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Comment by jokoon | Hacker News Reader

I don't like those sorts of articles because they dismiss the idea of reducing CO2 emissions, while only talking about hypothetical technologies.

I don't think it's a good idea to wait for such undeveloped technology to mature, because the clock is already ticking. It is still much more important to reduce emissions now.

What would be much better, for example, is developing smaller cars. I would rather see society organize for a voluntary reduction of co2, because capturing co2 seems like scientifically too fastidious.

Also, I'm european and I tend to be very pessimistic when looking at US co2 emissions per capita.

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I think the author actually agrees with you, per the article itself:

  "there are two general approaches to keep warming to below a certain level:

  - Reducing emissions
  - Removing previous emissions from the sky

  If you remember one thing from this piece, it should be that we need to do both. 
  Gone are the days where optimistic emissions reductions kept us below a 2-degree warming target."

Except reducing emissions seems much more doable, safe and simple. It's just politically difficult. I have little hope that technology will be able to capture co2 in a manner that will be sufficient.

I don't like those sorts of techs because people will brandish them as a solution, while it's highly unlikely they will help at all.

Changing minds and habits of billions of people is more simple and feasible? For me it's ridiculous. Any technological solution looks way better for me.

if no solutions is available and food security is threatened, minds and habits don't matter.

The alternative to reducing emissions etc. is called "Geoengineering" and there are dozens of proposed methods. [1] In fact some have even been tested in the field, like growing algae. Unfortunately most solutions have unlikely but quite extreme risk scenarios. Although some surface reflection techniques seem actually reasonable [2]

The article seems to ignore scientific research from the field that actually started decades ago, so it's difficult to take that very seriously. To me most of these methods look more like emergency measures when sh* literally hits the fan...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflective_surfaces_(climate_e...

The US may have a high CO2 per capita but also look at surface area. Because that reflects how polluted a piece of land is. The Netherlands (my country) is high on the list with 3859 tonnes of CO2 per square kilometer. Belgium at 3279. Germany at 2239. Switzerland at 970.6. And then all the way to the bottom the USA at 547 tonnes, sandwiched in between Hungary and Spain.

Even better than developing smaller cars would be to reduce meat intake. AFAIK that's the single biggest improvement a single person can make to their CO2 footprint. And it's not that hard to pull off - just tax meat more heavily. I'm not sure the party who passes such a law would get reelected though.

There's no need to tax meat specifically. A blanket tax on CO2 emissions would suffice. Regenerative agriculture allows for carbon neutral meat production.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90368127/is-it-possible-to-raise...

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