When you don`t have an education, you`ve got to use your brains.
- Anonymous
Why carbon capture needs a reality check
Geoengineering: A Reckless Gamble or Climate Saviour?
This summer, Bill Gates huddled in London with an elite cadre of the world’s wealthiest individuals: Jeff Bezos, Masayoshi Son, Prince al-Waleed bin Talal. Their mission? Not philanthropy. Not the noble pursuit of justice.
No, these billionaires were plotting a bold investment strategy aimed at making a profit while playing God with our planet’s atmosphere.
Among their investments are companies pioneering carbon dioxide removal technologies. These ventures promise to strip CO2—the very molecule suffocating our planet—straight out of the atmosphere.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Stripping CO2 from the air is not a miracle. It is an unproven, energy-intensive, and expensive pipe dream dressed up in the sleek marketing of “climate innovation.”
The Seductive Myth of Carbon Capture
Carbon capture feels intuitively appealing. Who wouldn’t want to suck up the pollution and tidy up the mess? But here’s the catch: the technology is fundamentally inefficient.
CO2 is a chemically stable molecule, its bonds tight as a billionaire’s grip on his wallet. Breaking those bonds requires enormous energy, and if that energy doesn’t come from renewables, the whole system collapses under its own hypocrisy.
Take one method, for example: air is exposed to a fine mist of water, creating carbonic acid. This acid is then heated to release water and CO2.
The water is recycled, the CO2 pumped underground. Sounds clean, right? Except that every step in this process guzzles energy like an SUV guzzles gas.
The only way this makes sense is with a massive infusion of renewable power—power that could instead be used to replace fossil fuels outright.
Let that sink in: We’re contemplating running a global CO2 vacuum cleaner while the house is still on fire.
Geoengineering: Hubris Masquerading as Hope
Geoengineering takes this delusion even further. It’s not just about carbon capture; it’s about deliberately altering Earth’s climate systems on a global scale. Want to block out the sun?
Inject sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. Want brighter clouds? Spray seawater into the atmosphere. The hubris is staggering.
These schemes are born of the same domineering mindset that caused the climate crisis in the first place: the belief that humanity can bend nature to its will without consequence.
Let’s be clear: geoengineering is not a plan. It’s a gamble. It’s rolling the dice on our only planet with no real understanding of the long-term consequences. Disrupting weather patterns? Sure. Collapsing ecosystems? Likely. Exacerbating global inequality? Inevitable.
Who will suffer most when geoengineering projects go awry? Not the billionaires bankrolling these schemes. No, it will be the world’s poorest and most vulnerable who already bear the brunt of climate change.
The Fossil Fuel Industry’s Perfect Excuse
Let’s not ignore the elephant in the room. Geoengineering and carbon capture are the fossil fuel industry’s ultimate get-out-of-jail-free cards.
By promoting these unproven technologies as a “Plan B,” they create the illusion that we can keep burning oil and coal while somehow cleaning up the mess later. It’s a lie. And it’s a dangerous one.
Every dollar poured into these speculative technologies is a dollar not spent on transitioning to renewable energy, on electrifying transportation, on transforming agriculture, on addressing the root causes of the crisis.
The Real Solution: Transform or Perish
We don’t need geoengineering. We don’t need carbon capture pipe dreams. We know what we have to do: transition away from fossil fuels. Now. Not in 2050. Not in 2040. Today. Solar, wind, geothermal, energy efficiency—these are the tools we need. They exist. They work.
What’s missing is the political will to deploy them at the scale and speed required.
Geoengineering is a distraction. It’s the desperate flailing of a global elite unwilling to confront the reality that their wealth and power are built on the destruction of the planet.
It’s a con job that shifts the focus away from systemic change and onto speculative technofixes that will never be enough.
Wake Up and Fight
The climate crisis is not a puzzle to be solved by billionaires tinkering with the atmosphere. It is a moral failure of our society to confront the consequences of endless consumption and exploitation.
The answer is not to double down on domination but to embrace humility. To recognize that the Earth is not a machine we can reprogram but a living system we must learn to live within.
Geoengineering will not save us. Carbon capture will not save us. Only we can save ourselves—by ending our addiction to fossil fuels and building a world that is fair, just, and sustainable. Anything less is surrender.
