Comment by casey2

The only thing "wrong" with it is that both parties are being intentionally vauge and operating at a "higher level" than the actual problem they are dealing with.

You can immediately rule out "carbon-sucking machines or whatever" because it will take at least as much energy to capture and sequester the carbon as you got from burning it and spent extracting it. Which directly brings us to the actual solution of getting energy from a renewable resource that is cheaper.

Over time all tech will cause issues but if it's well designed the issues won't be exorbitantly expensive to fix compared to the benefits. innovation will always be a cure-all, cause otherwise the problem is already solved, showing or educating people about which solutions are already optimal energy-wise will do more than enough to set their expectations straight, or at least convince them that they don't want to carry around tnt in their pocket.

Making Mars habitable will be a thousand year project which implies that the earth is not uninhabitable. Nobody except a conman will tell you that we have to "escape" earth to go live on mars.