[mtbch]

The carbon tax and tech solutions are a must but won't be enough, due to lack of time.

The science tells us we don't have much to turn things around, not nearly enough.

Based on our history of energy transitions, even rolling out commercially available tech for low/zero carbon generation left to market forces will take many decades, almost a century.

Then there are hard problems we simply have no low/zero carbon solution for at scale. Manufacturing pig iron for primary steel, ammonia, cement, industrial agriculture, plastics, shipping, aviation, etc.

Also, AFAIK there does not exist a demonstrated technology for CO2 sequestration that scales and has the required CO2 emission balance (needs energy to run). Storage is also unsolved. I'm curious if you have a link.

It took a century to build out the global oil infrastructure with its millions of miles of pipelines, pumps, oil tankers, etc.

We'll need to handle multiple times the material flow for CO2 sequestration. And overhaul/retrofit/upgrade the entire global energy system, industry, transportation, shipping, agriculture... Even allowing for existing sequestration tech - there's no time.

We need a quick head start that only cutting back consumption can give us. 10% of the population is responsible for 50% of global anthropogenic emissions.

If the top 1% of emitters or the ~75 million people at the top cut back their consumption to the level of the average European's, global emissions would decrease by 30%.

The current economics paradigm (~growth is a must) guarantees we can't solve climate change as growth cannot be decoupled from CO2 increase.

This is a physics problem. Physics doesn't care about ROI or discount rates or tactics.

We were given a diagnosis of terminal cancer quite some time ago and we refused to do chemo or undergo surgery because it would have meant a drastic change in our lifestyle. Now we are stage three. We still meet with our oncologist team from time to time, only to actively sabotage all of their attempts to save us.

In 1988 the UN established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In 31 years, after 51 IPCC sessions and 25 major conferences our yearly CO2 emissions increased by 60%. That's how much we care.

In 2019, Energy companies are still set on fully realizing their extractions rights and are actively seeking new oil and gas fields to exploit, including in the thawing arctic.

We're still buliding 1500+ new coal power plants and hundreds of airports.

We're busy entrenching our fossil fuel dependence. Anthropogenic CO2 emissions are still on the rise.

There's just no political will.