“There’s no evidence that burying carbon dioxide in the earth is a better strategy than aggressively pursuing other alternatives that clearly are better for the environment and will in the long run be less costly,” Mr. Holtz said.

But power company officials say the effort is the energy industry’s best hope of stanching carbon dioxide emissions over the next few decades.

“I really believe, in my heart of hearts, that coal is going to be burned around the world for years to come,” said Michael Morris, chairman and president of American Electric Power, which owns the plant here. “Retrofitting is going to be essential.”

I understand the logic here- there are a lot of coal plants, coal is going to be burned for a long time, it’s going to produce CO2 and we need to deal with it somehow.

At the same time, CO2 sequestration seems like getting out of debt with credit cards. It’s still out there and you know you have to deal with it eventually. The implicit hope here seems to be that “eventually” will be millions of years away when the mountains erode away. Hoping for no earthquakes in the meantime.