiverse rainforest of Costa Rica, the environment always inspired me. As a result of my childhood, I decided to study Environmental Engineering, both for my undergraduate and graduate degree. Environmental Engineering is fundamental to environmental policy, because it is the technologies we develop that ultimately allow for corporations to make a cost-effective change. I specifically will be studying carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies at Columbia University. Environmental engineering is the interdisciplinary subject which creates solutions to several of the environmental problems we face today. While science explores the reasons climate change and environmental issues happen, environmental engineering seeks to address them. With an unlimited budget, my goal would be to continue to contribute to the effectiveness of these solutions. Most of the worlds carbon emissions are attributed to just a small subset of large corporations. In that realization, one may argue that policy change is necessary to slow down anthropogenic climate change. However, issues have been identified in current CCS technologies. Companies are not motivated to implement these technologies because they are usually costly and have no other benefit other than combating climate change. Of course, policy changes which require companies to use these technologies may work, but we need to improve the technology itself. Additionally, many carbon sequestration methods involve storing carbon underground, where leaks can occur. When we look at these issues commonly associated with CCS, the solution becomes clear: Carbon needs to be converted into usable materials. What better way to convince large corporations to implement CCS than to provide a monetary incentive? Carbon dioxide (CO¬2) and methane (CH4) been converted into usable resources like oxygen, hydrogen, and even sugar. Particularly, NASA has used these technologies on their spacecraft air revitalization systems. Additionally, a scaled down experiment on the recent Mars Perseverance rover uses the planets atmospheric CO2 to convert CO¬2 to oxygen. A recent conversion challenge by NASA funded projects to convert CO2 to sugar. I strongly believe this is the future of CCS technology. While CO2 levels on earth are significantly lower than those on Mars, we can still implement these technologies by 1. Targeting point source CO¬2: These will provide the largest amounts of carbon and 2. Improving our low-level carbon capture technology. Other usable resources that can be made from carbon include graphene, graphite, and diamond. The goal, therefore, is not to simply store our carbon in the Earth and forget about it as we have always done. Instead, it is to implement the commonly used catchphrase “reduce, reuse, recycle” in even our CCS innovations. I truly believe that by providing an incentive such as this, companies will be more likely to agree to implement necessary emission policy changes.