Three years ago, on this day, June 23rd,
The Prime Minister of France presented on June 23, during a meeting of the National Industry Council (CNI) at Le Bourget, the country’s strategy for Carbon Capture, Storage and Use (CCUS), opening a consultation with manufacturers until September 29, 2023 to gather feedback.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 421ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context for this was that there have been dreams of CCS as a saviour technology since the 1970s when Cesar Marchetti did some spitballing at a seminar organised by IIASA. And since then, CCS has come in peaks and waves troughs. We are in the middle of or near the end of another CCS wave. The resistance to it will grow. The sums of money are unbelievably large and the benefits unbelievably small. There was a time when this could have been a useful adjunct, but we may as well spend the money on well, I don’t know what to spend the money on, frankly.
The specific context was that Macron and the others need to continue to pretend that there are solutions to these problems.
What I think we can learn is this: that even when you’re fucked, you still have to keep pretending, or maybe especially when you’re fucked,
What happened next: I haven’t looked but doubtless huge sums of EU money are being thrown at CCS.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
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.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Also on this day:
June 23, 1969 – Cuyahoga river catches fire. Again –
June 23, 1980 – G7 in Venice aims to sink Venice…
June 23, 1988 – it’s time to stop waffling and say the greenhouse effect is here
June 23, 1989 – Richo gonna save the world…
June 23, 1991 – Japanese propose pledge and review