Is carbon a waste product?

Let’s keep this simple, atmospheric carbon is a waste product as a result of our modern lifestyle and energy choices. Here is the definition of a waste product: ‘something that is taken out of the earth but not capable of being reintroduced.’ The logic is very simple. One half of the carbon we emit will last in the atmosphere for geologic time. This is an actual fact, and even though it is not a famous one it is central to the issue of where does civilization go from here? This is about the time when the grandfather in Moonstruck says “somebody tell a joke.”
We know what a waste product is very well because of the nuclear power debate. You can take the uranium out of the land but can’t safely reinsert the stuff after it has done its enrichment and fission thing. Interestingly, Steven Chu, our energy secretary, now sees nuclear waste as less of a hazard than the greenhouse gasses we are now emitting. We can wait around for some particle physicists to harness vacuum energy, dark energy, dissect and manipulate M-theory to extract energy from the 10th dimension, call it holographic energy, or capture all of our coal plant carbon (as seen on Sixty Minutes), and send it towards China via the Earth’s core. In the mean time we can stop wasting so much energy. The last option sounds a whole lot cheaper. Call it the low entropy revolution.