Seventeen years ago, on this day, October 12th, 2009,
Oct 12th 2009 Stephen Chu, US Secretary of Energy writes in an open letter “I believe we must make it our goal to advance carbon capture and storage technology to the point where widespread, affordable deployment can begin in 8 to 10 years.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 387ppm. 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 was that Obama had appointed some smart, high-profile people into his administrations, including Stephen Chu
And of course, if you want things to happen, you have to tell compelling stories, but sometimes stories are just stories.
Thespecificcontext was just before Copenhagen, which is supposed to be the last chance to save the earth (until the next last chance to save the earth. Reader, we never save the earth) comes this announcement full of optimism and brim and technosalvationism.
What I think we can learn from this is that smart people say stupid things, or things that turn out later to have been very stupid. I suppose maybe there’s a universe in which CCS was indeed rolled out – widespread affordable deployment – but we are not living in that universe.
What happened next. CCS hype cycle came to a shuddering halt, but has been re-hyped, re-inflated.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
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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.
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