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Taking CO2 out of the air would be an absurdly expensive way to fight climate change
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this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2024
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the problem isn't that it's expensive it's that it requires us to deal with more volume than every other industry combined through history to even start to think about making a difference.
and you'll notice it talks about the US hitting it's climate goals ... rich nations will need to do a lot of heavy lifting for the rest of the world for it to be worthwhile not just hit their own targets then say "Well, Somalia isn't pulling it's weight so we're all just going to die I guess but at least we did our small part"
This is also related to the ultimate bullshit about any kind of carbon credits.
The only way it makes sense to sell a carbon credit, at least in a world paradigm (such as it is under Paris) where all nations need to get to zero, is to price those credits backwards from the last ton of CO2 you are going to remove. Because all the tons need to be removed. In the most honest, true, legitimate scenario, selling a credit is taking a loan out against yourself which will HAVE to be paid back eventually.
So the cost of a carbon credit, assuming it actually represents the thing it claims to represent (hint: they don't), should be as expensive as it is per ton of DAC, since DAC is certainly the most expensive way to mitigate emissions.
That means they should be going at something like $500/ton or more in developed nations. Plus the interest on the loan.
In poorer nations, it's possible that those last tons will be cheaper to remove by nature of their lower costs. Maybe that DAC facility built in Indonesia will have lower operational costs than the one you build in Norway. But in that case, selling the credits from Indonesia to Norway makes even LESS sense because now Indonesia is effectively going to have to pay for that last ton to be removed from Norway... where it's WAY more expensive.
If we are to actually believe that carbon credits are what they purport to be, they are usury. They are colonialism. I guess we should be glad they're just regular scams and not that, eh?