I don't think you understand the problem.

Almost every climate scientist will tell you that we'll need negative emission technologies in addition to reducing emissions. They're not a replacement.

(Which is actually the main problem with all these technologies... even reporting about them makes people think they can skip the hard part...)

> every climate scientist will tell you that we'll need negative emission technologies

> even reporting about them makes people think they can skip the hard part

It also gives many hope. There's a lot of doom and gloom about global warming and climate change. We hear a lot about how we are past the point of no return. But in reality reducing emissions and employing sequestration technologies would make that untrue. It would mean we CAN get back to where we need to be.

I don't buy this whole argument about sequestration just encourages use of dirty energy. Consumers have very little choice and when they do being green has been in vogue for quite some time. I don't think sequestration is going to undo that thinking and popularity. Especially if we keep talking about the importance of both.

Reducing emissions and employing sequestration technologies wouldn't solve it unless both were at a sufficient level, and that sufficient level is the hard part. It sounds almost impossible to me.

Almost impossible. But not impossible. This is the realm where science and innovation thrives. Yes, there's lots of failure, but that's part of it. It won't be easy, but it'll definitely be worth it.

Honest question, as I'm not well read on the subject, but why?

If, say, enough of these were deployed to have a total negative balance, is that not enough?

Energy consumption is increasing, year on year. A warming climate will add more consumption, and sequestration technologies will require significant additional energy - to run, and to manufacture.

Ignoring the sheer massive scale of kit that would need to be produced, installed and run to achieve a total negative balance by sequestration, how many years or decades would that take ramping up?

Besides, if people believe there's a magic techie "fix" being rolled out, good reason to carry on chasing their developing country to USA levels of energy use, unsustainably. Forget EVs, insulation etc. Take every cheapest option - just as we always did. With that model you might never finish ramping up. To empty the pool, first turn the taps off.

We need carbon neutral industry and generation. We need negative to bring CO2 ppm back to pre-industrial levels, or even 1950 levels, to stop the year on year of oppressive summers and wildfires, and leave a little ice at the poles.

Actively sucking carbon out of the air is always going to be more expensive than not emitting it in the first place due to several factors, one of them having to build dedicated infrastructure for it on top of the energy production infrastructure you have to build whether it's fossil or renewable.

So if you have a limited pot of money to do something about climate change then exclusively relying on sequestration gives you less overall reduction.

That's not strictly true: Airplanes, for instance, 'have' to emit CO2 via combustion of fossil fuels: any attempt to eliminate CO2 at the source is going to be impossible to expensive. The atmosphere has the wonderful property of being self mixing, so Texas wind and solar driven capture can offset PA natural gas[1] if that is how the economics shake out.

A critique about the article: Their 'moral hazard' is a joke. CO2 is fungible. Emitting 10 tonnes and sequestering 10 tons is the same as emitting none. If the former improves people's lives (airplanes, cars, power, etc.) the decision is a no-brainer.

[1] hypothetically beneficial due to variability in sun/wind in addition to geographic limitations. Power has to always be on, CO2 sequestration doesn't have to be.

> Airplanes, for instance, 'have' to emit CO2 via combustion of fossil fuels:

Batteries may be out due to weight. Hydrogen on the other hand has a higher specific energy than gasoline

> Emitting 10 tonnes and sequestering 10 tons is the same as emitting none.

Emitting 10 tonnes of CO2 and not sequestering will improve people's lives today even more since they don't have to pay the cost immediately. The moral hazard is being lazy because theoretically someone in the future might pull off heroic efforts to save the planet.

> Emitting 10 tonnes of CO2 and not sequestering will improve people's lives today even more since they don't have to pay the cost immediately. The moral hazard is being lazy because theoretically someone in the future might pull off heroic efforts to save the planet.

Exactly. To restate, not emitting CO2 will make people's lives worse[1] but most of the environmental proposals I see don't seem to realize the sheer unreasonableness of their propositions which generally boil down to 'you' need to suffer (in concrete ways, e.g. a gas tax, not farming a rain forest, etc.) for the (vague) benefit of other people.

[1] Given the current state of technology.

re. putting the cart in front of the horse, I agree, but if air-CO2 sequestration does hit 150$/tonne as (optimistically) projected that works out to be a few bucks per gallon of gas: The economist in me says the optimal solution is to tack that on to every gallon sold (and ear mark it).

> generally boil down to 'you' need to suffer (in concrete ways, e.g. a gas tax, not farming a rain forest, etc.) for the (vague) benefit of other people.

That reads fairly one-sided. Let's flip it and say you have to cut back on some luxuries today so our descendants don't die by the millions at the end of the century.

It is one sided: its the view of the Brazilian logger who wants to cut down his rain forest. It takes a more credible argument than vague promises of '[his] decedents won't die by the millions' a century from now to dissuade him when his relatives live in favelas today[1].

[1] Which is exactly the sort of activity we 'first-worlders' have been benefiting from.

It is already doubtful that enough of this can be built to meet the needs of optimistic emission reduction scenarios. Thinking you could "do business as usual" and compensate that with carbon removal tech is about as plausible as colonizing mars as an alternative to earth.

There's been a recent study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10842-5

Like, even matching what the optimistic climate models require (that all depend on rapid emission reductions) requires "more than half of today's energy production".

It's like having a broken tap that's gushing water onto the floor.

And the best solution people are willing to come up with is putting a million tiny containers in place to catch all the water before we get flooded.

The problem with this method is immediately apparent: we're going to run out of space and also there's no way to be sure we're catching it in all the right places.

Simply fixing the tap so it doesn't spill water anymore is a much better solution.

Nope. Not enough.

We don’t just need to get to negative flux, we’ve already put too much CO2 in the atmosphere. We need to actively reduce it - fast. And then once we get back to a baseline, then keep it there.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.technologyreview.com/p/pub/le...

>Seems to me that tech is going to be much better at solving this problem than the government.

Whatever "the solution" in the end may be, we can all play our part. Individual, company or government.

Personally, I feel it's both wrong and harmful to play up feelings of "government should leave things to tech". That was never at play, in terms of working out a solution.

>Maybe after all that time we can start looking to other means to help address the issue rather keeping trying to alter it with legislation

The issue isn't being altered. Are you perhaps trying to say you think it's bad that the governments regulate what companies can do on their territory?

It makes perfect sense to fine companies that come onto the territory you own and are responsible for, when those companies pollute said territory.

Fining indeed doesn't solve the problem directly. It does offer a chance for reflection and study on the side of the companies.

The problem isn't that the government is trying to protect its territory and its people. The problem is that companies continue harming the environment despite the knowledge that this eventually kills people, animal and plant life.

What you're saying sounds a lot like the rethoric of "Don't fine us because we're not going to listen anyway". Which is downright evil.

>Of course even if the entire USA went carbon nuetral tomorrow it wouldn't do much because the biggest contributer to CO2 emissions right now is China at almost 2x what the US producing.

Respectfully, that is complete and utter bullshit. The impact would be gigantic.

It's not because there's still more to fix, that this means one action won't fix anything. That's absurd.

Also, the idea of "going carbon neutral tomorrow" is a strawman. A total exaggeration meant to portray the plans of one side as impossible. While those are not actually the plans to begin with.

Your entire post feels like anti-government propaganda.

I apologise if it came off that way I wasn't trying to government bash or anything like that. But we've spent the last 20 years or so trying to use a legaslative solution to produce results but that is seeming to be in large part ineffective as the issue is appearing to be exactrebated rather than shrinking.

But we need action now in order to help ameloriate the effects. If the political route has failed to produce results then it seems to me that we need to try a different avenue than what has not been working. In this case leaving it to invention and innovation to help address the problem.

It might not solve the problem on its own, but it won't be hurting it either and maybe it will lead to breakthroughs that do solve the problem.

I meant my last paragraph not as a critique of current carbon reduction efforts but rather to show that all the United States legaslative power in the world isn't going to solve the CO2 problem by itself as China is producing twice as much and increasing emissions whereas the US is shrinking emissions. After all this isn't a US only issue this is a world wide issue and although we should do all that lies within our power we should also be cognizant of the fact the US isn't the only nation on Earth and other countries should also be considered in this global climate change issue.

That's because international law is largely a fiction. Sovereign nations can't be made to do anything except if threatened with economic sanctions or a war.

As you point out yourself, emissions by the United States are declining (and, broadly, the trend continued under Trump, indicating this is an economically viable, rather than regulatory, decline), but when you let the largest emitter by far to continue spewing more than 2x the US CO2 into the atmosphere, there's very little we can do about CO2 for the planet as a whole. In fact their 2018 grew at the fastest rate in the preceding six years.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/05/brutal-n...

> Seems to me that tech is going to be much better at solving this problem than the government.

And who do you think is paying for the research (it isn't just Gates) and going to pay for them to be built? There is no incentive for a private company to build them unless there are carbon taxes that outweigh the cost of these. Do you think people will just build them out of the goodness of their hearts (I'll give you that some definitely will be, but not enough).

> but hey maybe the government will suddenly magically get its act together and things will work out.

And that's why we need to keep pushing. Because this tech won't be developed by itself. It won't be built by itself. There's many ways that can be done, but I honestly don't see one without government involvement (and it doesn't have to just be the US. Other countries who have their act together can build these and do global good).

I'm not sure I follow. Sequestering carbon doesn't make money in itself. Someone else has to pay them. And since it helps everybody and nobody in particular, people have to be convinced (or forced) to pay even though it doesn't personally benefit them.

If we can't even trust the government to tax high-emission industry, who's going to fund CO2 sequestration? Social media?

It can come from defence and foreign aid budgets since these interests are directly aligned.

> Seems to me that tech is going to be much better at solving this problem than the government. After all relying on the government to force the changes necessary hasn't panned out for the past 20 years.

Governments are the most powerful entities on this planet. 22 million people have government jobs in the US, which is 7% of the population. The money spent by the US government in 2019 (including states and local governments) amounts to 7.6 trillion USD [1]. This is 38% of the GDP [2]. If you just focus on the impact that all of the government's office buildings, cars, airplanes, etc. have, you get a huge opportunity for improvements. And of course the government doesn't just don't have influence on its direct business, it can also pass laws to incentivize or even force everyone in the country to become more energy saving. This is nothing that any other company can do.

I understand your frustration that there is little success in getting US congress in particular to pass effective laws that fight climate change, but one shouldn't underestimate the power that the US government holds. Tech is having a hard time when the government is funding oil companies.

[1]: https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/total [2]: GDP is about 20 billion. I'm not an economist, not sure how comparable the two numbers are.

There is unwillingness to accept sacrifice, and that limits what government will do. I think that we should have spent more time pursuading people of the moral importance of defeating climate change. Dry arguments about science are not effective enough.

Of course government intervention is absolutely necessary. Without guaranteed payments it would have been impossible for large scale renewables to start up. The government created the market. And that volume of construction has reduced costs.

Also, China has built more solar and wind power than anyone. And they have an active nuclear program. And their per-capita CO2 emissions are about half that of the USA.