A hierarchy of options is intended to guide actions from most to least effective, from best to slightly less good, to really not-so-great-at-all. “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” is a case in point for waste management. I have often wished these options had been explicitly numbered before their release:

1. Reduce
2. Reuse
3. Recycle

Too often we  fixate on the lower echelons of the scale. In the case of our dogged yet somewhat misguided devotion to recycling, we focus very hard on sorting waste into the proper bin, but fail to re-examine why we use so much packaging in the fist place. Regarding land stewardship, we plant a tree rather than protect an existing forested area. Various forces draw us to the bottom drawer option. It is usually easier, cheaper, more expedient, flashier and more media-worthy, and has a less disruptive effect on business as usual—in the short term.

So which of these reasons underlie the continued insistence that carbon capture and storage technology will solve the problem of what to do with our greenhouse gas emissions?

Canada and the Government of Alberta are collectively spending $2.5 billion on carbon capture and storage technology, primarily in an effort to deal with oilsands emissions. This mammoth investment in R&D continues despite advice from scientists that carbon capture technology is unsuited to deal with oilsands emissions. Secret ministerial briefing notes obtained by CBC show that the Conservative government has long known its keystone strategy in greenhouse gas management is unsound, even as it continues to announce more funding for carbon capture and storage projects.

With all our investment in mitigation technologies, we are still drawing blanks on what to do with oilsands emissions (and with the changed landscapes of northern Alberta ). Our eyes remain firmly glued to the solution at the bottom of the options list, the one headed by “Avoid” and “Reduce.” Thus we arrive at “Carbon Capture and Storage,” which essentially absolves us of our greenhouse gases so long as we can stick them safely underground for infinite periods of time. Is it comedy or tragedy that billions of dollars promises, yet does not deliver, an elaborate way to bury still more of our trash?

In the words of Einstein, “the significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.”

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