I'd argue that the more energy you use, the more comfortable your life is.
I'd also argue that energy use (at the moment) is pretty linked to how much CO2 you emit.
A lot of the biggest emitters live in democracies.
So, how do you get the majority of the population to vote in politicians who are going to make their lives less comfortable (by taxing / controlling / lessening the amount of CO2 they use)?
Frankly I reckon we, as a civilization, are going to dither and procrastinate up until the point it's far far far too late to do anything meaningful, and then people will try jump on the geoengineering to hack things into place. There was a nice piece in the book "This changes everything" where they were talking about geoengineering. I'll paraphrase, but basically someone said "we'll just alter things in this way", and someone else said "that'll mean droughts in my country". Fun times ahead.
If you haven't read it yet, I recommend "Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air" [0] to get an idea of just how much less energy we need to use if we want to get by with just renewables. I really hope we can get there!
I'd also argue that energy use (at the moment) is pretty linked to how much CO2 you emit.
A lot of the biggest emitters live in democracies.
So, how do you get the majority of the population to vote in politicians who are going to make their lives less comfortable (by taxing / controlling / lessening the amount of CO2 they use)?
Frankly I reckon we, as a civilization, are going to dither and procrastinate up until the point it's far far far too late to do anything meaningful, and then people will try jump on the geoengineering to hack things into place. There was a nice piece in the book "This changes everything" where they were talking about geoengineering. I'll paraphrase, but basically someone said "we'll just alter things in this way", and someone else said "that'll mean droughts in my country". Fun times ahead.
If you haven't read it yet, I recommend "Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air" [0] to get an idea of just how much less energy we need to use if we want to get by with just renewables. I really hope we can get there!
[0] https://www.withouthotair.com/