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Trying to reverse climate change won’t save us, scientists warn (www.theverge.com)

submitted 4 weeks ago by floofloof@lemmy.ca to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] bstix@feddit.dk 21 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

This is clearly a "why not both" situation.

Emissions must be cut and new technologies for reversing existing damage must be developed. There's a whole bunch of different things that needs doing, because there is simply no single solution, but using one approach to argue against another is certainly not helping anyone.

[–] alphabethunter@lemmy.world 9 points 3 weeks ago

There's a point made at the end of the article that most people seems to have missed entirely:

Existing facilities that can filter carbon dioxide out of the air only have the capacity to capture 0.01 million metric tons of CO2 globally today, costing companies like Microsoft as much as $600 per ton of CO2. That’s very little capacity with a very high price tag.

“We cannot squander carbon dioxide removal on offsetting emissions we have the ability to avoid,” study coauthor Gaurav Ganti, a research analyst at Climate Analytics, said in a press release. The priority needs to be preventing pollution now instead of cleaning it up later.

It's obviously a matter of "why not both?", and both the article and the scientists behind the report agree on it. However, a lot of people are betting their eggs on the idea that climate reversal technology will suddenly become a lot more effective and cheaper than it is right now. And sure, that may be the case, or not. For how many years have we heard of flying cars or self-driving autonomous vehicles and predicted that they were just around the corner, at most a few years away, but nada so far? Betting on the invention of a new technology that'll make a very expensive process today way cheaper is a VERY naive and bad approach.

[–] astropenguin5@lemmy.world 5 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah, though I think currently only emissions cutting should be implemented, mostly because damage reversing tech like DAC take green energy that could otherwise be used to more effectively cut emissions elsewhere. Once we start getting excess green energy to do such things, then it should be implemented. It should still be researched and developed now tho

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Exactly, which is why I don't get the point of this article.

Yeah, even after we get emissions under control there will still be problems, and we'll tackle those when we get there.

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I think the point is that some capitalists, both in business and in politics, encourage us to put our faith in future carbon capture so they can keep profiting off their polluting activities for now without having to invest in carbon emissions reduction. This is unrealistic and just an excuse not to tackle the difficult task of reducing emissions. We can't afford to let the problem become that much worse before we attempt to mitigate it by sucking carbon out of the atmosphere, if there's ever a technology that can do that effectively (which right now doesn't look likely). We need to focus most of our efforts on reducing emissions.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 weeks ago

some capitalists, both in business and in politics, encourage us to put our faith in future carbon capture

Sure, and others go completely against that and call it for what it is, because they have different profit motives (e.g. green energy companies). Legislators will do something in the middle, because they have other motives (i.e. campaign donations and appealing to constituents to retain their seat). That's why it's important to be an informed voter and voice your concerns, so legislators can decide which side to listen to.

Carbon capture should absolutely be something we do, but it shouldn't justify expanding fossil fuel energy production, but instead help clean up what we have as we reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, which can extend the investments we've already made (for legislators, this means fewer people losing their jobs). Any solution we come up with will be a balance between immediate economic impact and longer-term economic and ecological impact.

In many cases, we prefer to pick the option that's more expensive, but isn't needed right now, and that's for two main reasons:

we'll probably come up with new approaches in the future
minimal rocking of the boat - big changes cause people to lose their jobs, which can change voting patterns

In any case, once we reduce emissions to something sustainable, the problem largely simplifies to spending money, and it's a lot easier for legislators to spend money that make significant changes to our everyday lives. So as long as we can delay the worst of the impacts as people gradually adjust to more sustainable living, we can probably spend our way out of the ecological debt we've built up.

I don't like it, but that's the way things tend to work.