“Direct air capture is expensive, unproven, and will ultimately make almost no difference in reducing climate pollution… Capturing just a quarter of our annual carbon emissions would require all of the power currently generated in the country.”
“Direct air capture is expensive, unproven, and will ultimately make almost no difference in reducing climate pollution… Capturing just a quarter of our annual carbon emissions would require all of the power currently generated in the country.”
I can’t say I’m a fan of the current generation of this technology, and I’m not really excited about the idea that we can just use it as an excuse to not change our behaviors.
However: This kind of investment is how we get better versions of the technology, or learn that it truly is a dead-end.
Maybe this won’t result in like, amazing faux-trees capturing and sequestering carbon into bricks we turn into buildings or something, but maybe it will result in technology we can miniaturize or repurpose to slap on the ends of tailpipes and the tops of smokestacks. Maybe it’ll end up being a stepping stone to something greater.
We’re at the point now where we can’t afford to let the perfect be the enemy of good. We need to try everything, even if it’s not perfect right now.
My sentiments exactly. Plus, carbon capture as a concept (in this form or others) is a desireable and perhaps even necessary avenue of exploration considering where the climate currently is.
We’re already at the point of no return - each year tens of millions more acres are burning than is normal. Arctic ice is melting. Both of these are self-feeding cycles. Even if humanity were to vanish and/or our carbon emissions dropped to 0, we’re already at the point of these kinds of extremes. If we want any chance of returning to a climate humans have been largely familiar with over the course of written history, we have to start eliminating the carbon already in the atmosphere, whether by technology or by biological systems that WON’T burn down in the next drought. The Atlantic oceanic current system is estimated to collapse within a couple of decades, which will have massive ramifications for the ocean ecosystems as well as climate for the northern hemishpere, so it’d be just peachy if we could figure this all out before then.