March 18, 2020 | by Dru Jay | Geoengineering Monitor  | Source | 

“As the climate crisis deepens, governments and corporations are putting more and more stock in carbon capture technologies, which aim to remove carbon dioxide from smokestacks and even directly from the air. New rhetoric about “restoring the climate” is being used to promote these technologies.

Less well known is that global fossil fuel conglomerates have been promoting this technology and are planning to use it to profit from the crisis they created.

The environmental, economic and social implications of scaling up carbon capture technology to the point where it would impact global CO2 levels carry significant costs and will result in significant impacts.

Is CCS being embraced because it’s a workable solution, or because it justifies continued fossil fuel extraction?

Here are seven reasons to think twice about carbon capture as a response to the climate crisis.

1. Carbon capture buys time for fossil fuel companies to continue extracting

The “carbon bubble” refers to the fossil fuel assets that can’t be extracted for the planet to stay under 1.5˚ of warming, but which remain on the fossil fuel industry’s balance sheets. The total liability of the carbon bubble is estimated to be as high as $100 trillion.

As a result, there is a tremendous incentive to promote various forms of geoengineering, including various forms of Carbon Capture. The fossil fuel “super majors” don’t necessarily need carbon capture technology to work. They just need it to appear to work, both in order to buy more time to continue extracting and to provide governments and regulatory bodies with an excuse to avoid a pitched battle with big oil – something most people would prefer to avoid.”

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