Twenty years ago, on this day, June 25, 2003, the great and the good talk climate…
2003. Platts – US, EU, 12 countries agree to develop carbon capture technologies.[CSLF deal signed]
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 378.4ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Bush administration had pulled out of Kyoto and had turned to technology in inverted commas as a way of pretending that it gave a s*** about emissions reductions. The Europeans as usual had to pretend that the Americans were not pretending and hope for the best.
What I think we can learn from this
These technology fantasies, these fantasies of techno salvation ISM are socially necessary under the current system and frankly under any imaginable system humankind can only be there a very little reality.
What happened next
the talk of imminent rollout of CCS has continued unabated ever since very few CCS plants have been built and the scale of the problem is beyond enormous you simply couldn’t build CCS that fast
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs..