“Fossil fuel interests see a clear benefit in promoting direct air capture as a means to preserve the dominance of dirty fossil fuels,” said one advocate.

“Direct air capture is expensive, unproven, and will ultimately make almost no difference in reducing climate pollution… Capturing just a quarter of our annual carbon emissions would require all of the power currently generated in the country.”

  • Rentlar@beehaw.org
    15·
    2 years ago

    If the viability of a project is predicated on another breakthrough or scale up, that shouldn’t discourage doing research on it.

    Research costs time, money and effort. If not carbon capture, any spare USD floating around is going to end up into the military industrial complex, banks, oil and pharma anyway.

    • jimmydoreisalefty@lemmus.orgOP
      11·
      2 years ago

      The unproven technology has been a key focus of oil and gas lobbyists, who argue that fossil fuel companies can continue their planet-heating extraction activities if plants are built to remove the pollution they cause.

      • raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org
        8·
        2 years ago

        And that’s really all one needs to know; people who have made themselves rich as god don’t want to lose out on squeezing that last drop of profit out of fossil fuels.

    • perviouslyiner@lemm.eeEnglish
      5·
      2 years ago

      Ok, so the fossil fuel extraction licenses are conditional on privately financed carbon capture systems operating which exceed the emissions from using whatever is extracted?

      Not so fun when the mythical technology actually has to work, is it?