zlacker

>>Brajes+(OP)
I'm starting to wonder whether the conventional wisdom of reducing carbon emissions in favour of more electricalisation is really solving the actual problem. As is often pointed out on HN, electrical cars are substantially heavier than their fossil fueled alternatives, and generate other pollution along the way. Furthermore, we're digging our lithium brines from the environment, without really understanding what all this lithium will do once it's leached out into the environment or what impact the mines themselves will have.

With the recent advances of turning CO2 into other substances, such as propane, should we be focusing more on closing the carbon cycle and simply be producing fossil fuels from the waste products of yesteryear?

Naively, it feels like we understand C, O and H, better than we understand some of the rare metals we're now introducing in the name of climate change.

>>alexch+Ei
The amount of carbon emissions is simply far too large for sequestration efforts, natural or otherwise, to make a significant dent.

In the end, what the world needs is an abundance of cheap energy without proportional carbon emissions. Everything else is secondary.

>>jgreen+fm
Any hypothetical sequestration into a fuel (as in the parent parent comment) would also require a power source, so the question goes back to low-carbon power!