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Maybe we could use atmospheric carbon for currency, turning an expensive process into a lucrative process.

by Maursault 4y ago

gruez 4y ago
So basically cap and trade and/or carbon taxes?
- imtringued 4y ago
  Cap and trade is an example where speculation and hoarding would be good for humanity, instead housing gets more expensive and CO2 certificates get allocated to coal plants for free completely undermining the purpose of the program.
dredmorbius 4y ago
That's a premise of Kim Stanley Robinson's book Ministry for the Future. Financially the process might create real returns. Thermodynamically, however, it's still a losing game. It's costing you more in energy to remove the carbon than you gain energetically by creating it in the first place.
- Maursault 4y ago
  > It's costing you more in energy to remove the carbon than you gain energetically by creating it in the first place. Isn't this also true of mining gold and everything else? Doesn't it cost you more in energy to work for a living than it does to not work and live in poverty? Atmospheric carbon is not gold, of course, but neither is intrinsically valuable. But assuming we could somehow identify the source of the carbon and foil carbon counterfeiters that try to pass coal off as atmospheric carbon, if all currency-issuing authorities and all world governments arbitrarily name atmospheric carbon valuable and exchangeable with currency such that the value of the currency trade is more than it costs to extract the carbon, even with thin margins, if the margins are arbitrarily made to exist, that's the ballgame: we have a rush on atmospheric carbon, and everyone and their brother is trying to get rich quick extracting carbon from the atmosphere. Though it would be simpler all around to tax the living hell out of carbon producers... tax them into extinction. The market and society will adjust to not having concrete, glass, shipping, ice vehicles, etc. But this can't happen in the US until we rescue our country being held hostage by the conservative minority.

Maybe we could use atmospheric carbon for currency, turning an expensive process into a lucrative process.

gruez 4y ago

So basically cap and trade and/or carbon taxes?

imtringued 4y ago
Cap and trade is an example where speculation and hoarding would be good for humanity, instead housing gets more expensive and CO2 certificates get allocated to coal plants for free completely undermining the purpose of the program.

dredmorbius 4y ago

That's a premise of Kim Stanley Robinson's book Ministry for the Future. Financially the process might create real returns. Thermodynamically, however, it's still a losing game. It's costing you more in energy to remove the carbon than you gain energetically by creating it in the first place.

Maursault 4y ago
> It's costing you more in energy to remove the carbon than you gain energetically by creating it in the first place. Isn't this also true of mining gold and everything else? Doesn't it cost you more in energy to work for a living than it does to not work and live in poverty? Atmospheric carbon is not gold, of course, but neither is intrinsically valuable. But assuming we could somehow identify the source of the carbon and foil carbon counterfeiters that try to pass coal off as atmospheric carbon, if all currency-issuing authorities and all world governments arbitrarily name atmospheric carbon valuable and exchangeable with currency such that the value of the currency trade is more than it costs to extract the carbon, even with thin margins, if the margins are arbitrarily made to exist, that's the ballgame: we have a rush on atmospheric carbon, and everyone and their brother is trying to get rich quick extracting carbon from the atmosphere. Though it would be simpler all around to tax the living hell out of carbon producers... tax them into extinction. The market and society will adjust to not having concrete, glass, shipping, ice vehicles, etc. But this can't happen in the US until we rescue our country being held hostage by the conservative minority.