Currently, there is no effective way to put carbon back in the ground, and therefore no way to make the externality bear the cost. This is an excuse to justify high emission, low efficiency use cases. It’s capitalism cope meets buying a Catholic indulgence. “I am wealthy and deserve this and so I will pay a token amount that is meaningless to continue to justify this excessive, unnecessary consumption.”
If the use case does not require fossil fuels, certainly, carry on. Same if your biofuel isn’t going to cause the Amazon to be clear cut and can be economically produced at scale. But until then, have to aggressively impair the consumption of fossil fuels, because it’s only going to keep getting hotter, year after year, long after we reach net zero (which is still a decade or two away). Maybe one day we’ll have a mechanism to sequester carbon, and enough low carbon energy to suck all of the CO2 emitted since the industrial revolution started out of the atmosphere for long term, stable storage to mitigate climate change. But not today, and therefore, these are the facts that must drive policy until the facts change.
> Al Gore gave a TED talk in 2023 where he discussed the carbon capture and disposal industry and specifically mentioned Climeworks. He made fun of the company, calling the capture industry nothing more than a cover for oil and gas companies to keep their businesses afloat.
Even if you don’t like Al Gore, the math remains the math.
> there is no effective way to put carbon back in the ground, and therefore no way to make the externality bear the cost
The cost applied to externalities can be spent to amend the specific damage, which is sometimes impossible, or can be commensurate to the estimate damage in order to create different benefit.
> indulgence
I concour with the analysis, but not necessarily with the moral evaluation. I have already mentioned nearby that money is a token to be spent on freedom in a framework of choice in allocation: Economics, science of Optimization, is the science of the management of Scarcity to some authors - and that scarcity is structural, existential (as evident in the case of Time). The purpose of resources is to invest them according to preference - some choices more loaded, but the computation compares the values of said "load" with the "preference" and the "resource (money etc.)".
The actual rebuttal: if you had to go "black vs white" in preferences, vs the continuous framework I proposed, than heating for example would be a problem - an externality bearing investment that we could not compensate with a reversal of the damage. But should we do without heating? You yourself defend touristic travel. Where can we put a threshold? At that point, it is best to quantify damages and charge the externalities.
Electricity->Batteries, renewables, geothermal, hydro, transmission, cross country interconnectors
HVAC->Heat pumps, low carbon district heating, insulation, sand heat batteries
Mobility->Electric vehicles, bikes, scooters, light rail, heavy duty electric vehicles
Marine traffic->Low carbon produced methanol or ammonia
For air travel that must remain and cannot be replaced with an electrified or low carbon alternative (until low carbon solutions exist), the component that must remain be made as efficient as possible. Regardless of wealth, you fly commercial, just like everyone takes the subway, regardless of wealth or status, in cities with high quality mass transit. Your need is met, just within our collective societal tolerance for the harm incurred for the travel desired (Point A->B).
We may disagree, and that’s fine. I believe the climate data is clear as an input to this decisioning. Whether you’re wealthy should not be a factor in outsized carbon emissions (private jet travel, specifically) simply because the socioeconomic system is defective on this. I assume the appetite for this goes up as climate change consequences become more dire, compelling more appetite for extreme actions to course correct.
Just because there are currently (economically motivated) shams doesn't mean the concept is impossible or the tech not understood. As I see it the primary issue is cost. There's the price tag put forward by the PR shams and then there's the real price tag which at present remains entirely unpalatable.
There's nothing except the political preventing the governments of the world imposing the unpalatable price on the market and policing the capture operations for net effectiveness.
Currently, there is no effective way to put carbon back in the ground, and therefore no way to make the externality bear the cost. This is an excuse to justify high emission, low efficiency use cases. It’s capitalism cope meets buying a Catholic indulgence. “I am wealthy and deserve this and so I will pay a token amount that is meaningless to continue to justify this excessive, unnecessary consumption.”
If the use case does not require fossil fuels, certainly, carry on. Same if your biofuel isn’t going to cause the Amazon to be clear cut and can be economically produced at scale. But until then, have to aggressively impair the consumption of fossil fuels, because it’s only going to keep getting hotter, year after year, long after we reach net zero (which is still a decade or two away). Maybe one day we’ll have a mechanism to sequester carbon, and enough low carbon energy to suck all of the CO2 emitted since the industrial revolution started out of the atmosphere for long term, stable storage to mitigate climate change. But not today, and therefore, these are the facts that must drive policy until the facts change.
Climeworks' capture fails to cover its own emissions - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44017317 - May 2025
> Al Gore gave a TED talk in 2023 where he discussed the carbon capture and disposal industry and specifically mentioned Climeworks. He made fun of the company, calling the capture industry nothing more than a cover for oil and gas companies to keep their businesses afloat.
Even if you don’t like Al Gore, the math remains the math.
> there is no effective way to put carbon back in the ground, and therefore no way to make the externality bear the cost
The cost applied to externalities can be spent to amend the specific damage, which is sometimes impossible, or can be commensurate to the estimate damage in order to create different benefit.
> indulgence
I concour with the analysis, but not necessarily with the moral evaluation. I have already mentioned nearby that money is a token to be spent on freedom in a framework of choice in allocation: Economics, science of Optimization, is the science of the management of Scarcity to some authors - and that scarcity is structural, existential (as evident in the case of Time). The purpose of resources is to invest them according to preference - some choices more loaded, but the computation compares the values of said "load" with the "preference" and the "resource (money etc.)".
The actual rebuttal: if you had to go "black vs white" in preferences, vs the continuous framework I proposed, than heating for example would be a problem - an externality bearing investment that we could not compensate with a reversal of the damage. But should we do without heating? You yourself defend touristic travel. Where can we put a threshold? At that point, it is best to quantify damages and charge the externalities.
Mental model:
Electricity->Batteries, renewables, geothermal, hydro, transmission, cross country interconnectors
HVAC->Heat pumps, low carbon district heating, insulation, sand heat batteries
Mobility->Electric vehicles, bikes, scooters, light rail, heavy duty electric vehicles
Marine traffic->Low carbon produced methanol or ammonia
For air travel that must remain and cannot be replaced with an electrified or low carbon alternative (until low carbon solutions exist), the component that must remain be made as efficient as possible. Regardless of wealth, you fly commercial, just like everyone takes the subway, regardless of wealth or status, in cities with high quality mass transit. Your need is met, just within our collective societal tolerance for the harm incurred for the travel desired (Point A->B).
We may disagree, and that’s fine. I believe the climate data is clear as an input to this decisioning. Whether you’re wealthy should not be a factor in outsized carbon emissions (private jet travel, specifically) simply because the socioeconomic system is defective on this. I assume the appetite for this goes up as climate change consequences become more dire, compelling more appetite for extreme actions to course correct.
Just because there are currently (economically motivated) shams doesn't mean the concept is impossible or the tech not understood. As I see it the primary issue is cost. There's the price tag put forward by the PR shams and then there's the real price tag which at present remains entirely unpalatable.
There's nothing except the political preventing the governments of the world imposing the unpalatable price on the market and policing the capture operations for net effectiveness.