Better to resign ourselves to poverty and lower living standards than try to actually solve the problem quickly because it seems hard, right?
Cheap reusable rockets seemed hard until SpaceX came along and made them routine.
Carbon capture is not exactly picking up where the Shuttle left off.
The most interesting part of carbon capture is the offshoot technologies.
I don't see how modern productive agriculture (without which the supportable world population without completely destroying the remaining natural areas of the world goes down to 2-3 billion) would work in a carbon neutral world without using giant solar or wind farms to essentially produce artificial fossil fuels from atmospheric CO2... which sounds like carbon capture tbh.
The ideal here would be for the world's richest countries, whose wealth has been built off of emitting the majority of the CO2 already in the atmosphere, to fund massive green energy projects in countries like China and India. There's no reason why China should be building new coal plants to bring electricity to their population while the already electrified EU and USA twiddle their thumbs and import another hundred million tonnes of plastic doodads.
Industrial Agriculture is responsible for effectively burning off most of the carbon captured in the soil.
Using no-till, regenerative techniques can capture carbon back into the soil, improve water retention, reduce soil temperatures, reduce the need for chemical feedstocks (fertilizer, herbicides, etc.), and simultaneously produce livestock (and their feed), all while producing comparable amounts of crop.
The only increased input required is active local management, which requires downscaling production, but as an upside allows diversifying the nature of crops produced.
We've put too much emphasis on consumption of low-quality goods. We are drowning in shitty stuff.
Getting rid of shitty stuff isn't "lower living standard" or "poverty".
These are examples of systemic waste product that are only useful for consumerism churn. Besides T-Shirts and plastic waste, there are tons of products that are produces with the least concern for long-term usage. Because it not "economic" - only because we allow to externalize all the associated costs.
[0] https://goodfair.com/blogs/nonewthings/did-you-know-that-one...
In the case the original source of the first link is page 10 of this: https://ctprodstorageaccountp.blob.core.windows.net/prod-dru...
The first link has been victim of a game of telephone, where the original source had 15kg per T-Shirt, more than half of that was washing costs, assuming 50 hot washes (and this from over 15 years ago when washing machines were less efficient and electricity much less green). 6kg from T-shirt production being their actual estimate.
Is 6kg "a lot"? Depends what you're comparing it to. Worldwide clothing industry in general seems to be around 1% of total CO2 according to the above link.
I would love it if we had a sensible estimate for what the sum of CO2 externalities is, but my understanding is estimates can differ by over two orders of magnitude.