Tolkien called this idea “sub-creation,” suggesting that only God could create, in the complete sense of the word. But that humans, being made in God’s image, would by their nature strive to create. Anything we create uses what God gave us and would therefore be a lesser order of creation, thus sub-creation.

I agree. But we are not there yet. And there is already a lot of carbon in the air.

Yes, I did completely miss your point. However, I think these are two different issues. One is that oil companies are benefiting from our tax system and using carbon capture for good PR. The other is that we are trying a variety of things to help reduce the effects of climate change and one of those things is carbon capture. Oil companies using using carbon capture to gain good favor doesn’t preclude it from being a potentially helpful process.

Part of the problem with new technologies is that they’re inherently less efficient than the same technologies once they’ve been further developed. And the problem with that is that it takes millions of dollars develop and deploy new technologies.

This was once the biggest argument against solar and wind. It was expensive and markedly less efficient than coal. However, solar and wind are now pretty good and continuing to get better. All because people were willing to invest the many millions of dollars to develop those technologies.

This is almost always the argument with new technologies. But to make the argument that it’s a good reason to stop investing in a wide variety of technologies that could literally help save the world is shortsighted.