| To me, it's mind bendingly frustrating that we're even considering things in terms of a 'reduction from current emissions'. It's like someone deeply in debt cutting their spending by 5% or whatever. What is actually required is that we start from zero emissions and work upwards - e.g. if we need some agriculture, that's some unavoidable CO2 right now until we have electric solar powered tractors or whatever, and so on. The reduction method is so far from the correct approach that even if it works, it doesn't work, as you've stated, because it's based on the idea that we just go on as normal with small tweaks. It's looking like we actually need to create a completely different economy, rapidly, in order to survive. Oh boy. |
Or, correction, there's one way to get them to do that: Point guns at them.
(Un?)fortunately, the vast majority of the developed world lives under democratic government, and the same people who would rather not massively and suddenly reduce their wealth and quality of life in response to future predictions also would rather not have martial law imposed to convince them to do so.
So the "tiny ineffectual reductions from current emission levels" is the only possible framework under which any kind of preemptive climate action can actually happen. You're correct that there's no way this can solve the problem; the correct response is to understand that we're just basically fucked and the only ways out include things like "establish, by force, oppressive totalitarian global state oriented around climate management" which would damage the future world we live in just as much as climate change would, but in a different way.
We're just fucked. And there's a certain liberty in that! You don't have to worry about whether or not we'll fix the problem; we won't, so there's no troublesome uncertainty. Just go see the sights around the world you'd like to see before they're destroyed.