The carbon isn’t valuable elementally as much as it is structurally and molecularly. I mean that as aromatic rings and other ready made building blocks that conveniently can be fractionally separated with pressure and temperature conditions in a column as a gross generalization. All of this is energy intensive but much less so than building up from three atom molecules with strong bonds. And much much less energy intensive than separating a trace % molecule from the atmosphere at low atmospheric pressure and translating that to complex molecules.
There needs to be more appreciation for the laws of thermodynamics when discussing technology. Everything is not a 1-dimensional reduced abstraction.
The #1 rule of HN that must never be violated: software developers are the smartest people on earth, and literally every field could benefit from their definitely not stunningly overconfident and reductionist contributions. I dread threads about engineering subjects I get paid to be competent in because I can't handle the tsunami of neckbeard opinions that I'm about to see.