it’s all very complex but there are some simple bits of it - oil in crude is carbon that was cycling through the atmosphere before the dinosaurs and got collected by plants which got buried (due to there not being bugs to eat them) it’s been locked there for ages so when we take some out the ground and add it to the atmosphere that increases the total amount, when we take it from the atmosphere and use it then we’re doing the same thing that plants have been doing for billions of years and just borrowing it to make use of for a while then putting it back. without any question if we could wave a wand and replace all the crude oil to oil infrastructure with infrastructure for taking it from the air and reusing it then it would be a good thing.

Is taking carbon from the bottom of the atmosphere and putting it near the top a bad thing? probably, possibly, maybe - that gets into really complex physics which i wouldn’t even pretend to understand, but it also gets into the existential angst of having to compare with the lifetime ecological and climate damage done by all the other options - is it better if people fly, take trains, or boats? cruise ships are really bad for everything, trains are great but require HUGE infrastructure which isn’t always possible, and i don’t even need to mention the ecological impact of a long distance car trip (or it’s supporting costs). It might actually make flying a good option ecologically, it’s possible with autonomous low-flying vehicles using it that it could be such a good option as to displace road transport in some areas thus removing the need for so many huge bridges and ecologically damaging road surfaces.