If we could suck 101% of the carbon we produce in a day out of the air, how would the effect global efforts to go carbon neutral?
Obviously, this will probably never happen. In the best future for humanity, maybe we can drop our emissions enough to allow for such a thing. But more likely societal collapse
If we went carbon neutral today, things would continue to worsen for an estimated 50-70 years before correcting. Only going significantly carbon negative solutions will have the rapid, desired effect, and that's nigh impossible.
One of the Civilization 6 expansions introduces climate changes. You can unlock a technology for carbon recapture, however, generally by the time you are able to unlock it, climate change is already occurring. You're also not able to reverse damage that has already been done.
While it can be frustrating in game, I appreciate the fact that the developers realistically incorporated it not being feasible.
It'll be something like the tragedy of the Commons. People in jurisdictions that don't enforce carbon neutral activities would just ramp their activities up with more abandoned, relying on the scrubbers to save them. And they're definitely going to be able to outpace the scrubbers.
In our current economic modeling, a carbon generating activity is a profit center, a carbon sinking activity would be a cost center. So every business would be incentivized to generate carbon and not sinking any of it. And it'd be difficult for governments to pay for sinking it. Especially when carbon can be produced outside their own jurisdiction.
The bigger question is this: How much energy would be required to collect and sequester 101% of daily carbon emissions?
I think it absolutely should be done, but getting there will be a huge undertaking and we will need creative solutions to get there without contributing to the problem.
If this does happen, and there are strong carbon controls globally, we could potentially reverse global warming very very slowly. But it would trend to the better. I'm hopeful
Uhh... Broski when it's pumped into the ground it's not just pouring gas into dirt, they are running it through Balsaltic rocks and forming stable minerals in the bedrock.