just when you thought the limits of profit-insanity had been reached…
DeAnander has made the remark more than once that what gets done for profit is nearly always wrong, as in wrong-headed, incredibly stupid, and-or outright morally reprehensible.
I have bad news.
She is right… again and again.
As proof, we offer this loatest from Rachel’s:
CARBON SEQUESTRATION
[Rachel’s introduction: Carbon sequestration is an industrial plan to
bury as much as 10 trillion tons of carbon dioxide deep in the
ground, hoping it will stay there forever. Though most people have
heard little or nothing about this plan, it has already been endorsed
by major environmental groups, universities, philanthropies and the
federal government.]
By Peter Montague
In response to a relentless stream of bad news about global warming, a
cluster of major industries has formed a loose partnership with big
environmental groups, prestigious universities, philanthropic
foundations, and the U.S. federal government — all promoting a
technical quick-fix for global warming called “carbon sequestration.”
“Carbon sequestration” is a plan to capture and bury as much as 10
trillion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide deep in the ground, hoping it
will stay there forever. (A ton is 2000 pounds; a metric tonne is 2200
pounds; ten trillion is 10,000,000,000,000.) Though the plan has not
yet received any substantial publicity, it is very far along.
The purpose of the plan is to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide
entering the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil
and natural gas). Carbon dioxide is the most important “greenhouse
gas,” which is thought to be contributing to global warming.[1] A
carbon sequestration program would capture the gas, turn it into a
liquid, transport it through a network of pipelines, and pump it into
the ground, intending for it to stay buried forever.
From an industrial perspective, carbon sequestration seems like a
winning strategy. If it succeeded in reducing carbon dioxide emissions
to the atmosphere, it would allow coal and oil firms to retain and
even expand their market share in the energy business throughout the
21st century, eliminating the need for substantial innovation. Carbon
sequestration would also greatly reduce the incentive for Congress to FULL ARTICLE.
DeAnander:
1) like Hydrogen Economy, this whole concept requires a degree of techno-optimism that is nothing short of delusional.
2) the actual wording of DeAnander’s Law is it is always more profitable to do things wrong — which is not quite the same thing as “everything done for profit is insane,” but is the same thing as “everything done for maximum profit is insane.” [this implies that compound interest — which forces the seeking of maximum growth and maximum profit to pay geometrically compounding debt (a verbose way of saying “it’s usurious”) — is insane or at least leads to insanity.]
Carbon sequestration is a symptom of exactly the same mentality as freshwater flush toilets, CAFO, and FTZs: the idea being that if a problem is moved elsewhere, it stops being a problem. The so-called solution is displacement rather than transformation, and the delusion is that there is an “outside” or a “somewhere else” on which the problem can be dumped consequence-free. We could go at length into the roots of this naive and dangerous belief (many people have) but basically all we need to know is that it’s bunk: there’s no such thing as “somewhere else”, all pipers are paid in the end, and moving a problem around is not a solution, just a way to waste more energy.
As the old joke goes — “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.” == “So don’t do that.” The solution to carbon emissions is to stop generating carbon emissions, or at least to stop generating them in the obscene quantities we are belching out today. Any other scheme for moving them around, hiding them under the rug, dumping them over the fence when we think the neighbours are asleep, etc. is (a) childish and (b) another excuse for a Pharaonic boondoggle like the Alberta tar sands project or the occupation of Iraq.
We need a new name for these climate disaster profiteers, and I propse to call them Carbonbaggers.
11 November 2007, 6:27 pmMalachi Constant:
Stan - thanks for bringing this subject - which I’d never heard of - to everyone’s attention. I can see why they are being secretive about it.
11 November 2007, 11:16 pmLegume Sam:
I think the last time I posted a comment on this thread it was lost, so here goes:
1) As far as I know, carbon sequestration is only being proposed for new coal plants. Nobody, at least nobody I’ve heard of, has yet figured out how to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
2) Treehugger explains that carbon sequestration takes a lot of energy out of coal plants (never mind being a costly technology), thus reducing the ER/EI of coal
3) The abovecited article also suggests that there really isn’t that much room in the world for effective storage of CO2.
4) This is probably a scam meant to keep the coal industry going. The intellectual trend of the present moment is that of saving capitalism for a dying planet, which intersects with the Democratic Party’s drive to take back the White House in the ways described in this comment.
12 November 2007, 2:30 pmCharles:
Buckminister Fuller proposed that we put nuclear waste in rockets and shoot it into the sun. (smile)
16 November 2007, 5:19 pmBela Berg:
Where will the Hanford of carbon sequestration be?
16 November 2007, 7:28 pmsocialscientist:
looking for a viable solution?
http://www.freepublictransit.org
the beginning of the end of autosprawl
.
7 January 2008, 10:27 am