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this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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I was reading about how carbon capture from the air is going to be a trillion dollar industry. Just SMH. It’s so much easier to not emit than it is to recapture. But since we’ll never get China and India off of coal, I guess we have to do something.
This is a bad and uninformed take.
Source
And that's without even going back to look at imperialism and its impacts on those countries, and why they're now having to play catch up with the west (who not only did our fair share of polluting during our own industrial revolutions, but still continue to do so pretty much freely), mostly to provide for the west.
This, like the overpopulation myth, are nothing more than racist distractions created by the rich and powerful to get us to blame "others" rather than look for who is really at fault - them (Edit to clarify: and by them I mean all obscenely rich and the governments they control, faux communists included).
Whenever someone says "we'll never get China off coal" I just pretend I read "we'll never get the west off oil". Saves me a lot of irritation.
I might try that, since trying to engage with those replies only leads to even greater frustration..
You may be surprised to learn that I totally agree with you. In my extremely brief statement I did not treat the nuances of this issue. I think the developing world has every moral right to pursue the same industrialization path as western nations have. I believe our world economy is driving their coal usage. I believe they are still relatively small as a contributor on a per capita basis.
However I also believe that they have less ability to transition to renewables and I expect them to pursue their right to lift their populations out of poverty. And so: we’re never going to get them off coal. With their huge populations, they will inevitably be top contributors as this process progresses. Therefore, we need to focus on mitigations as well as renewables, since this massive set of emissions appears to be non negotiable, and in fact we’d be hypocrites to try, as you point out. I would consider active mitigations the moral obligation of the developed world, and in fact that’s where air capture efforts are mainly occurring.
This isn’t racism, and playing that card in the face of these simple facts is a great way to get nowhere with the issue.
We're never going to "get them" off coal because we keep weaselling out of providing them with the support to do so after centuries of exploiting their people and resources for profits the size of which we can't even comprehend, not because of the size of their population, and not because they're top contributors, because as stated, neither of those are even true.
What we need to focus on is the fact that this is a global problem and that shirking and shifting responsibility to others only gains those making the profit more time to make more profit. We all breath the same goddamned air, and pretending like there are "us" and "them" in this mess is ridiculous beyond words.
As for that last part - no one is "playing a card" (seriously??), and while your intent might not be racist, the trope you are using, and its impact, are. You not being aware of this fact (or comfortable with it now that you are) doesn't change it.
Okay I can tell you’re red hot to defend your narrative. Sorry for making it harder for you.
Lmfao, sure, if that makes you feel better about your shitty take...
Developing nations have an easier path to renewables. There is less resistance in building new infrastructure than in modifying existing infrastructure. You don’t have to deal with hundred year old equipment when you start with modern equipment.
The developed world owes its advanced state to the use of resources from the undeveloped world and damage to the shared environment.
The developed world should supply non fossil fuel power sources to the undeveloped world, as an investment in a cleaner future and a reparation payment.
Renewables might be able to handle the lesser load initially for developing areas, while small scale thorium or fusion reactors could be future high power options.
It's difficult to get China and India off coal because they're doing most of the world's manufacturing and some processes are currently impossible without it. But 'we' exported manufacturing to Asia and 'we' buy the products the coal is used for. 'We' don't get to wriggle out of responsibility by pretending that a couple of low and middle income countries are somehow responsible for 'our' excessive consumption.
Yeah, we can 100% blame 'outsourcing to China' for that fuckup. Actually, we can kinda blame greedy shareholders.
What fuck up? If we were doing our own manufacturing, we'd be using the coal instead. We just wouldn't be able to blame other countries for our consumption.
They're also far more "off coal" already than most of the west, and their renewable generation is growing far faster than the coal.
I’ll let your comment stand. I agree with what you said. What I said also happens to be true. I didn’t cast any shade on them.
Yeah both is true and can co-exist
China's usage of coal is huge, but it's proportiojn has dropped from 75+% in 1990 to around 55%. It's slow progress - it may accelerate. The problem is the rest of the world exports so much of its manufacturing requirements to China.
China is actively encouraging that aka temu
Western countries are just as guilty, if not more. We contributed terribly for several hundred years, and still today net carbon use is still increasing in developed countries. It's just not increasing quite as much as before.
I totally agree. I made a very short and unqualified comment about the developing world’s inevitable contribution to climate change and I’ve been getting hung out to dry all day as an uneducated racist imperialist who doesn’t understand how much the west has contributed. I definitely DO. And there’s no changing the developed world’s past but I think we have the wealth and technology to transition to renewable energy and really lower emissions. I don’t think that developing nations have that ability necessarily and that’s all I meant to say. I think that no matter what the developing world does there is a huge load of carbon coming from developing nations, who have every right to industrialize and lift their people out of poverty. There’s no blame in that. It’s just a fact. So here in the west we might want to think about active capture in addition to reduction because we’ll likely need both. If western nations did all the harm up until now then it seems fair for us to shoulder the burden of active capture. My very brief comment didn’t properly address all these nuances, and I’ve been getting all kinds of hate for blaming climate change on developing countries, which I did not say and do not think. I guess it’s good to see people vigorously setting the record straight.
I saw your earlier comment, I knew what you meant.
Yeah historically the United States has admitted the most carbon of any country to date. Other countries are having their industrial revolutions and we are hypocrites for criticizing them.
Not emitting is not that easy. We are in a transition period at the moment. Electric vehicles are here but we don't have all the infrastructure needed to support them. Let alone the fact that battery tech is not developing as fast as we need it to.
Right now liquid fuels still have the advantage of greater energy density. If we could move to hydrogen fuels that would be cool, and we could repurpose existing petroleum facilities.
But who knows which way the tech is going to go. The only sure thing is that we are in for a wild ride one way or the other.
Other problems with your post aside, you think it's good enough to emit less but not worth it to actively invest in getting the excess carbons out? The problems they are solving overlap, but they are not the same set of problems.
The energy required to take carbon out of the atmosphere is at best, double what it took to put it in the atmosphere in the first place. There's seriously strong economic reasons that this is a bad idea.
And it's perfectly normal for technology to advance and become more effective and efficient over time.
There are hard limits on recapture efficiency. The only way to make it remove more than it creates is to use energy like geothermal. Even then, the production of a carbon capture facility generates enough emissions that it would take years of constantly running, and you’d only ever reach it if you’re using 100% clean energy to power it.
Grind up basalt slightly more than we normally do. Spread it out.
It's exothermic.
Rate limited, but more than enough to undo the damage if we stop digging up 95% of fossil fuels.
We're at the point where we can't prevent the consequences of climate change. We can only prevent it from getting worse and mitigating the effects. Even if we stopped all CO2 emissions this second, we'd still be suffering for years.
It's worthwhile for us to look at technologies which can reverse our existing impact to some degree. Finding a way to safely and intelligently remove carbon from the atmosphere may be more expensive, but it has the possibility of fixing our climate much sooner than otherwise, and that's worth it.
It's important though that we don't use it as an excuse to stay the same. The cost of doing this "cleaning" needs to be factored into fossil fuel price so transitioning away from it accelerates. Creating some additional cushion while we continue to do that would be very beneficial.
I've already accepted we're fucked. There's some really good ideas out there, and we know exactly where the majority of the carbon is coming from (I posted a graph in here, the biggest contributor is industry) but legislation isn't being put in place to target the biggest emitters. Instead, we're supposed to buy our way out of it by buying electric cars and building more things ie making more industry, when we should be doing the opposite.
You should check out some of Nick Johnson's videos. There are so many empty, decaying houses in the US. And yet, more houses are being built. It's astonishing.
Emitting less is possible NOW. Removing carbon already in the air isn't even possible yet. ClimateTown showed this in a recent vid. All efforts should be towards what's possible and effective now rather than towards what's really expensive, not very effective and may may be possible in the future.
What you said is the equivalence of putting all the eggs in one basket, which is a pretty silly use of the human resources available.
The vast majority of pollution is from agriculture. Are you gonna quit eating meat anytime soon?
I call BS
I did, and so should everyone else that claims to want to do something about the climate catastrophe.
Artificially grown meat is quickly becoming more and more viable, it's not like it will be impossible forever to have a steak.
I also stopped eating meat and also for climate first, but I wouldn't say a person is hypocritical not to either. The problem is not with individual consumers, our impacts are pretty much nonexistent on a problem of this scope. The problem is on our failures of regulators, and of grassroots organizations to enact change. If we want to have impact individually it's not by eating beans, it's by [redacted]. Or at least by organizing disruptive protest.
And you just won't be able to convince enough people to stop eating meat to stop animals from being reared and slaughtered. Humans have been eating meat since before we were homo sapiens. Expecting the masses to adopt a radically different diet is foolish.
You don't have to, although I commend your efforts.
I can't wait for that day!
Not quit, but I do reduce.
Heres the reference about carbon capture, with all the graphs you need to support this fact, for arguing with people later.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-10842-5
Chatterjee, S., & Huang, K. W. (2020). Unrealistic energy and materials requirement for direct air capture in deep mitigation pathways. Nature communications, 11(1), 3287.