So people should stop with individual action while lobbying politicans? On what do you base that? I agree that political solutions are important but can’t see that individual contributions won’t be a part of the solution. I also think that politicans usually want to do what is popular, e.g if people start eating less meat politicians dare to suggest meat taxes. Politics is usually slow, I firmly believe we need to work on all levels to mitigate co2. I’ve heard some criticism against co2 tax, since different areas of society works very differently. For example taxes on gas have not been very successful for decreasing the amount we drive even though taxes on gas in many countries are much higher than suggested tax levels for co2. Another big emitter of co2 is heating and cooling of real estate, but the cost of that is spread over a long time and is usually not payed by the entrepreneurs that build and sell the property and does not to a high degree affect the pricing. So in both of these cases we need other tools than taxes like subsidies for buying electric cars and building standards/regulations.

> So people should stop with individual action while lobbying politicians?

If it helps them lobby their politicians more, then sure. I mean, it doesn't, but if it did I'd take that trade any day.

> On what do you base that?

Purely on a sense of urgency. Individual action will--at best--lower greenhouse emissions by lowering demand for carbon intensive products & practices. How many business cycles does it take for these actions to take effect? We simply don't have decades. As well, a consequence of lowering demand of carbon-intensive products results in...a lowering of the price of carbon/oil. Increasing demand, until the slack is picked up elsewhere. The invisible hand is powerful.

A Co2 tax does the same thing as individual action--it lowers the demand for carbon, except it prevents the price from adjusting down. It is our only hope.

> For example taxes on gas have not been very successful for decreasing the amount we drive even though taxes on gas in many countries are much higher than suggested tax levels for co2.

By definition, then the tax is too low. Demand for gasoline is very inelastic, but it's not perfectly inelastic.

I don't think you understand the urgency. Runaway heating has started. We don't have 20 years. A draconianly high CO2 tax is our only hope.

> I don't think you understand the urgency. Runaway heating has started. We don't have 20 years. A draconianly high CO2 tax is our only hope.

If you believe that I don’t understand the urgency I was being unclear. What I’m saying is that when I’m been reading more on the subject I have started to believe less in a co2 tax. I much rather have for example draconian building standards because I believe that will give more bang for the buck than co2 taxes.

The bacteria are mentioned in Albert Bartlett's famous lecture here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY

It's clickbait titled and split into 8 parts, for who knows what reasons, but that quote is the tl;dr version of it. Exponential growth is unintuitive, and chasing endless growth is not going to work out well for us.

Even if the bacteria find another entire jar of open space - as much space as has ever been known, as much space as they have used in their entire history - a fully terraformed Mars hanging out in the back yard previously unseen - it only lasts a single doubling-time.

Found a 3 minute version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73xdpoQFLQk

Carbon sequestration seems like the (political) winner because it's much easier to convince people to spend money on something than it is to take their money for doing something (in a democratic society at least).

Edit: Of course not emitting the carbon is better and more efficient but from a practical "affecting change ASAP" perspective sequestration seems like an easier pill for society to swallow. That should go without saying but I forgot that weekends here are basically Reddit and those kinds of things cannot be considered obvious.

Please learn some basic facts.

The idea that carbon sequestation is an alternative to reducing emissions needs to die as quickly as possible. It's rooted in fantasy, not in facts.

All climate scenarios from the IPCC that don't end up in a huge catastrophy rely on rapid emission reductions. Most also rely on carbon sequestation for negative emissions in the future (which many think is too optimistic, because it needs yet to be shown that the technology can be scaled up enough). There is no scenario of averting catastrophic heating with carbon sequestation alone.

Unfortunately we need to do both. It's much "cheaper" (in money and thermodynamics) to release carbon than to capture it, so we need to stop pumping it into the atmosphere in order for it to make any sense whatsoever to spend money removing it.

> it's much easier to convince people to spend money on something than it is to take their money for doing something

If that was the case we could have a strong carbon tax, which would actually be a very good idea, probably the most economically efficient of all. But they don't. People like to keep their money even if that means much less money for them in the long run because we don't have an economy in the sense we are used to.