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In a U.S. First, a Commercial Plant Starts Pulling Carbon From the Air (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

I keep hoping some smart environmentalist/entrepreneurs figure out more markets for sequestered carbon. For example how we can use more wood in construction. I just can't see the right kind of social change happening before it's too late so hopefully there's a way to capitalism our way out of this.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago*

    I essentially just said the same thing in another reply before I read this one.

    I don’t think growing more trees for sequestering is, alone, going to work, due to the sheer scale. Growing trees itself is great. We should totally do that. But for the purpose of sequestering carbon long-term, it’s not that great.

    Best we could hope for is a method to discover some new building material that we could manufacture directly from captured atmospheric carbon. Then there is a downstream market for it and the carbon gets “sequestered” as part of our economy of durable goods. Like an alternative to wood, or copper, PVC/PEX, or cement, or steel studs, or rubber, or concrete, or plastic, or hell even girders.

    That also would buy us a decade or two, at least, to figure out how to effectively recycle said materials, and be free of a lot of industrial sources of ancient carbon.

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