Reply To: Cap and Trade

[Aeronaut]

dennisp wrote: “Again with the fusion ex machina.”…hmm, as if fusion were some unexpected savior coming out of nowhere? Isn’t this entire forum about the invention of fusion, and its consequences? On non-fusion related forums, I don’t bring in fusion as an argument.

Pretty much agree on the rest. If we were smart, we’d start taking carbon out of the atmosphere, with things like biochar and carbon-negative cement. Then instead of carbon credits being issued by the government, they could be issued by anyone who verifiably remediates carbon. If you emit, pay someone to clean up your mess, or do it yourself, like we all learned in kindergarten. The technologies are remarkably inexpensive.

We could have a carbon-neutral civilization and still drive around our SUVs, even without inventing fusion. Fusion is my main hope only because I think we’re too dumb to actually do it.

Until we actually prove a minimum of energy breakeven (unity), we may or may not have a technically feasible solution. And as Rezwan pointed out, the status quo has no pressing reason to change, unless they can be shown that they can make more money by adopting fusion energy than they can by opposing or ignoring it.

There’s already an industry that revolves around brokering carbon credits, and I suspect that carbon reduction consultants are cleaning up cleaning up by charging to reduce carbon exposure, and again by selling the newly available credits.