[Retric]

The possibility for improvement without massive government intervention exists.

The rate of increase in CO2 emissions has seemingly slowed down dramatically. Emissions increased ~5% over the last decade while the decade before that was 32%.

On the surface increasing emissions is still terrible, but as oil, coal, and natural gas are only getting more expensive and the alternatives get cheaper. Many of the worst estimates are no longer relevant and people in 2070+ might not need dramatic measures to deal with climate change.

[mort96]

The rate of increase in CO2 emissions has slowed down dramatically in large part because of massive government intervention though, no?

[Retric]

Depends on what you mean by massive. US’s net renewable subsides over fossil fuels work out to something like 0.1% of the budget in that time period.

On one had that’s serious money on the other hand it’s not enough for tax payers to notice the expense.

[MichaelZuo]

There are also opportunity costs and non-monetary costs.

For example the EU subsidized and encouraged diesel engined cars greatly, to reduce CO2 emissions, but the increase in diesel pollutants, other than CO2, over and beyond that of gasoline engined cars, likely decreased average health in urban areas.

Now with Euro 6 they are correcting the problem but the damage has already been done to at least one generation.

[pmoriarty]

"The possibility for improvement without massive government intervention exists."

One such improvement people can make without government intervention is to stop eating meat.[1]

I'm not so optimistic that this is going to happen on a large enough scale, though, to make a difference. There's too much culture, habit, and identity wrapped up in meat eating for most people to give it up any time soon.

[1] - https://www.sciencenews.org/article/food-emissions-data-diet...