Turning carbon dioxide into liquid fuel. Scientists have discovered a new electrocatalyst that converts carbon dioxide (CO2) and water into ethanol with very high energy efficiency, high selectivity for the desired final product and low cost.

[u/Wagamaga]

https://www.anl.gov/article/turning-carbon-dioxide-into-liquid-fuel

[u/BlueShellOP]

Personally, as a California resident who has to live in permanent smog, I'm in favor of instituting a strong carbon tax simply to have clean air again. We had some really beautiful days these past months because of the shutdown - I was able to see all the way to North Bay from Skyline Vista Point, which is something I've never been able to see and will likely never be able to see again. But, wanting nice things is apparently not allowed in America.

The problem as I see it is, it's financially better to do nothing. Doing nothing costs companies nothing, and they can continue chugging along as is forever.

So, what do we do? Let Capitalism doom us all to ecological collapse? Do we force change and upset existing power dynamics? Do we find some middle road where we continue on as is, but tax it and force companies to not pollute the environment? IDK, these are all big questions that nobody has the answer to. I'm 100% against doing nothing, but the powers that be are going to push for just that for as long as possible, because R&D is slow and unpredictable. You may be right and we find a solution, or you may be wrong and we all die from inaction. I'd rather fight tooth and nail to make sure the latter never happens, repercussions be damned, because the alternative is far far far worse than a few mega corporations' bottom lines being impacted. I think there is too huge of monetary force pushing the economic harm message for me to trust it blindly.

[u/drivemusicnow → u/BlueShellOP]

The problem is that you're ignoring what lies behind those "mega corporation" profits. When you apply a tax to a company, that just gets passed directly on to the consumer. You're effectively "pricing in" the !potential! ecological impact that that product has, with a price that you're setting arbitrarily, because the costs are impossible to predict or even understand. And when you do that, you're increasing the costs of services on everyone, including those least capable of paying for them. I would love for every coal plant to be shuttered overnight, but the impact would be significant on the price of energy. Germany has implement such policies, and has one of the highest energy costs in the world. This is just one example, but the reality is that while you think you're "saving us for ecological collapse" you're actually doing real harm to real people today, for a prediction of doom that is very controversial. Everyone agrees it's happening, and everyone agrees it's human caused, but no one has any idea the "what happens next" with any degree of certainty. I very much agree with policies to subsidize research on carbon capture, and perhaps you could subsidize energy prices, but the impact on things like beef, gasoline, cars, etc will have a very substantial harm on real people.