this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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The US just invested more than $1 billion into carbon removal / The move represents a big step in the effort to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere—and slow down climate change.::undefined

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[–] mrgoodc4t@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Everyone here is mad that we’re doing this as if this is the only thing we’re doing. This… nor any of the other things suggested here… are either/or strategies. They’re all AND strategies.

People just wanna bitch.

Celebrate everything that is done to help slow down climate change and encourage more.

[–] agressivelyPassive@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The problem is, that this technology is already being used to greenwash fossil fuels. There's a gas power plant currently running that got subsidies and good press for building a CCS facility next to the power plant. Something like 1% of the emissions were actually sequestered, but millions were wasted.

If these subsidies are actually tied to reasonable requirements, I'm all in. History shows, though, that this is usually not the case.

[–] RohanWillAnswer@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Part of the problem with new technologies is that they’re inherently less efficient than the same technologies once they’ve been further developed. And the problem with that is that it takes millions of dollars develop and deploy new technologies.

This was once the biggest argument against solar and wind. It was expensive and markedly less efficient than coal. However, solar and wind are now pretty good and continuing to get better. All because people were willing to invest the many millions of dollars to develop those technologies.

This is almost always the argument with new technologies. But to make the argument that it’s a good reason to stop investing in a wide variety of technologies that could literally help save the world is shortsighted.

[–] agressivelyPassive@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You completely missed my point.

This technology is currently used to greenwash fossil fuels. With tax payer money.

That is, you pay taxes, that are paid to big oil and gas firms to pollute the planet even further. The CCS is just window dressing. It does nothing. And that's what I'm afraid will happen again.

CCS only makes sense, if the CO2 is actually pulled out of the carbon cycle. Otherwise it's fraud.

[–] RohanWillAnswer@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, I did completely miss your point. However, I think these are two different issues. One is that oil companies are benefiting from our tax system and using carbon capture for good PR. The other is that we are trying a variety of things to help reduce the effects of climate change and one of those things is carbon capture. Oil companies using using carbon capture to gain good favor doesn’t preclude it from being a potentially helpful process.

[–] agressivelyPassive@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago

But it's not helping, that's my point!

Fossil companies emit more CO2 because of this technology. That's not helpful.

It's a regulatory problem, but let's be honest, regulations are hardly written against major companies.

[–] harry315@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They rather should've planted a bunch of trees

[–] BackupRainDancer@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Amen, only angle I can see someone disagreeing with is trees becoming a potential bank of carbon to be fed back into the atmosphere via fuel for wildfires.

I so wish there were better ways to control forest fires.

[–] harry315@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But even if they do die, if you always make sure to have enough trees alive, it'll be a net zero.

Also, I'm wondering that no company has started investigating to bury trees into abandoned coal mines yet. Like, take one, give back one for using a few hundred thousand years later.

[–] beaubbe@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How would a company make money by dumping trees in holes?

It should be a government effort to do something like this. At least planting trees, no need to cut them for decades anyway. We would need an insane amount of tress for that to work too, basically as many as we burned as oil since the industrial era...

[–] harry315@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago

There's this concept of CO2 trading in europe. Basically a very dirty compania buys certificates from cleaner ones (or CO2 negative companies, like that hypothetical tree burying company). These allow dirtycorp. to pollute the air, while giving clean Inc. the ability and the monetary resources to pull CO2 from the air.