But if some technology makes it 1000x easier, cheap, and doesn't require the involvement or even consent of governments, then that's a win for science right? And avoids leadership / human nature.
If you could find a solution that was a few tens of billions times cheaper than any current solution, a private individual might be able to fund it. That might work. But right now, no government will pay even for a solution 1000x cheaper than current options.
This is why no one is considering Geo Engineering.
Remember, if you don't want to solve a problem, the cost of solving it is always too high, even if the cost is only 1USD...
I think geo engineering is not heartily pursued out of an abundance of caution: having established we can seriously damage the climate, many of the solutions that try to put the breaks on look even riskier because we don't want to overshoot. Or rely on unproven technology when the crisis is here, now.
(Not to be flippant, but the relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/349/ describes this well: sometimes things get a lot worse when an engineer tinkers with them.)
Geoengineering by taking excess CO2 out of the atmosphere, using machines that we can simply switch off, and storing the CO2 in deep basalt formations where it turns into rock, is almost certainly lower risk than leaving the excess CO2 in the air.
That doesn't mean we should rely on this entirely and not attempt to reduce emissions. But we're also past the point where we can rely on emission reductions alone.
If we don't have the will (budget) to stop emissions at source, why would be have it to go out and sequester it from the general atmosphere? Isn't that harder technically, more expensive and more energy consuming etc?
Distributed costs and concentrated benefits. Each particular emissions reduction plan impacts specific groups that will fight it. General taxation to pay for geo-engineering projects impacts everyone as well, but not in specific ways.
There might be more public support in a moon-shot big engineering project, and fighting the small-government types, than say, reducing emissions for factories and fighting the relevant lobby.
That depends. Cars are on the verge of being pretty cheap to electrify. Long-haul airliners, not so much. The smart thing would be to put a substantial price on carbon, give credit for sequestering, and let the market do the rest.
In the long term, we're going to need net negative emissions anyway. CO2 is already too high and is still rapidly increasing.
Any solution cheap enough that the developed world can shell out for it without worrying about the developing world not paying their fair share would get implemented in an instant.
FYI, the Royal Society says we could fix it with geo engineering for a few 10s of billions USD a year [0]. That seems pretty cheap, only about 10-100USD per person per year for the US and EU. Less if the rest of the developed work chips in. It would even cost less Net as we would save the most from not having to build flood defenses or import food or keep out refugees.
It still boils down to "who pays." And we're in the "I won't even pay my taxes since I can just hide them somewhere and the government won't come after me" phase of capitalism.
The world's going to hell fast. If past is prologue, the Rich will pay for their parts of the world being nice and habitable. Everyone else will be left to suffer.
Get ready to see domed city concepts getting more serious and more cities like Vegas with connected tunnels and shafts between buildings to avoid going outdoors for any reason...
Actually right now we can’t stop climate change without some method of sequestering what we’ve put into the atmosphere and oceans.
Even if we stopped 100% of emissions today, we’ll still have continued warming from the baked in effects of co2 and from continued methane leaks from the earth as it warms. The earth would stabilize somewhere but it would be warmer than we want.
So we need something like this. You’re right that it’s mostly a human nature problem, but it’s still better that we develop tools so they’re useable when things get urgent enough that it becomes short term enough that we act.
Also is solutions get cheap enough that also allows action. Past solutions have been very costly: carbon is how we got the industrial revolution. There was no easy way to go back on that. Ni real options to maintain prosperity other than nuclear, which we had collectively ruled out. (Referring to past, not present. Solar is much cheaper now)
It's a political problem. Problems that don't - or appear to no - spread pain and benefits equally move inexorably towards the political.
But here's the thing. Political problems have political solutions. You just have to figure out a way to adjust who gets hurt and who gets helped until the people happy with the solution have enough power so that they can steamroll those who remain unhappy.
We're now offered a 1001st option.
We will refuse this option too. Because the problem isn't that we can't stop climate change, it's that we don't want to.
That's not a science, engineering, technology problem. It's a human nature, leadership problem.