Committed?
We will have extra energy for carbon capture on the next decade. This is a problem we can solve. Not before it gets worse, but we can stop it from being permanent.
That is, direct air carbon capture means investing an amount on the order of the value of the existing fossile fuel infrastructure to spend energy to achieve nothing of value (except offsetting the damage we caused by not switching to renewables earlier).
It's a complete nonstarter. Only a vehicle used by the fossile industry to delay the transition.
But I guess, no, that's impossible!
"According to the IPCC’s Working Group III report, carbon capture is one of the least-effective, most-expensive climate change mitigation options on Earth."
"Even today, some projects already operating around the world have not been as successful as planned. In Australia, the CCS project run by Chevron has not yet made its Gorgon project meet its target of 80% carbon dioxide capture.
A recent report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) on two Norwegian projects that store carbon dioxide under the seabed called into question the long-term viability of CCS."
"There are currently 42 operational commercial CCS and CCUS projects across the world with the capacity to store 49 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, according to the Global CCS Institute, which tracks the industry. That is about 0.13% of the world’s roughly 37 billion metric tons of annual energy and industry-related carbon dioxide emissions."
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/03/20/opinion/carbon-c...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/01/is-carbo...
Regarding energy transitions and carbon capture:
> Energy transition aspirations are similar. The goal is powering modernity, not addressing the sixth mass extinction. Sure, it could mitigate the CO2 threat (to modernity), but why does the fox care when its decline ultimately traces primarily to things like deforestation, habitat fragmentation, agricultural runoff, pollution, pesticides, mining, manufacturing, or in short: modernity. Pursuit of a giant energy infrastructure replacement requires tremendous material extraction—directly driving many of these ills—only to then provide the energetic means to keep doing all these same things that abundant evidence warns is a prescription for termination of the community of life.
I personally care more about avoiding millions dying of starvation but you do you. I understand that said millions being mostly in Nigeria and India make some in the west care less about them that cute animals, but still.
One day, maybe not so long in future as many may think, our descendants will judge us as primitive barbaric savages. And they will be mostly right.