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That's true, but it misses the point rather badly. A big reason that CO2 is a problem is that it is very stable. Getting it out of the atmosphere at scale requires vast amounts of energy. So if your goal is to reduce the amount of atmospheric CO2 (and if it's not then you've essentially given up on the future of civilization) it is much better not to let the carbon get into the atmosphere in the first place. Carbon in plastic is already sequestered. Dumping it back into the atmosphere is not progress.


That’s perfectly reasonable in the short term. Long term however we don’t want to endlessly extract CO2 either, so eventually we will want a pure equilibrium state with zero net gain or loss in atmospheric CO2.


Yes, of course. But I don't see any circumstances under which returning the carbon in plastics to the atmosphere contributes to that goal.




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