Current international proposals to mitigate climate change now need to include BeCCS and carbon capture in general to pretend 2C or less is still achievable, but don't let that convince you it's a realistic proposal in any way. BeCCS at scale is largely non demonstrated, and most likely a pipe dream; a cop out to keep going and avoid doing what we actually should be doing: stopping emissions immediately, negative growth and consuming less, not differently.
Here is a short piece, for example, that explains why the largest carbon capture facility in the world does in fact shit-all for the climate: it does sequester CO2 but the only way it managed to do that efficiently enough is not by pulling it off of the air, of course, but instead off of natural gas being extracted to, you guess it, be burned as a fossil fuel. More generally, actually deploying true BeCCS plants at scale seems impossible - the scale of the infrastructure required boggles the mind, not to mention the energy required (which is itself currently mostly not clean and climate-damaging). And this all supposes tens of thousands of those plants would actually be built, without a profit motive, in a capitalist framework.
Finally, as I said in another comment, even assuming BeCCS could be deployed and that it would work (which again, is extremely unlikely), that does fuck-all for the ongoing biosphere destruction (species are disappearing right now much faster than during the worse mass extinction the Earth has ever seen, and mostly thus far not because of climate change) - making the idea that we'd only be in for 150 "shitty years" sadly optimistic.
When I'm able to push through the seething hatred and abject hopelessness, I can recognize a certain morbid curiosity is there for me too. But then the existential dread usually kills it.
I don't think 2c is achievable. We're gonna need everything to stop 4c.
As for the rest I agree. We're fucked. But there's "geologically scale ruined the biosphere but still somewhat functioning as a civ" fucked and "unlivable planet, no seasons, no crops, weather shuts down trade by making ports unviable, everyone dies" fucked
4C is probably "humans still alive as a species but in incredibly reduced numbers and no functioning large scale modern civilization". At 4C there's not a lot of food that can be produced; heat actually becomes lethal for days at a time in large areas of the world; extreme weather events have become the norm.
Carbon capture could stop the worst of this if we go zero in the next decade. We'd still be in for a shitty 150 years or so.
Current international proposals to mitigate climate change now need to include BeCCS and carbon capture in general to pretend 2C or less is still achievable, but don't let that convince you it's a realistic proposal in any way. BeCCS at scale is largely non demonstrated, and most likely a pipe dream; a cop out to keep going and avoid doing what we actually should be doing: stopping emissions immediately, negative growth and consuming less, not differently.
Here is a short piece, for example, that explains why the largest carbon capture facility in the world does in fact shit-all for the climate: it does sequester CO2 but the only way it managed to do that efficiently enough is not by pulling it off of the air, of course, but instead off of natural gas being extracted to, you guess it, be burned as a fossil fuel. More generally, actually deploying true BeCCS plants at scale seems impossible - the scale of the infrastructure required boggles the mind, not to mention the energy required (which is itself currently mostly not clean and climate-damaging). And this all supposes tens of thousands of those plants would actually be built, without a profit motive, in a capitalist framework.
Finally, as I said in another comment, even assuming BeCCS could be deployed and that it would work (which again, is extremely unlikely), that does fuck-all for the ongoing biosphere destruction (species are disappearing right now much faster than during the worse mass extinction the Earth has ever seen, and mostly thus far not because of climate change) - making the idea that we'd only be in for 150 "shitty years" sadly optimistic.
Can’t wait to see how much more fucked things will get in my lifetime 🙃
When I'm able to push through the seething hatred and abject hopelessness, I can recognize a certain morbid curiosity is there for me too. But then the existential dread usually kills it.
I don't think 2c is achievable. We're gonna need everything to stop 4c.
As for the rest I agree. We're fucked. But there's "geologically scale ruined the biosphere but still somewhat functioning as a civ" fucked and "unlivable planet, no seasons, no crops, weather shuts down trade by making ports unviable, everyone dies" fucked
4C is probably "humans still alive as a species but in incredibly reduced numbers and no functioning large scale modern civilization". At 4C there's not a lot of food that can be produced; heat actually becomes lethal for days at a time in large areas of the world; extreme weather events have become the norm.