Quote

We need to figure out a way to create more energy on a gigawatt scale and not create so much CO2 in the process.

I don't think you have a choice but to pull CO2 back that has already made it out, or is about to make it out, because we are not overnight shutting down all the coal plants.

CO2 is the exhaling breath of our civilization, literally... Changing that pattern requires a scope, a scale, a speed of change that is beyond what we have done in the past.

In a well-monitored storage site, it is always possible to release CO2 in a controlled manner in the unlikely event that it threatens to escape. Such a release is certainly no worse than ignoring the emission in the first place.

A car produces about one pound of CO2 per mile. There is no problem with collecting the CO2 in the tailpipe, but one might easily end up with a trailer hitched to the car for carrying all this CO2 back to the filling station. The gas burned from a 15-gallon tank would fill up five 60-inch-tall gas bottles.

The European auto industry made a commitment to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by an average of 140 grams per kilometer. But then there was a significant change in what customers wanted in their vehicles.

I'm not disputing that increasing CO2 emissions in the atmosphere is going to have an impact. It'll have a warming impact.

Adding CO2 to the air is like throwing another blanket on the bed.

Now, we put out a lot of carbon dioxide every year, over 26 billion tons. For each American, it's about 20 tons. For people in poor countries, it's less than one ton. It's an average of about five tons for everyone on the planet. And, somehow, we have to make changes that will bring that down to zero.