Comment by getnormality

> Otherwise it doesn't make sense to put CO2 into the air with one hand and take it out with another.

I agree that it doesn't make sense, but I also want to challenge the engineering assumption that an extremely relatively inefficient solution should be ruled out.

If direct air capture worked and simply required absurd amounts of carbon-free power, say from nuclear, it would mean that we no longer have to fight political battles against the entrenched incumbents. They could simply emit whatever our elected politicians let them get away with, and DAC would soak it up.

I completely acknowledge that it seems somehow egregious to do it this way. I am an efficiency-minded person and would hope that we could do it the efficient way. But given all the ugly constraints and lack of progress so far, should we really expect this to be solved the way an efficency-minded engineer might prefer?

If we get to that level of desperation though, I would hope that we could simply pay the emitters to install carbon capture.

What I don't think will work is a politics of rage, righteous or otherwise. I don't recall any incidents in history where a politics of rage led to cool-headed, efficient technocratic solutions. The perennial problem is that the same politics of rage is equally accessible to your opponents, and it spirals down from there towards disorder and violence.