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> Critics of carbon removal have long feared that it will offer polluters an easy way out, by giving them an excuse to continue their emissions. A great illust

> Critics of carbon removal have long feared that it will offer polluters an easy way out, by giving them an excuse to continue their emissions. A great illustration of the moral valence of the issue. If the problem were considered as an engineering problem, then of course it wouldn't be a problem that firms can continue to use carbon-rich manufacturing processes as long as the carbon is removed from the atmosphere shortly after it is produced. But it's not treated as an engineering problem by activists, it's more akin to sin. There's no offsetting your blasphemy by doing good works. The act itself is unacceptable no matter the circumstance.

CPLX 2y ago
Whenever you see a public policy issue that seems to be based on totally ignoring logic consider immediately jumping to the word “trust” and analyzing things that way. People refuse to take a medicine despite the fact that science says it’s clearly the right move? They don’t trust the scientists. Environmentalists refuse to see this as an engineering and accounting problem? They don’t trust the people who will be responsible for keeping the numbers in balance. And so on. It’s usually much less complicated when you look at things this way. And while I share the desire for the world to head in a more pragmatic direction that coldly analyzes the costs and benefits of policies, at some point we might have to confront the problem of “experts” being fundamentally full of shit across many aspects of public life.
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
I don't think it's fair to take that tone against climate activists without considering the larger context of the issues here. We have been lied to for decades by the industry and it's lobbyists. They knew damn well what greenhouse gasses were going to do to our world back in the fucking 70's, just like tobacco companies knew what their products would do to people's lungs, just like they knew what lead would do to people and still put it in gas, pipes, and fucking paint. Even now many are still clinging to the bullshit "check your energy impact" garbage, shaming individual consumers for the fact that they knowingly are setting the planet on a course to large-scale ecological disaster and have been since before most of us were born. It's also worth considering that carbon capture is not a bulletproof solution without costs. The machines themselves are quite large if you want to capture at a scale sufficient to actually offset climate change, and if people hate the look of windmills, oh just wait till they get a look at carbon capture hardware. I've also not yet seen a carbon capture application for motor vehicles, industrial or otherwise (though I would love that). And, carbon capture does not assist us at all in getting off of oil in general, which is a finite resource that we only have so much of and so we really need to figure out different things for that. Not burning oil and it's byproducts saves a hell of a lot of oil for plastics, which we also need. It is mostly an engineering problem. It's also a lying bastard corporation problem. It's also a complete failure on the part of regulatory structures to take on the problem, and political meekness from every standing government on the face of the earth. It's a problem that ties directly into many systemic failures of our society; the over-centering of profit above any and all other considerations, including our survival. It's a loaded issue.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
That's definitely an issue; they are encouraged to sequester emissions, instead of reduce / eliminate them. Same with CO2 emissions rights; for some reason every company gets these for free, AND gets to sell them to other companies if they're under. They should be buying them from the government in the first place, and the price needs to go up sharply every year. Too many of these ideas end up defeating the purpose. Another example: NL and energy companies are investing heavily in offshore wind parks. What happens? Instead of existing power plants shutting down, a newly built Microsoft or Google datacenter buys the majority of the capacity of the new wind farm for the next decade or so. Instead of replacing power production with renewables, renewables are added and consumption increases alongside. Makes sense in a capitalist system too, more supply means cost goes down means demand goes up means cost goes back up.

CPLX 2y ago

Whenever you see a public policy issue that seems to be based on totally ignoring logic consider immediately jumping to the word “trust” and analyzing things that way. People refuse to take a medicine despite the fact that science says it’s clearly the right move? They don’t trust the scientists. Environmentalists refuse to see this as an engineering and accounting problem? They don’t trust the people who will be responsible for keeping the numbers in balance. And so on. It’s usually much less complicated when you look at things this way. And while I share the desire for the world to head in a more pragmatic direction that coldly analyzes the costs and benefits of policies, at some point we might have to confront the problem of “experts” being fundamentally full of shit across many aspects of public life.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago

I don't think it's fair to take that tone against climate activists without considering the larger context of the issues here. We have been lied to for decades by the industry and it's lobbyists. They knew damn well what greenhouse gasses were going to do to our world back in the fucking 70's, just like tobacco companies knew what their products would do to people's lungs, just like they knew what lead would do to people and still put it in gas, pipes, and fucking paint. Even now many are still clinging to the bullshit "check your energy impact" garbage, shaming individual consumers for the fact that they knowingly are setting the planet on a course to large-scale ecological disaster and have been since before most of us were born. It's also worth considering that carbon capture is not a bulletproof solution without costs. The machines themselves are quite large if you want to capture at a scale sufficient to actually offset climate change, and if people hate the look of windmills, oh just wait till they get a look at carbon capture hardware. I've also not yet seen a carbon capture application for motor vehicles, industrial or otherwise (though I would love that). And, carbon capture does not assist us at all in getting off of oil in general, which is a finite resource that we only have so much of and so we really need to figure out different things for that. Not burning oil and it's byproducts saves a hell of a lot of oil for plastics, which we also need. It is mostly an engineering problem. It's also a lying bastard corporation problem. It's also a complete failure on the part of regulatory structures to take on the problem, and political meekness from every standing government on the face of the earth. It's a problem that ties directly into many systemic failures of our society; the over-centering of profit above any and all other considerations, including our survival. It's a loaded issue.

Cthulhu_ 2y ago

That's definitely an issue; they are encouraged to sequester emissions, instead of reduce / eliminate them. Same with CO2 emissions rights; for some reason every company gets these for free, AND gets to sell them to other companies if they're under. They should be buying them from the government in the first place, and the price needs to go up sharply every year. Too many of these ideas end up defeating the purpose. Another example: NL and energy companies are investing heavily in offshore wind parks. What happens? Instead of existing power plants shutting down, a newly built Microsoft or Google datacenter buys the majority of the capacity of the new wind farm for the next decade or so. Instead of replacing power production with renewables, renewables are added and consumption increases alongside. Makes sense in a capitalist system too, more supply means cost goes down means demand goes up means cost goes back up.