On: Carbon capture is a fig leaf for fossil fuel expansion | Letters

Another morning, another proposal to dress the gallows in silk. This carbon capture fantasy - £264 billion by 2050, they say - is not a solution. It is a subsidy, a life support system for the very industry that suffocates us. Capital, having exhausted the external world, now turns inward, seeking to commodify the very air we breathe, to profit from cleaning up the mess it made.

They speak of capturing carbon as if it were a technical problem, not a political one. But I see the trap: this “solution” stabilizes the system, makes extraction tolerable, delays the necessary rupture. It allows them to keep drilling, keep burning, while offering the illusion of responsibility. The cost is not just financial - it is the cost of stolen time, of a future foreclosed by false promises.

Renewables avoid emissions; carbon capture merely manages them. One is a path beyond this system, the other is its perpetuation. And who will bear the £264 billion? Not the fossil giants - it will be public money, our money, spent to save their profits. The spontaneity of mass opposition, the clarity of those who refuse this bargain - that is where hope lies, not in these calculated concessions meant to pacify us.