We already have an ideal carbon capture technology optimized by Nature Inc. through a state of the art evolutionary algorithm running trillions of parallel processes for billions of years. It's called Trees (TM). With Trees (TM) the CO2 emissions problem has a simple two step solution that anyone can accomplish with ease:
If a whole forest grows and the whole forest dies, you’re right, no carbon is captured.
But if a whole forest is created and maintained, even as trees die and rot they build the biomass of the soil and undergrowth: every ton of life is carbon and heat energy captured - individuals live and die, but the overall biomass can increase, capturing carbon and energy in the form of healthy ecosystems.
As another commenter pointed out, if humanity just left earth tomorrow, it would take eons for CO2 ppm to fall, so we should be doing something proactive. Plus, planting and caring for trees is something everyone can do and gets us away from the “wait for a super villain billionaire to solve it” mentality.
Edit: thanks for the link to Azolla, hadn’t heard of that
The nasty thing about global warming is that it's weakening the jet stream. This causes places to one year have crazy amounts of years and the next drought. The rainy years, things grow like crazy! Lots of growth. On drought all that new growth dries up and is tinder for forest fires.
We need more trees for sure, but at the same time would would need to put huge efforts in forest fire prevention otherwise poof, all that hard work trees do sequestering CO2 literally goes up in smoke.
To offset our entire current greenhouse gas emissions with trees alone, we would have to increase earth's total plant biomass by 10% each year.
Given how slow most types of trees grow that seems completely unfeasible unless we give up most meat (taking space that we now use for growing animal feed).
(Yes, we have a lot of space in the desert, but studies show limited effect on global warming from planting anything there once you account for how well sand reflects heat back into space).
I'll save you the time (though you should watch it).
1. Much of the animal feed comes from agricultural byproducts. As an example, we eat corn on the cob, but much of the corn stalk is inedible to humans, but can be made into products for animals.
2. Much of the land used for animals is not suitable for growing crops. Some is, but it's not a 1:1 swapability factor.
1) Stop cutting down Trees
2) Plant more Trees
That's it. The end. Problem solved.