In 2024, the climate engineering company (Climeworks) captured only 105 tons of carbon dioxide at its “Mammoth” Direct Air Capture (DAC) plant in Iceland. This is not the amount captured daily or weekly, but the total for the entire year. In comparison, this is less than the annual emissions from a dozen long-haul trucks, approximately one-thousandth of the carbon capture capacity that the company claims its plant is designed for. By mid-2025, the company began layoffs, with at least 10% of its workforce (about 500 people) being let go. For a company that has raised over $800 million through equity and subsidies and is hailed as a pioneer in direct air capture, these figures are sobering but not surprising — they are simply the inevitable result of hopeful technological optimism colliding violently with the laws of physics, economic realities, and scaling limitations.