Trees never evolved for the purposes of mass capturing carbon from the air as efficiently as possible. Yes, they convert CO2 to O2 as part of their life cycle, but algae and other organisms have a much bigger role in capturing CO2 and turning it into O2.
Furthermore, so much of the CO2 that we emit is CO2 that was sequestered in the past over those very same 100s of millions of years. Meaning that going the natural route will take that amount of time.
Let’s not pretend that the west needed Putin to become racist/fascist. The same west which slaughtered tens of millions of people at the altars of capital after WW2.
Many fossil fuel companies, especially ones involved in the middle east petrostates gain huge oil rent from selling oil.
Basically, the price of oil is close to the price of producing it in the “marginal” fields (the least productive fields), while some oil fields are many times more productive than the marginal fields. The owners of the hyper productive fields gain huge amounts of revenue from selling oil (this is called “differential rent” in economics). And this profit comes from owning the oil fields themselves.
If the demand for oil were to fall, its price would fall quite rapidly, as oil producers would abandon low productivity marginal fields. This would torpedo the oil rents of the petro states
This rent effect exists for lots of goods, but it is more pronounced in oil because oil is a scarce natural resource that is spread very unevenly.
On the political side of things, the oil rent of the big producers is protected by the US government, because the oil rent of the big producers is what holds up the value of the USD.
:( I don’t get it
We are so behind the point where policies like this are enough.