Why do you answer "Why aren't they doing X?" with "They're trying to fail" ? How about "Because it won't work and I don't know enough about the subject to understand the reason" ?

Do you honestly believe that none of the people working on it actually ever thought of welding something over the pipe? Really?

The other option is to do what the rest of the world is doing and just not care. This isn't a life-or-death problem anymore. It probably isn't threatening any species either. Just about the only cost will be economic.