Capping emissions

Deep thought: liberals want legalization of marijuana because of individual liberty, and government savings via reduced anti-drug spending. They often argue that government tax revenue could be gained via open-market sales of marijuana, and that really, alcohol is much worse. We've been over this.
But with the biggest climate meeting since Kyoto about to start, I have to ask: how can they (liberal weiners) expect reduced carbon emissions? Because limiting carbon emissions will hurt businesses, make no mistake. And the government will spend a fortune policing carbon emissions nationwide. And corruption will invariably occur, as businesses cut corners to maintain liquidity, or ignore the emissions requirements completely. And really, is CO2 even that bad? Climategate has shown us that there is a very real possibility that scientists aren't completely sure about the long term effects (and cause) of rising CO2 levels.

And so I see this weird duality to their thinking: marijuana should be legal, but CO2 shouldn't.

Here's my solution: rather than capping (or even reducing) CO2 emission levels, instead we should subsidize and encourage "carbon farming" or any practice where a person's trade is literally to convert CO2 into a compact disposable material. For example, a small, well-run algae farm might convert 2,000 tons of CO2 into oxygen and hydrocarbons every year. Or a deep-sea miner could deposit CO2 into the deep ocean as a side-business. Or an intrepid scientist could develop a photovoltaic nanorobot that catalytically (using photon energy) broke the double bond between carbon and oxygen in CO2 and created hydrocarbons in a cascade (artificial photosynthesis, essentially).
All these trades could be wildly encouraged, and any great idea on how to dispose of nightmarishly-huge (Godzillions of tons) of CO2 would be pursued. Instead of limiting the GDP of our nation by capping business' CO2, instead we'd increase the GDP by creating a whole new set of businesses. And that would lead to tax revenue from those businesses, plus jobs, and tax revenue from those jobs, plus sales, and tax revenue from the sales...what's not for a liberal to love?!

And the best part is, as CO2 emissions rise like a fighter jet, so too would the business of carbon farming. We'd essentially solve the CO2 problem the most profitable way possible. I envision vast swamps of goopy, churning algae, belching hideous bubbles of clean oxygen, and occasionally a thin layer of hydrocarbon (read: biodiesel) is skimmed off the surface.

Why cap emissions, when instead we could use them?


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