[elif]

The current carbon capture systems would need more than one order of magnitude in costs and efficiency to come close.

There are plenty of proofs out there with hard figures, but just think about it. You need to be more effective and cheaper than plants for this concept to make any sense. That means competing against a baseline of pure solar energy inputs, self-replication, and the ability to trap carbon in the soil.

The biggest carbon capture apparatus we have is our ocean, and we are acidifying and toxifying it INDEPENDENTLY of our carbon misuse. Ecology is our only real hope, and CO2 is only one of many variables we need to control. We're dropping a lot of balls here, and hyperfocus on CO2 will just enable us to continue deluding ourselves into the fatal belief that industrial progress will still save us.