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Nice PR for Elon, throwing money at an already-solved problem. Many plants consume CO2. It seems planting (and NOT 'harvesting) them is too common-sensical, no

Nice PR for Elon, throwing money at an already-solved problem. Many plants consume CO2. It seems planting (and NOT 'harvesting) them is too common-sensical, not high-tech enough, or fast enough to sustain all of our bad habits. I've not seen any global assessments of this question (might be a better thing to throw money at). Instead of incineration of plant 'waste' (exactly the wrong thing) (e.g. India's yearly pollution problem) we can bury much more of it (leaves, branches, crop residue, paper, cardboard) in the ground. And leave it there. Perhaps with enhanced biomes that consume and 'lock-up' CO2. (Low-tech again. Putting incinerators out-of- business as a by-product.) We can require all fossil-fuel producers to invest a large share of their profits (otherwise wasted on shareholders - they have no plans) on mitigation. That would incent them to find optimal solutions. With severe penalties including jailtime for an added incentive (far more effective than carbon taxes).

chillacy 6y ago
The details of the competition aren't available yet (what's the scoring criteria?) but one would presume that planting trees is a viable candidate.
mlindner 6y ago
It's impossible to plant enough trees to consume all the CO2 we've dug out of the ground and still have human civilization not starve. That would require going back to forestation levels even greater than that of a pre-industrial era. More so trees aren't a permanent carbon sink. They get knocked over, get burned in forest fires, and their leaf litter decomposes, all releasing the CO2 back into the atmosphere.