Or we can accept that massive geoengineering is going to be required and start setting up the engineering and legislative frameworks to minimize the risks.
I'm writing from a friend's massive house heated to 21C/70F, and built to last what, thirty years at best? Of a lot of plastic materials, and stuffed with extra electronics and vehicles that also cost a considerable amount to make and dispose of. Most of this stuff is unnecessary junk.
Geoengineering, if we opt for it, absolutely must be coupled with toothy regulations governing resource harvesting and use. Don't pick the first berry you see, and don't pick the last.
We've kicked this can so far down the road that effecive reform on our habits will be worse than pulling teeth. It won't be easy, and will involve things like respecting a woman's right to govern her own body (I'm in the USA where this is increasingly a concern), respecting other animals' right to exist, treating meat as a rare luxury and maybe going so far as to stop farming meat and return to hunting, and getting our entertainment closer to the local seasonal patterns of life on Earth. Get my drift?
Another example: Electric cars are not a solution; using cars less is the way to go. It won't be an easy life, lesss reliant on technology, but it will be more meaningful.
I don't disagree in general, I believe we need to be more aware of our consumption but what you describe is an ideal that I believe most individuals in the world do not share. Its a world that would require massive depopulation, how are we going to get there?
I think India's just dropped below replacement rate?
Without conflating them, you have to have noticed that the same people tend to be on the wrong side on both issues. Which is a shame, because there is nothing more conservative than safeguarding one’s environment and way of life, but it is what it is.
The consequences are here already, we cannot wait for something that might be working or not eventually, in a century. We cannot depend on hypothetical future technology that will save us all. And none of the possible solutions he have now can scale to the extent needed, by multiple orders of magnitude. None of the flashy carbon capture demonstrations hold up to scrutiny because fundamentally the problem is to extract ppm out of humongous volumes.
By all means, let’s keep researching and developing solutions (that’s what’s paying my bills for now, so I am not going to complain). But don’t assume that there will be a magical “solve it” button. There won’t.
The term geoengineering may need to be dropped. It sounds scary. But that belies that we're already doing it, just unintentionally.