Politicians and the wealthy often tell us not to worry about global warming because we’ll be able to develop carbon capture technology to remove planet warming gases from the atmosphere.
This claim means that the wealthy don’t need to use their money to tackle climate change today, because someone else will have to use their money to tackle it tomorrow.
And at first glance it also offers a huge opportunity to make a lot of money. Everyone is going to need to capture carbon to reduce the effects of global warming. It clearly presents a hugely profitable opportunity and the wealthy love hugely profitable opportunities.
But who would be stupid enough to spend money creating carbon capture technology at scale, though?
It will clearly cost a fortune to create the technology and it will probably cost a fortune to run it too. The wealthy today don’t want to spend their money preventing climate change, because they don’t think it will affect them. And it’s unlikely the wealthy tomorrow will be keen to pay for carbon capture either. There doesn’t seem to be any demand.
But even if there was demand, who would be stupid enough to create carbon capture technology at scale? Normally new technologies are protected by patents, ensuring their developers can make huge profits if there’s a market for their creation.
But at some point in the next 50 to 100 years, we’re going to find ourselves in a climate emergency and carbon capture at scale will be essential to saving the planet. Why pay for the technology? Every single government will insist that it’s immoral for the patent owner to profit from their technology when the world will die without it.
The developers aren’t going to earn any royalty from their work. They’ll probably be lucky even to recover the money they spent on developing the technology. In fact, they should just be grateful if the media don’t call for their trial for crimes against humanity for trying to profit from the climate change catastrophe.
The idea that carbon capture will save us is just a fairy-tale to save the wealthy from spending their money and save us from worrying about destroying the futures of our children and their children.
No-one with enough money to develop carbon capture technology at scale is going to develop carbon capture technology at scale, because they know there’s no opportunity to profit, just an opportunity to lose.
If carbon capture is such a profitable opportunity, why’s Elon trying to fly rockets to another planet, instead of saving this one?
What you just read? ☝ Shouldn't more people read it?
Share it now, before you forget
