One of the less savory aspects of moral posturing about technological issues is that some subjects are taboo.

Currently air capture of CO2 is a political third rail of climate policy. Here is why:

For most of those people opposed to greenhouse gas regulation advocating air capture would require first admitting that greenhouse gases ought to be reduced in the first place, an admission that most on this side of the debate have avoided. When so-called climate skeptics start advocating air capture (which I have to believe can't be too far off), then you will have a sign that the climate debate is really changing.

If such a transformation occurs, then we have the irony of seeing the climate skeptics become the technology advocates and the greenhouse gas regulation advocates become technology skeptics. Why? For most of those people who support greenhouse gas regulations, even admitting the possibility of air capture is anathema, because it would undercut the entire structure of the contemporary climate enterprise. Consider that the Kyoto Protocol and all of its complex mechanisms would largely be rendered irrelevant. So too would be most research on carbon sequestration (though point source sequestration would likely remain of interest) and management, as well as much of research on reducing emissions in autos, homes, cities, etc.. As well, because among many much of the motivation for climate mitigation lies in changing peoples lifestyles, securing advantages in international economics, and changing energy policies, air capture represents a tremendous threat to such agendas. As a 2002 Los Alamos National Laboratory press release trumpets, "Imagine no restrictions on fossil-fuel usage and no global warming!"

Emphasis added. Here's a prototype.

Workable methods exist and good scientists are working on improvements to get costs down. Sequestering carbon in this way is ten times as expensive as buying permits on the European carbon exchange, but it's real sequestration. Pielke concludes:

Imagine if governments around the world set up a $50 billion prize for the first technology that demonstrated economic viability for air capture of carbon dioxide at, for instance, $20 per ton, $5 per ton or $1 per ton. The resulting investment in innovation would be massive. To scale the cost of awarding such a prize, it is a fraction of some projections of the annual costs of implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, which would deal with about 99% less of the problem than cost-effective air capture.

Can air capture solve the problem of increasing greenhouse gas emissions? I don't know. But if scientists and policy makers frame the climate problem as one of stabilizing concentrations of atmospheric CO2, then given the potential payoff, air capture deserves to be at the center of international climate policy debate. Presently it is not, but I'd bet that it will be soon.

Contrast this with Robert Socolow's wedge theory, a hugely expensive project spanning 100 years that would tinker with every aspect of civilization and require the whole world to march in lockstep. As fans of regulatory control argue:

. . .what is most appealing to me about stabilization wedges is that it demonstrates that we don't need radical improvements in our technologies and changes to our behavior to be able to avoid the worst-case scenarios. This means that improvements to our technologies and changes to our behavior -- all of which are well-within our capabilities -- have the potential therefore to make things better. If Socolow is correct, and I believe that he is, we aren't yet facing a world in which doing the very best we can means barely hanging on. Instead, we are in a position now to make resolute and meaningful advances, thereby keeping us from disaster and laying the groundwork for even greater transformations.

It's control and changes in behavior that are the true objective, not co2 mitigation. The cure is worse than the disease. It's the same type of problem we have with curtailment of civil liberties due to terrorism. Those who seek control will use any threat to take control and regiment society since that is their heart's desire. In this case, they hate your SUV on general principles. Even if it ran on co2 and emitted pure oxygen they'd still hate it, ridicule you, and find another excuse to seek to ban you and it.

The problem may be even worse for those who doubt that we have a climate problem, or that it a bad thing in any case. The problem I see is the one mentioned in Diminished Capacity in response to this.

The moral ought to be that if we dislike what the climate is doing - for whatever reason - and think we can affect it - through whatever means - then we should consider controlling it. Most climate discussions focus on reducing economy and the effects of civilization rather than fixing the climate per se. That is why it took so long for ideas of carbon sequestration to be accepted and why organisations seem more interested in debating how to stop climate change while agreeing that it is unlikely to succeed than the more practical matter of adapting to it - it is the aims that are important, not the result. There is a strong stream of antimodernist ideas from Rosseau and onward linked to environmentalism that make proponents more interested in being anticapitalist, anticar, antiindustry rather than being primarily for a nice climate (however defined - I want Scandinavia to have a climate and ecology like the bronze age heat maximum myself).

In the long run we better control the eigenvalues of the critical points of the climate dynamical system. That is both the practical and moral thing to do.

Emphasis added for symmetry with Pielke's comparable sentiment above. Who will decide which climate period will be chosen for the target? It seems that different parts of the world may have different views on that. And this should comfort the control freaks since they will still have something to complain about and reasons to strive for control.