chapotraphouse

The Energy Department projects that together the two plants will create 4,800 jobs and remove more than two million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year, the equivalent of taking half a million gasoline-powered cars off the road.

Are gasoline powered commuter vehicles really at the center of the climate problem? I was under the impression that most emissions came from the commercial and military sectors.

Hot take: Scrubbing carbon out of the air is good, and we should absolutely be learning how to practically deploy that technology. It may not pan out, but we’d be fools not to pursue it. You can do lots with carbon dioxide if you have enough clean energy, including synthesize non-fossil carbon fuels. When draft animals and water mills powered the most advanced human industries, the technological implications of fossil fuel combustion were unthinkably distant. It is not impossible that we stand in a similar position in relation to the implications of fusion power. Techno-optimism can be used as a conservative political force, but the optimism itself is not always unwarranted. If people are able to develop useful and helpful technologies under capitalism within the imperial core, the technologies themselves can be useful despite the social relations driving their development.