Removing CO2 from the atmosphere is a speculative technology at the moment.
Like, yes, we “can” do it, if you ignore all the materials and energy needed to perform that process. And that’s just in theory, in practice its bound to be far more difficult.
No matter how you put it, it’s easier to just… Not release the pollution in the first place. If it’s too difficult to stop polluting, it will certainly be too difficult to remove that pollution that has been already released. Entropy and all that.
Removing CO2 from the atmosphere is something we should only really start thinking about when the world already runs nearly entirely cleanly.
An Apollo scale program to extract carbon emissions from the atmosphere could be financed by the OECD countries without heavily impacting their economies.
Building a thousand nuclear plants with reduced safety requirements in a remote place would not run into NIMBY problems.
Stopping emissions globally would require Chinese political will, since they emit more than all of the OECD combined.
If you want China to emit even less, support protectionist policies in Western countries and/or tariff reductions for products that may prove they’ve been produced with renewables.
Removing CO2 from the atmosphere is a speculative technology at the moment.
Like, yes, we “can” do it, if you ignore all the materials and energy needed to perform that process. And that’s just in theory, in practice its bound to be far more difficult.
No matter how you put it, it’s easier to just… Not release the pollution in the first place. If it’s too difficult to stop polluting, it will certainly be too difficult to remove that pollution that has been already released. Entropy and all that.
Removing CO2 from the atmosphere is something we should only really start thinking about when the world already runs nearly entirely cleanly.
You ignore political realities.
An Apollo scale program to extract carbon emissions from the atmosphere could be financed by the OECD countries without heavily impacting their economies.
Building a thousand nuclear plants with reduced safety requirements in a remote place would not run into NIMBY problems.
Stopping emissions globally would require Chinese political will, since they emit more than all of the OECD combined.
China has stalled their CO2 emissions since roughly 2012; they mostly pollute so much because there’s immense demand of manufactured goods in richer countries; they’ve been putting far more effort into transitioning to renewables than some Western countries; and they’re still below emissions per capita than Canada, the US, Russia, South Korea, Netherlands, Poland, Iran, Israel, Germany and Japan.
If you want China to emit even less, support protectionist policies in Western countries and/or tariff reductions for products that may prove they’ve been produced with renewables.
That graph badly needs updating. They stalled between 2012 and 2016, but skyrocketed from 10 gigatons 2016 to 11 in 2021.
So no, your premise is wrong.
https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china
Isn’t it possible to reduce CO2 on the long run by planned forestry management, if we reduce our own emissions enough?