How on earth could you possibly make an economic argument on the future viability of our species on this planet?

It's because of economics we're in this mess in the first place.

Huh? Even with extremely important life-saving goals, you still want to use a cost-effective method to get there.

Also if it was actually expensive enough, we'd simply be doomed. Economics can't be ignored. They're a proxy for how much we can accomplish.

I agree in principle, but my question to you, is how do we make something economic i.e. CO2 pollution, which in principle provides no value?

The same goes for fossil fuel consumption. There's nothing economic about not using fossil fuels.

Understandably it's a compromise, but the first reaction shouldn't be "it costs too much, so don't do it". This attitude is the reason why nothing ends up getting done. I would much rather an uneconomic solution, than no solution at all, which seemingly is the status quo.

Taxes are one straightforward way. But no matter how you're paying for it, if you have method A and method B, and they'd both do the job, you don't pick the one that costs 5x as much because you think economic arguments are a bad thing.

That's an extremely sad point of view. Of course humans can accomplish things that are not economically viable.

Perhaps it's become harder in our current society, but many great projects of man were economic folly.

To give one admittedly a little cliche example, landing on the moon never made any economic sense.

That's not what I'm talking about. Pretend getting to the moon would have cost a quadrillion dollars. We wouldn't have been able to do it.

> Pretend getting to the moon would have cost a quadrillion dollars. We wouldn't have been able to do it.

This is a statement of reality, not economic system. A society that decided to divert resources, today, to building a Dyson sphere on Alpha Centauri would fail, irrespective of economic system, because the goal demands more resources than it can sustainably divert.

> This is a statement of reality, not economic system.

Yes, that's my point. The worry about "economically feasible" in the ancestor comment is a question of what plans are realistic with unlimited motivation. It's not about economic systems holding us back.

That's silly. That's like condemning logic or mathematics.

If you want future viability, you can ask if there is a cheap way or an expensive way to get what you want. That's economics. It says nothing about what your goal is.

You're forgetting a key factor though: politics.

What you're arguing is a rational idea of economics that doesn't exist. Instead, we have this bastard version influenced by politics, which in practice, cares nothing of the key objectives which concern future viability.

Instead, we get this thing that demands infinite growth and consumption. That's modern economics and it's destroying us.

> we get this thing that demands infinite growth and consumption. That's modern economics

This is a stylised misinterpretation of economics.

so you are just saying that you dont like a particular brand of politics.

This is a first of its kind, I'm sure over time they'll become more efficient.

But yes, probably not using carbon would be better, so maybe if we have proper capabilities and laws in place, companies might be forced to remove all the carbon they release - that will either make them pay for such service or push towards reducing carbon as much as possible

The last one, not burning it in the first place, is the thermodynamically-easiest thing to do.

However, there's already a lot of CO2 in the air, and we'll be wise to pull that out, too, so the impacts of warming are blunted.

Part of the way people will begin to vote for carbon-usage restrictions is when they begin to discover exactly how expensive it will be to remove from the air. The big catalyst, of course, is when they begin to personally feel acute effects of climate-change.

This [1] was my catalytic moment. Everyone's will be different, but we're each going to have one or more experiences that change our view on fossil fuels.

[1]: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cw09t0gPAwm/

Well, I think they'll move the whole thing to a nearby coal or gas power station and fit over the chimney stack. After all, that's where the CO2 is concentrated. It wouldn't make sense suck CO2 out of the atomosphere as a trace molecule at 430 PPM - that would be stupid. Hopefully they plan to miniaturize the technology and fit it over transportation exhausts and wherever else we're dumping out CO2 in high concentrations.

> simply not use the carbon in the first place

No one is disputing this is obviously the best move. But telling humans not to consume stuff has a rather long and unsuccessful history. Let's not try to keep doing that.

turning trees into paper is too slow. anything you can do with trees is too slow, actually.

if carbon capture is undertaken seriously enough to just break even at current burn, the storage alone will be the largest industrial project in human history.

if we somehow stop burning carbon tomorrow we will still see catastrophic change as the carbon we've already emitted takes effect.

the beginning of any solution is to stop, but nobody can afford to stop.

Wouldn't it be simpler to plant trees instead of using energy to capture carbon? To absorb 1000 tons of CO2 a year, you'd need roughly 200 acres of land, which seems more feasible.