Monoculture is terrible for the ecosystem. Fertilizer runoff causes algal blooms and dead zones in the ocean. Multinational agricultural conglomerates force developing world farmers to purchase their GMO seeds sue them for copyright infingement if they try to use their seed stock in the next season. Rainforests are being burned down to make room for pastures of methane emitting cattle and monocultured palm oil plantations. The Haber-Bosch process is responsible for 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Should I go on? At what point am I supposed to like this?
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Literally children who want big loud vroom vroom trucks with lots of chrome.
The main difference in my opinion is a hostile frontier. You can't really compare 5th century Germany to Canada or Mexico (even though the right wing would love that to be the case). No hordes either.
This is literally what happens when a volcano erupts. Magma solidifes at the top and creates a plug, which builds pressure until it explodes.
They are usually uneducated and poor with trauma in their backgrounds. They have no idea what they're signing up for.
Open access fees are generally like $4000 per article. Now find a grad student or postdoc (the people actually writing these articles) who has that kind of money to spend because they "believe in free and open access to information."
Actually weathering can happen on the timescale of decades; it's all a matter of how much surface area of the rock you expose. Nature does this too slowly. In terms of energy input, grinding rocks gets a huge head start with all of the mine tailings we already have. Here is an example:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c03609#
In terms of capitalism, for me it's not too simple. Capitalism is a profit driven model that can't comprehend long term ecological damage. It becomes a "negative externality" which can then be modelled by economists however they want (which is why they don't agree about how bad it is). If we had a system based on human well being we would have solved climate change already. It's simply not profitable to replace the fossil fuel economy with renewable energy sources. It requires a level of investment capitalists can't comprehend. This is largely why societal change comes from governments which can simply invent money to throw at a problem (think New Deal or Bidenomics).
The complicated part is answering why humans can't seem to get past capitalism. I think we all agree the system is doomed; we just can't figure out how to get away from it.
There actually is a much easier way with enhanced weathering. Igneous rocks naturally carbonate as they weather, and pull CO2 out of the atmosphere to make carbonates. This is why when you have a mountain building event it causes global cooling. So what you need to do is expose more igneous rock surface area to the atmosphere by grinding it up and spreading it out. This also costs energy but not nearly as much as carbon capture, and it's also slower. But we know it works, and there are several pilot studies trying it.
The problem is capitalism. There's no room for a zero-profit process in the economic system that everyone accepts as necessary. It has to somehow enrich the investor class.
Continental drift had been proposed way before this. The mechanism was unknown.
They've been saying this every election. This line is the norm now. There never was much of a democracy.
Well, capitalism has been hinted at here, but as far as I can see, nobody has suggested that we try to change society so that it's less oppressive. I realized a while ago that profit doesn't motivate me, and it sounds like you might have as well. I suggest (in addition to following the excellent medical advice) that you seek out your local socialist organization. Life doesn't have to be this depressing.
Right, those are all irreplacable parts of global capitalism and its ruling oligarchy.
Haber Bosch is basically just squeezing nitrogen and oxygen together with a catalyst to make ammonia. To generate high pressures you need energy which you get by burning hydrocarbons. Legumes and bacteria can also do this, which is why crop rotation and letting fields lie fallow has been done for centuries. But you can't let your field lie fallow if you have to compete with other firms who are burning coal to make fertilizer...