A fossil fuels company has deep incentive to minimize the harm of fossil fuels. A solar company has incentives to make fossil fuels as bad as they can.
Even if you generally perceive fossil fuels guys as bad guys.
Regardless. Any company has incentives to do this if someone (government) will pay for it. It doesn’t really harm any profits.
No they've decided to go the route of tobacco companies, deny everything and party while the sun is shining. By the time the lawyers show up they're counting on being dead or too old to stand trial.
You... you're aware that the actual, historically realized, attitude of fossil fuel companies has been to deny any harm exists, right? Deny it to the tune of 200 million dollars as recently of 2019, and for good reason! That spending bought them lots of political inaction since the science was settled in like 1990, you know: the days where keeping staying below 1.0 degrees warming was a realistic goal.
CO2 conversion tech is a path to selling more fossil fuels.
Because it sounds to me, speaking of "punchy but not particularly realistic" that you have some idea in your head of how our politics and economics work, that is contrary to even a cursory examination of material reality, and is laughably naive. And I earnestly want to hear it, because I could use a laugh today.
Could you please not.
You are presenting a false dichotomy. It’s not “bribe vs. use this tech”. It’s also not really about bribing at all. Fossil fuels are important. That sucks, but we do need them in the short term.
If this tech works, and the government is willing to pay for it to some extent, it’s probably a lot cheaper to build caseload gas plants and peak daytime load renewables than it is to try and build excessive green power and batteries to tide the night over.
Or just, you know, worst case run this profitable service independently of externalities
They have a deep incentive to capture the regulatory framework that might hold them accountable for that harm, which they have accomplished.
Look how well that's worked out for the financial sector. Nothing but good faith actors there. Immaculate.
I’m saying that fossil fuels companies are incentivized to sell useful co2 converters because this enables them to sell more fossil fuels.