[thatcat]

I'm not so sure that is the case, simply for economic and social reasons. Climate change is a much more tractable and immediate problem, yet technological developments and their implementations still seem to be moving too slowly to matter at the moment.

[Stupulous]

Solar has dropped 50-75% in cost in the last decade, and accounts for 10x more wattage. Battery capacity has doubled in that time. Wind energy capacity has doubled. Geothermal capacity is 1.5x. Electric cars are 4x more common than they were 5 years ago. Carbon sequestration has advanced at a technological level, although production hasn't seen serious advances (probably because renewable energy produces a profitable resource, while sequestering just exchanges money for fighting climate change).

If that's not enough to make a difference, it's because we started too late and the problem is too large, not because technological development is too slow. Admittedly, nuclear could have done the job already, and the issue there is social.

If human lifespan technology moved at half the climate change technology speed, we'd have 25 extra years per decade and be effectively immortal today.

[specialist]

It seems to older me that punctuated equilibrium is some kind of natural law.

Incremental progress may be ideal. Alas, whatever forces that may be, trying to preserve the current equilibrium, fight off change. Until the compulsion to change overwhelms the system.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

So when humanity finally goes carbon negative, it'll be despite the opposition, because they couldn't defend the status quo any longer. Then all that bottled up change will be like a dam bursting.

Hopefully it'll happen sooner than later.