[FrenchAmerican]

"we all know we can’t decarbonize in time"

I guess you mean "we all know that almost no current government has the political courage to do what is necessary so that we decarbonize in time".

Or " we all know that we don't have the fortitude to do to do what is necessary so that we decarbonize in time". => that version is better if governments do what their public opinion is willing to do.

To fight in the WWI and WII, the most advanced economies of those times turned in less than two years into war economies, where more than 50% of the GDP was directed to the war effort.

True for Germany, France, the UK plus, for WWII, the USA, the USSR, Japan.

The Apollo program amounted during the 60s to 4% of the US GDP, just for the political sake of keeping up with the USSR.

If we considered - as we should - the dereliction of climate and the on-going massive reduction of biodiversity as an existential threat, we would act accordingly.

We can decarbonize in time. But we don't want to "look up", e.g. to listen to the Science.

Australia is having huge fires and large floods every year now - but still elect a government in denial of the causes.

In the USA, the natural disasters are rising sharply in frequency and magnitude (current drought in the West, hurricanes etc).

Etc etc.

When it will become unbearable, we will at last act accordingly. The solutions are there already.

There are many breakthroughs (batteries for example, to store surplus of renewables energies so that it can be used at will when necessary). Far many more would occur if we invested money in research and R&D.

We ought not to bet on a hypothetical magic bullet. Not that we shouldn't fund those research. Startups with small odds to succeeded easily raise VC money since a success would offer a huge ROI.

But the trap is to bet the future of the world on a hypothetical magic bullet when the solutions already exist. We just don't want to do what necessary to implement them.

The USA, Canada, Australia for example emit 3 times more CO2 than France per inhabitant. However, the loss of biodiversity is as fast (and maybe higher) in France (which governments do very little to tackle gashouse emissions).

[dr_dshiv]

I think we agree with each other. I’m not aware even of a plan that would enable timely decarbonization. If you know of one, I’d be interested to read it. But at present, the time targets are completely infeasible. That doesn’t mean amazing progress isn’t being made. For instance, Dubai will be 100% solar powered by 2050. But that’s not fast enough.

Let me know what you think of this article: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/25/magazine/vacl...

[VintageCool]

I think you under-estimate how quickly human populations will mentally adjust to "the new normal" and how much suffering we're willing to tolerate, especially if it happens to someone else on the other side of the planet.