The anthropocene is as it is, not as it should be. Emissions reduction, carbon removal, and solar radiation management are all important tools in managing the world we’ve made.
The sooner our cultural narrative expands to accept consequential responsibility, the better.
(Article is better than the headline)
Why not save as much CO2 as possible now and, when we can't do more (e.g long-term shortage of batteries), fully invest in carbon removal programs?
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_feedback#Positi...
Personally I think that development of both in parallel is what can bring the most success.
We covert to an emissionless society in the future and use carbon removal as the net-zero emissions bridge during the transition phase.
Economically, they are. Carbon removal technologies do not prevent the emissions of CO2 (their production actually emits CO2), but reducing emissions cancels the need to remove emissions future emissions.
Budgets are limited so any investment in future carbon removal is not used to stop today's emission. Also, climate change isn't the only catastrophe we must avoid (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_collapse) so our efforts and resources are definitely limited.
To be fair, so does the production of renewables.
I think the bigger reason is that CO2 sequestration is more compatible with human psychology. It reminds me of a study that looks at three ways to convince homeowners to conserve energy (sorry, this is from memory, I can't remember the actual study):
Method 1: educate them about how much money they will save. -Result: Little to no effect on consumption
Method 2: educate them about how much better it is for the environment -Result: Little to no effect on consumption
Method 3: inform them that a majority of their neighbors are conserving energy -Result: A significant reduction in consumption
Now that doesn't seem particularly rational to me, until you frame it as most people are simultaneously selfish and also social creatures. But that framework helps understand why carbon removal gets more coverage than conservation.
Because carbon removal tech at scale needs to be ready at that point, and it won't be if it doesn't get investment now. I agree it shouldn't get as much attention as displacing carbon sources, but it still needs research investment.
Is it? The problem isn't that there's carbon in the atmosphere but we keeping adding more even though it's making it inhabitable.
Is too much alcohol in my blood a technical problem or a drinking problem. Someone drunk should stop drinking alcohol in the first place (admit that's a behavior of behavior) instead of finding ways to remove alcohol from their system.
but if removing alcohol is possible (and cheap), and the person _wants_ to be drunk, then they should be allowed to do so. Rather than saying that one should reduce their alcohol intake.
Just like carbon removal, removing alcohol from blood is much more difficult (and/or expensive) than to stop drinking.
It's an addiction so maybe we should stop selling alcohol to drunk people who can't help but put their life at risk. If your drunk friends says "but I'll find a way to get sober", we can agree to help them with that once they stop drinking.
Also, wrt to climate change: people won't want carbon but energy and we have an alternative to fossil fuels so replace them with renewable sources as much as possible and once we've done our best, finally talk about all the CO2 we failed to save. It's all about priorities because of the time carbon remains in the atmosphere and the feedback loops at play.
How do you figure? I can't foresee a world in which a human being's life is carbon neutral. So if we have an exponentially growing global population, how does carbon reduction not eventually lead to population control?
We don't https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow...
If you’re living in poverty, a kid doesn’t impact your socioeconomic status in such a profound way, and in rural places they can be an economic benefit.
For many middle class people a single child would drive them into poverty.
depends on what you mean by lower emissions.
Transitioning to more renewable sources is certainly a good way to invest resources, but it's not mutually exclusive to also consider carbon capture.
What is _not_ possible is for people to reduce their consumption. I, and many others, will not be willingly sacrificing the high quality of life that is the result of using a lot of energy. If people expect that climate change is to be solved by having everyone reduce their consumption, then that train of thought is doomed to fail.
I do not mean moving back to a pre-industrial lifestyle.
But we have cheap and viable solar energy today because of decades of work to make it economically viable. So tarring carbon removal or any other technology that could feasibly improve or stabilize a damaged climate could be strangling future pillars of climate response.
I am just worried that some industries are using carbon capture as a delay tactic. Reminds me a little if “clean coal” they pushed some years ago.
Also, if the companies and countries profiting from carbon extraction from the ground aren't the ones paying for it to be extracted from the atmosphere, you've got a massive transfer of wealth happening there. Should the US be paying for the Saudi royal family to get richer?
If climate change is a sufficiently important issue, then hell yes, the US should be paying for CCS, even if that means that the Saudi royal family can afford a few more solid-gold-airplanes. If the issue isn't that important, than why bother at all?
Why? We can switch to EV (this cuts emissions by 6 https://ec.europa.eu/clima/sites/clima/files/transport/vehic...) and to renewables (another factor for EV, but also households and the whole industrial sector). We can also significantly reduce meat consumption (the easiest and least expensive change).
Personally, I've halves my emissions in 2 years (no flights, no car, vegetarianism, etc) so I don't understand the fatalism. Sure some may reject changes but it's much easier to do than many expect. If one can/will change, others can/will to.
This "just use EVs" alone is not viable for anything but the industrialised countries, and even there most are struggling with the cost and public support. Here in Germany, nobody wants any more windmills or power lines, yet we are only at less than one quarter of what we need overall. Meanwhile electricity is already extremely expensive over here.
Reducing meat consumption is only easy if you don't like meat or like to castigate yourself. I personally would rather see Miami sink into the ocean than not eat as much meat anymore. And I know a majority of the population thinks this way.
Now take the above and tell that to the inhabitants of an up-and-coming nation like China, Brazil, Nigeria or South Africa. They'll just laugh at you I guess. They want their piece of the cake, too.
> Which would include abandoning several international treaties
There is an international treaty to reduce emissions: https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/...
The US is one of the main obstacles to it and indeed abandoned it recently: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54797743
> If climate change is a sufficiently important issue, then hell yes, the US should be paying for CCS, even if that means that the Saudi royal family can afford a few more solid-gold-airplanes. If the issue isn't that important, than why bother at all?
This sounds like a false dichotomy?
Also, the paris agreement doesn't really limit emissions beyond the industrialized countries. Most of the world isn't limited at all, or just very very generously.
And yes, the US is an obstacle. But that doesn't mean that the rest of the world will feel obliged to fulfil the paris agreement, prior agreements on this topic have never really been obeyed. I guess the US just has a culture of not entering agreements they don't intend to obey, whereas others sign and then wait&see.
And about the false dichotomy: yes, maybe. But since climate change advocacy is getting increasingly shrill (justifiably or not), e.g. by changing global warming to global heating, climate change to climate catastrophe, declaring it a danger to human survival, either the problem is overstated or a really big one. Leading to the aforementioned dichotomy.
On the other hand, I guess we would all be well-served by more objectivity and less hype.
A carbon price, with border adjustments for im- and exports would be an effective way to let the invisible hand convince every nation to become net neutral.
I feel like that goes against human nature though. Instant gratification > all.
You also need to account for grid scale energy storage to deploy renewables at any meaningful capacity. Unfortunately we still don’t have a cost-effective solution that works at grid scale. Batteries don’t last long enough.
However, I am also taking into account about 200€/ton CO2.
You also have to consider round trip efficiency. Anything less than 75% is probably a non-starter. Lithium Ion approaches 93% but still has a very high cost of ownership.
Clean coal has always been a sham, so I don't have faith in their schemes for scrubbing carbon. These companies have shown no real appetite for actually fixing the problems they created, and a near infinite appetite for juking the stats.
As an example, they always block any semi-reasonable economic systems for carbon taxation and pricing externalities which would be extremely effective at fixing the problem from a consumer demand perspective and pricing in mitigations for petroleum use.
Their sequestration seems largely about pumping CO2 into the ground. I'm not a geologist, and I can't speak to how effective that is at keeping gas from leaking back to the surface, but stories about fracking ruining the water in large areas due to _gasses_ coming up from the ground don't give me faith. Maybe the strategy is to shove enough CO2 around mineral strata like olivine that eventually absorb it but the entire process sounds like it is rife for abuse: oil company SAYS it shoved it down there, SAYS it will stay there, just to get whatever capture credit. Do they actually care if their carbon gets in the air? Historically the answer is absolutely not.
And the article is right, bad science reporting in the press will misrepresent the problems and solutions, like they have for, oh, since the press has ever existed for science in general and 70 years specifically for oil/gas/global warming/the environment.
Nations DON'T have to be poorer. Alternative energy is cheaper than coal, and last I checked was on even par with natural gas turbine, and soon new alternative energy will be cheaper than already-installed gas plants, an important milestone that means the electric companies will actively try to shutter since replacing them saves them money.
The BEV will drop under ICE drivetrain cost very very soon. It probably has already, but the design cycle of cars using those technologies is probably on a 2-5 year delay from showing up in the marketplace.
So the third world's transportation and energy infrastructure will be largely decarbonized. I think that's about 50-60% of emissions in the emissions pile.
Your argument seems to boil down to "make solving the problem by means other than carbon capture seem impossible or repressive". I disagree.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum#Composition
Its already 83% carbon by weight, and already in the ground, and already liquid.
Its impossible to do any better than that! CO2 is only 27% carbon by weight.