this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2024
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A tree absorbs about 25 kg of CO2 per year. A human breathes out about 250 kg of CO2 per year.
Trees are great, but not all that efficient. To deal with the amount of CO2 humanity is currently producing, we'd need a whole lot more of them.
That's just breathing.
A gallon of gas is nearly 9kg.
A ton is 1000kg. And it costs about $160 to capture it. So $1.44 per gallon to recapture it's CO2.
Costs are USD.
Could you imagine a 40% tax on gasoline to pay for carbon capture?
We're all fucked.
Not only can I imagine it, I think we should go for it. The goal ought to be one cylinder per person, a family of four gets driven around with a 1.6L naturally aspirated V4 engine.
Keep it balanced between simple and efficient.
Mormons eyeing up a W16 Bugatti as their next motor vehicle purchase..
Their church certainly appears to be able to afford it 🙄
Yes. Yes I can. Most of the world already pays more than that in tax on petrol anyway.
The UK currently pays 53p/litre in duty, and an extra 20% in VAT, meaning a 145p litre of petrol is currently charged 53% in tax.
Ramp the price up, watch use fall. People will use less. People will buy smaller cars, and travel less, and use public transport. Coddling motorists will fix precisely fuck all.
I think the problem here is that we are so accustomed to our relatively low price at the pump (compared to most of Europe) that cheap gas is almost essential to the survival of the lower and middle class. People who don't have the option to buy a smaller car, or move closer to work (because rent and house costs near job centers are outrageous), or take public transit (because it's non-existent outside the super expensive cities).
Even toying with the idea of a $1.40 tax (and probably more, if we accommodate for the untaxed dyed diesel we use for home heating) would be political suicide for one politician. No way in hell it's getting signed off on by half.
The demand for public transport won't grow if it's cheaper to take two tonnes of your own metal to work every day.
You don't need to introduce the tax all in one go, ramp it up over several years. Although as always the best time to start doing this was 20 years ago. I guess the second best time is still now though.
I can imagine a 40% tax on gasoline, and I'd love it. But, I think it would be nearly impossible to get it done in modern North America.
People making decisions decades before we were born were happy to create a world where car travel dominated. We were born into a world where it's hard to get around in any other way. Young kids today may be willing to make the sacrifices necessary to save the world, but almost everybody else thinks it's too inconvenient.
Yeah, we're fucked. Or at least the generations who will have to live in this hellhole we created are.
Luckily for us it's not just trees though of course. there's like 400 something trees per person though and many other plants and organisms that also help as carbon sinks. Grasses and other plants cover the ground and sink tons of CO2. It's pretty cool to look up how much CO2 capture per different organisms like an acre of grass etc.
Yeah, nature is great. If all it had to handle were billions of people breathing we'd have no issues.
The problem is that modern machines are extremely efficient at dumping CO2 into the atmosphere, but as great as trees are, they're not all that efficient at removing it. So, if we want to keep CO2 at survivable levels, we either need fewer CO2-emitting machines (ideal) or a machine that takes CO2 out of the atmosphere (so far, impossible at scale). Simply relying on trees isn't going to cut it.