> The Department of Energy's Carbon Negative Earthshot seeks to slash the cost of carbon removal to $100 a tonne by the end of the decade
At 40 gigatonnes a year, that would be $4 trillion, which is about 5% of Gross World Product.[0] It's probably still cheaper to avoid emitting the CO2 in the first place, but that does put an upper bound on the cost of reaching net zero.
Of course, no one wants to take a voluntary 5% pay cut, but that figure (if it's correct) does make it harder to argue that "we can't afford" to do anything about CO2 levels, or that tackling climate change requires us all to stop flying or heating our homes.
At 40 gigatonnes a year, that would be $4 trillion, which is about 5% of Gross World Product.[0] It's probably still cheaper to avoid emitting the CO2 in the first place, but that does put an upper bound on the cost of reaching net zero.
Of course, no one wants to take a voluntary 5% pay cut, but that figure (if it's correct) does make it harder to argue that "we can't afford" to do anything about CO2 levels, or that tackling climate change requires us all to stop flying or heating our homes.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product