[stephen999]

Technically possible. There were alternatives developed quickly to the CFC problem that worked about as well and were only slightly more expensive. This lead to support for them politically because it was a no-brainer to switch over.

On the other hand, alternatives to oil and gas are much more expensive and require significant sacrifices compared to just using oil.

Electric cars are more expensive than ICE. They have less range and there is a lack of equivalent charging infrastructure. Those are being solved but it’s taken 30 years or more of working on battery technology and efficiency to match ICE cars for convenience.

Solar panels and wind has been similar. Years of development and billions of dollars to optimize it and still has downsides compared to oil and gas.

Things like airplane fuel and plastics there are no easy solutions to still.

Even the things that have solutions like electric cars, solar panels, etc require tons of new infrastructure to switch which is expensive both in dollars and carbon cost.

Just look at the total dollar amount of replacing all oil-using cars/trains/planes/power plants/factories/etc and compare to all CFC-generating devices it’s a lot more.

[ZeroGravitas]

Possibly I missed it, but you don't seem to have listed a single technical reason why it's harder than the CFC issue?

When you say something is "much more expensive" you're mostly talking politics since basically everyone agrees it's cheaper to deal with climate change.

[stephen999]

Well, the alternatives for CFC-generating are already developed and in the marketplace. There are still no equivalent alternatives for many oil-using products. Kind of indicates that it is technically easier.

The fact that there are CFC replacements but not oil replacements for all use-cases indicates that it's more difficult, no?

> basically everyone agrees it's cheaper to deal with climate change

I'm not sure that's the case. Seems like a lot of people are either hoping that it's not going to affect them that much, or that some miracle technology will be developed which will fix the problem more cheaply and not require any change in behavior on their part.

[ZeroGravitas]

I think we're still talking past each other.

My thesis is that the reason there are not sufficent oil alternatives, is that the people who benefit from oil being burned for fuel have made sure that is the case.

The quick and simple way to a) make use of all existing alternatives where feasible and desireable and b) ensure a market exists for people to develop new alternatives is to introduce a carbon tax that accounts for the externalities.

That has been a hard task (though we've made some limited headway) and it was not technical challenges that held us back but political.

Your argument is the equivalent of a King saying, "Well, that sounds great in theory but democracy is too technically difficult", "No it's not" "Well if it's so easy why hasn't it already happened yet" "Because you murdered anyone who suggested it" "Oh yes, so I did".