MIT engineers make converting CO2 into useful products more practical

Carbon concentrations in Earth's atmosphere are a problem: a mess.

Weaning off of fossil fuel use and transitioning to sustainable energy production and storage is among the biggest steps to stop making more of a mess.

Carbon sequestration is cleaning up after the mess that has already been made.

I see no reason to hold off on performing one of these steps until after the other has been finished: both should be done at the same time.

I think the risk that carbon capture gives governments an excuse not to properly regulate emissions outweighs the possibility they actually succeed in removing carbon from the atmosphere.

On top of that, removing diffuse CO2 from the atmosphere requires far more energy than the bare minimum (i.e. the energy it released as fuel), because it is diffuse. The energy harnessed to do this (e.g. electricity from solar) would be put to better use doing actual work.

I think we would require an enormous surplus in power generation before carbon capture even registers on the scale of useful interventions.