Carbon Capture: The Mirage of a Quick Fix for Climate Change
Why bottling up emissions is harder than it sounds—and what that means for our climate future.
Imagine a world where every factory and power plant captures its CO2 and buries it underground. This is the promise of carbon capture and storage (CCS). But the reality is sobering: to capture even 20% of global emissions, we’d need to handle more gas than all the oil, gas, and coal currently moved worldwide. Most CCS projects to date have been small pilots, and the long-term safety of underground storage is still uncertain.
CCS is not a magic bullet. It can help, but only as part of a broader strategy that includes efficiency, renewables, and smart policy. Betting everything on CCS risks delaying the real changes we need.
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