The short answer to your question; "Because we are not solar powered".
Our planet is solar powered, but we are not.
I don't agree that new uses for carbon dioxide should be found. I find it disturbing that there seems to be a drive to make markets for carbon dioxide. If it ever becomes something seen as valuable, I think we would be in even bigger trouble than we already are.
It is a waste gas, the vast bulk of it produced from fossil fuel consumption. The market for fossil fuel is already something that looks fatal by itself.
Our economic system considers Earth as a ball of capital, with no energy in or out, and yet there is massive energy coming in from the sun, we don't account for that in any way because money itself represents only capital, not the energy coming in.
Can you imagine if we designed an engine, with no regard for its supply of fuel. It wouldn't run very long. That is what we have, and that is why it is grinding to a halt, starving of energy, it seems to me.
So it is pretty simple, plug into the sun and all is fixed.
Another thing we should see as indicative, is when we create hydrogen from solar, it has all the functional properties of fossil fuel, but no pollution produced in its creation, and no pollution produced by its burning.
That is actually quite an incredible result with very far reaching implications, it seems to me.
Remove fossil fuels processing, and the pollution stops. After we've plugged into the sun, and gone wholly solar powered then the cost of processing whatever carbon dioxide pollution remains afterwards looks far more affordable.
I spend my time saying this over and over. All of the problems are fixed, after we take the only way out of the closed box zero-sum economy; plug into the energy of the sun.
The reason we don't see it going mainstream yet, is that by doing it, we will destroy capitalism, because with free energy must come also free money, otherwise the money does not truly represent energy, and that is a pretty big deal
