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Why carbon capture needs a reality check
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this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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"net zero" refers to continuing to emit greenhouse gases and fixing the problem some other way. Carbon capture, carbon credits, whatever.
Zero means actually stopping the emissions in the first place.
Except that net zero is mostly being used as an excuse to keep going with your business, emitting away while paying lip service to the idea of reducing emissions in ways that may or may not actually offset the continued emissions.
The first thing we need to do is make carbon credits illegal all around the world.
If they're actually sequestering the carbon fully, like injecting it back underground, then it's equivalent to not emitting in the first place. I think the issue is that the offsetting methods companies are using are not actually sequestering carbon. Like promising to not cut down trees or burying logs insufficiency underground.
The problem is: nobody is doing that and nobody even has a realistic plan to do that.
Ok, but achieving net zero is not an excuse to not go sub zero if possible.
If we let corporatations continue emitting when they could not be, because an equivalent amount of greenhouse gases got sequestered somehwere, then we're stopping at "not making it worse" when we could be going for "great improvement".
A large part of the marketing around "carbon neutrality" is about placating consumer guilt so people will keep buying things they want but don't actually need.
The messaging around this stuff can and will be twisted into something that attempts to maintain the status quo, emitting at full steam, rather than investing in real improvement.
Such as, you know, producing and consuming less in general.
Oh I get what you're getting at now. Yeah if sequestering is limited, you should be using as little as you can. But for applications like rockets, it's much more effective to sequestere CO2 than to try to make something like an electric water rocket.
Totally. But it can and probably will be used as an excuse for why it's ok to pollute land an air with open goldmines so some company can make gold turd sculptures for rich people to place in their homes as a "conversation piece".
When in reality we should be discussing whether some non-essential industries should get to emit anything at all.
That's what the greenwashing mentioned by the person you replied to means. It's the practice of marketing away the downsides of a product that really shouldn't be possible to rub off. Some things are just inherently wasteful and "offsetting" the waste just means something unavoidable is offset a little less.