New documents show how a deceptive PR strategy pioneered in 1950s California first exposed the risk of climate change and then helped the industry deny it.
New documents show how a deceptive PR strategy pioneered in 1950s California first exposed the risk of climate change and then helped the industry deny it.
The main problem with carbon removal is that it’s expensive, and removing it doesn’t produce a product you can sell. So in practice, doing something like what you describe within a generation requires a system of taxation which absorbs 40% or so of total economic output, and uses it to sequester carbon. That seems, to put it mildly, politically very difficult.
You’re correct on the marketability. You either sell it to be released later defeating the purpose, or by hopefully sequestering it to help with extraction of fossil fuel, which again…maybe not worth it. To actually remove massive amounts of CO2 and permanently take it out of the cycle is akin to burying money.
I see the main problem not as the cost, but the scalability. Our best efforts so far don’t even amount to a fraction of a percent. There have been recent developments that could help some, so that would be a percentage of our annual emissions. A long way to go when the preferable solution is to remove emission amounts not only being emitted, but past years’ amounts too.