The Observer is correct to highlight the urgency of the climate crisis and the signal this year’s devastating hurricane season sends (“Hurricane Milton is a portent. But it’s not too late”). But your conclusion that carbon capture and storage is the “last option” is misleading, defeatist and dangerous.
Carbon capture has a 50-year record of failure. In a half century, the industry has captured a minuscule proportion of global emissions and left a trail of failed projects and wasted public money in its wake. The fossil fuel industry knows CCS is not the answer, yet it keeps pushing it as a distraction tactic to delay the transition to clean energy. The irony is that the very industry you suggest should be paying for cleaning up emissions is instead pocketing billions in public money for failed CCS. Money that should go to transitioning to renewable energy solutions.
