I didn’t read the article but I did scan it and I saw this…
Oil and gas companies lobbied for the direct air capture money to be included in the law, arguing that the world could continue to burn fossil fuels if it had a way to clean up their planet-warming pollution.
I agree with you, I’m not claiming we can just keep going with our fossil fuels as long as we build some carbon capture machines – seems like everyone leftish on social media can hold exactly two postitions in their heads, “you either agree with me as I’m 100% correct or you’re wrong/totally misinformed and obviously think all solutions require more capitalism” .
Think about some hard drug user that’s fucked up their body over the decades and is in very bad health. Now of course, stopping hard drug use is THE solution to their problem. But does that mean stopping drugs is the only thing that can help them live a long healthy life (which is the reason for quitting right?)? No, they can eat some real food to help their body heal, start reading some books to learn, etc.
This is the same with our climate. I’m not saying we don’t need to get off fossil fuels ASAP, I’m saying ignoring or denigrating other things is as good idea as telling someone trying to recover from hard drug addiction that healthy food and exercise are pointless. It’s clear that abusing hard drugs and eating healthy is not enough.
Even if we stopped using fossil fuels today. No more driving at all. All agriculture uses non-fossil fertilizers, etc. climate change is still happening and on track to cause massive amounts of harm. We need to try to reverse some of the damage we’ve already started.
And radiant sky cooling is not a rich person’s technology (kinda replying to another commenter here, but still, look it up, I bet you don’t know what I’m talking about). I’m making panels with chalk as the key ingredient. This technology has great promise and could save lives ultimately, why is bad, it’s not being proposed as an alternative to eliminating fossil fuels.
Move away from false dichotomies and look for holistic practical solutions
where in my reply did you get this from?
it’s got more in common with “you will die in a year if you don’t immediately stop the drug use”. eating healthier won’t stop your imminent death. we’re talking about an extinction level event for most of the biosphere on a timescale of mere decades and the damage will be incredibly hard to undo because of positive feedback loops that will outpace our own emissions in a few short years. life will continue but it will look substantially different. our present society is doomed if we don’t stop emitting CO2 - there’s no long healthy life until we get to net-zero emissions.
as to radiant sky cooling, how much of the earth’s surface would we need to cover in order to lower the Earth’s temperature by, let’s say 1 degree? I think the piece that’s missing here is the runaway greenhouse effect from methane/other greenhouse gasses getting released out of the permafrost - we’re potentially staring down 6+ degrees of warming once we get up over 2 degrees. and we’re likely to be at 1.5 before 2032. generating electricity this way is very cool and it will help but I’m worried about the scale of the problem.
to be clear, I’m not saying we shouldn’t work on technologies that might mitigate some of the damage. I’m saying presenting these as a solution to climate change oversells their actual capabilities and the scale at which we can feasibly implement them. all it would take to switch to solar today is sufficient money. but that’s a project that would require most of the large economies on the planet to change their productive capacity over to solar panels, batteries, transmission lines, etc., but that’s exactly what’s not happening because of powerful lobbying interests and a belief that the private sector must fix the problem. I’d bucket radiant sky cooling in the same category - very cool if it works and the governments of the world fund massive development projects, but unlikely to actually be implemented.
there’s a kind of soft climate denialism where people admit human-caused climate change is happening but act like bandaids will solve the issue, failing to grapple with the scope of the problem and the need for immediate, decisive action.
as for capitalism, I think one way or another, climate change spells the end for capitalism. the only question is how many of us die with it.
Then why are we arguing?
I made a comment saying people are presenting these solutions as if they’ll solve climate change and you made an analogy about drug use?
You know what analogy means?
yes, and I pointed out why it doesn’t work already