Until the price of gas starts to remotely reflect the medium to long term costs of climate change I basically always celebrate anything that increases gas or carbon-based energy prices. Like, it sucks... but there's lots of data that consumers respond to these prices in their choices.
The way I think about it, the entirety of global civilization is massively, massively subsidizing carbon emission.
I agree. I’m just addressing the notion raised in the post above that oil companies will bear cost increases in an industry where everyone sells an identical product and consumers can just cross the street to save $0.10 a gallon.
If you wanted to pay for direct air capture of CO2 to directly "undo" your climate effect of driving, the cost would currently be about $6 per gallon. Price comes from [1], found [2] looking for a second opinion on current direct air capture cost.
Direct air capture is just not feasible at a world scale.
And the whole circus around it, manufacturing (and extracting the natural resources for that) of all the machinery for it, clearing land to place it (and all the NIMBY circus), all the energy generation for it, the transmission lines, the maintenance, the burying of the captured carbon. It's all going to lead to lots of pollution and CO2 emissions even if the things are powered by 100% green energy.
It's just a pipe dream of the people looking for a quick fix so we can continue doing what we've been doing.
But we'll just need so hellish many of them to make a dent in global CO2 levels in time to prevent the worst effects of climate change. It's just impossible.
The only way to really fix things is not emitting the stuff in the first place but most people prefer putting their fingers in their ears.
The way I think about it, the entirety of global civilization is massively, massively subsidizing carbon emission.