“Pipe Cleaners” (Life of the Mind, Feb. 6) features engineers who advocate pumping CO2 emitted from Midwest ethanol refineries to, and into, Texas oil fields. This sounds like the same kind of thinking that got us here.
Massive pipelines disrupt ecosystems all along their routes. “[P]roducing more oil” doesn’t exactly sound like a good thing for the atmosphere. And no one knows the unintended consequences of injecting massive amounts of CO2 underground, especially as the practice scales up in, let’s say, the next seven generations.
So tell me again why taxpayer subsidies to industry to build “thousands of miles of pipeline” for this project are a “win-win,” rather than just a win for those who fear they will lose too much if we act on our need to end dependence on fossil fuels?