Or maybe it's one of those things that won't go out with a bang. It'll just be a slow whimper, as life degrades and there is no emergency "declared".
Ultimately this is a failure of collective action. The mechanism simply isn't there. It certainly isn't democracy.
Well-off Californians or Londoners may say so and switch to an electric car and a powerwall at home.
People in rural China, in India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, central Asia, central Africa care much more about putting some food on the table, and about having electricity, and about going around in absence of great public transport infrastructure. So they run thermal power stations, they burn coal, they drive gasoline-powered motorbikes, old Western cars and trucks, because they don't have a serious affordable alternative. They have more salient stuff to care about than penguins.
And they are, in total, literally half the world population.
https://youtu.be/zJdqJu-6ZPo?si=KG_etuletTl4SKgZ
To your point who will make what sacrifice, as that is what is needed but is it reasonable or realistic to expect this? Seem the best approach is we need some serious tech development and fast.
The vast majority of climate impact fits within 1) population, 2) power generation and 3) transportation. No.2 gets a bunch of focus, but 1) and 3) seem far less and sub issues that have little relative impact get far more attention.
People drop simple "we must do something" but it's so complex and I feel ultimately few humans want to make either the real sacrifice needed or investment in change so we're stuck in the middle and along for the ride.
But cars are still needed in many areas, and even in dense cities with excellent public transport. In this role, electric cars are strictly better than gasoline cars, because they can be powered by solar or hydro or wind or nuclear energy right now.
Also, I know a number of people who despise dense cities and want suburbia or countryside. Again, if they could fuel their cars from solar panels on their roofs (or shopping center roofs, parking lot roofs, etc), it would be strictly better than burning more oil.
Which "humans" exactly? First they elect politicians for feel-good green promises, but then when time comes to actually pay the price of becoming "greener" they lose their shit like "I meant all _other_ people to make sacrifices for green future, not _me_!!!". For good examples see Gilets jaunes or recent German walkback from fossil fuel heating systems ban that was supposed to start from 2024.
The bad part is that it’s happening way too slow because of a lack of collective action as you suggest.
I don’t believe the problem is fundamentally democracy. Democratic countries have taken action in the past famously with CFCs that was probably unthinkable. But clearly Democracy is insufficient.
We’ve tried several mechanisms but none of them have worked so far.
You realise there's almost a 1:1 correlation between energy use and GDP?
We're not fundamentally reducing the amount of energy we're using, and there's nothing to suggest that we can seriously replace oil with other means. Think plastic etc.
But we should decrease carbon emissions. Partly it will be by turning to fully electrical processes (trains, trucks, etc) and generating more electricity using more solar, wind, and nuclear power plants. Partly it will be by turning to synthetic fuels, again powered by non-fossil-fuel sources. Burning hydrocarbons is fine if you recycle the CO₂ after that.
The goal is to eliminate CO2 emissions, not eliminate the use of oil generally.
For plastics production, that goal could be achieved by migrating extraction, refining, manufacturing, and transport to carbon neutral energy sources.
Of course, moving away from non-biodegradable plastics, in general, is also a good idea for a host of other reasons.
But given oil is also used in, for example, the production of fertilizer, we're probably gonna need to be able to extract it and use it sustainably for a while yet.
We all worked together to boil an egg, so democracy can make a five-tier wedding cake no problem! It’s not that I believe we can’t solve the problem, it’s just a bad metaphor. And that we’ve collectively chosen to value our own comfort over our children and grandchildren.
Until that isn't the driving force in our society, I can't see much changing sadly.
In 2001, US stance on the Kyoto Protocol held sway, and its ratification might have supercharged global climate efforts / green technological advancements.
It's ironic that some skeptics label what amounts to broad scientific consensus as being part of a "death cult"; classic projection.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2001/mar/29/globalwa...
I imagine folks might get going if they ever manage to set a river on fire?
It's not the people ignoring the issue. It's the people actively working against a solution.
Probably the last day that we're still around as a species.
Displace oil with something better and you can win.
Unfortunately people become climate activists instead of engineers. Demand someone else fix things.
It's absolutely insane the % of global resources are controlled by so few.
It's not all controlled by a single trillionaire.
Just because these are the biggest funds on earth, does not make them some beautiful steward of your retirement.
Instead of investing in individual stocks like Microsoft, Vanguard's index funds make it easy to invest in e.g. an index of all US stocks, which is less volatile.
What exactly is it you find so sinister about index funds?
And why do you think Vanguard (a co-op) is worse than Fidelity (a publicly traded company which also provides similar retirement index funds)? Is it just because Vanguard's funds are more popular and therefore bigger?