I wholeheartedly agree! I think this is a stumbling block that all too many folks encounter and then give up on seeing the idea as a solution to climate change altogether, but there's a rather clever fellow named Klaus Lackner who frames the solution in precisely these terms. Air Capture is a waste removal problem with financially viable solutions today... It's really just about getting the right diffusion of cost.

I found out about him and his uplifting work through an appearance on the podcast Manifold [1]. But you can also learn about his research directly through ASU [2, 3].

Personally, it made me feel like the problem was far more tractable than I previously intuited.

[1] https://manifoldlearning.com/episode-040/ [2] https://asunow.asu.edu/20190429-solutions-lackner-carbon-cap... [3] https://cnce.engineering.asu.edu/