You're not really disagreeing with the previous poster.
We need to do what you suggest as quickly as possible. That means some things that depend on that carbon downstream should be stopped, replaced with alternatives or at the very least heavily discouraged while a market for substitutes created. But how do we decide which ones to do first? Ideally the cheapest and biggest impact. Our best tool for doing so is probably a well regulated market with a carbon fee.
Unfortunately, the same groups that caused the problem, then tried to cover up the problem, then attacked all the solutions continues to talk about how great a carbon tax will be, while also funding the politicians who will never let it happen.
But, if you want to know what the most sensible answer is then just look at what vaguely sensible countries are doing. What they're doing today is probably what we should all have been doing 20 years ago.
This usually involves putting some kind of financial incentive on electricity producers to move to low carbon alternatives (gas is fine as a short term substitute, but if we'd started 20 years ago we'd no longer need it today) and other CO2 emitters to use electricity rather than fossil fuels (e.g. cars).
Other basic elements are carbon tariffs to stop other countries undercutting your efforts.
It's not rocket science. The whole "this is impossible" stuff is just bullshit from the people who don't want to do it. EVs, Solar and Wind Turbines were all impossible according to the same people. Most of the moonshot stuff is trying to come up with a technical solution to the political issues, and that's hard.
> It's not rocket science. The whole "this is impossible" stuff is just bullshit from the people who don't want to do it. Most of the moonshot stuff is trying to come up with a technical solution to the political issues, and that's hard.
If all recorded history is anything to go by, the moonshots are probably our best realistic hope, because technology is easier than politics. The "people who don't want to" use existing solutions have all the power and it's going to be very hard to convince them to change their minds; they're protected by the common folk because they have the "high ground" of having their interests be aligned with short-term interests of regular people, while the required changes will necessarily inconvenience everyone in the short term.
No, we shouldn't be counting on new technologies to get us out of this, but it's still by far the most likely outcome out of possible futures where we do get out of this.
So it's easy if all countries agree. If that is not the case you need to find out how much carbon from the ground was used in each item at your border. At that points it becomes rocket science?
You just have to add a country wide tariff until they implement a carbon fee. Gives them the option of disadvantaging all their exports or joining a global collaboration to meet goals they actually agree with and will benefit from as long as everyone does it together.
As I said, look at what the more sensible countries are doing today and you'll see what we all should have been doing 20 years ago. No magical technology required:
The UN projects that the global population increases from a population of 7.7 billion in 2019 to 11.2 billion by the end of the century. [1]
> but stopping it faster either requires severely authoritarian measures or increasing economic safety, which counters the benefits.
Sounds like you really don't want to consider this solution at all, because you feel it can only be accomplished by a decree that would be constraining people's liberty?
Have you considered the possibility that some people might want to contribute more to sustainability of their own free will?
For each American couple who reads this post and decides to have one less baby, over the next 79 years the world will be spared from 1,562 metric tonnes (1,722 tons) of C02 emissions. [2, 3]
> And reducing birth rates too fast sets us up for disaster too.
Are you saying humans aren't capable of living with zero population growth? If that's what you are saying, could you explain the nature of the difficulties you project?
Birth rates are falling across the board, but stopping it faster either requires severely authoritarian measures or increasing economic safety, which counters the benefits. And reducing birth rates too fast sets us up for disaster too.
All it requires is education. I'd say a quarter of the over educated I know do not have kids, myself included. After a certain level of education, our society strikes one as no place moral to bring more people.
To allow education of enough people requires a significant economic lift. Not going to happen fast enough.
UN projections puts the end of population growth at some point within the next century, but accelerating that change fast enough to have an impact on climate change would require dramatic interventions, and also will not happen because it would be absolutely politically untenable for most politicians to stunt growth that way (you'll note, politicians many places are encouraging more children, and China has kept loosening up their own policies because current birth rates are causing concerns - politicians would in general rather encourage more children than open up for more immigration, and opening up for more immigration is in any case a stopgap).
So, while reducing growth is absolutely part of it, we're already doing that pretty much at the rate we can expect to be politically tenable. There are parts of Africa we could encourage a faster reduction in (e.g. some of the absolute worst, like Niger, would likely fall off a lot faster with more economic development assistance), but it's not going to do enough to speed up population reversal in time.
Remember that changes in birth rates has a trailing effect of a couple of decades, typically. So even if we could make changes now to education for example that will drastically cut birth rates eventually, it'd not affect population size enough in time.
We need to do what you suggest as quickly as possible. That means some things that depend on that carbon downstream should be stopped, replaced with alternatives or at the very least heavily discouraged while a market for substitutes created. But how do we decide which ones to do first? Ideally the cheapest and biggest impact. Our best tool for doing so is probably a well regulated market with a carbon fee.
Unfortunately, the same groups that caused the problem, then tried to cover up the problem, then attacked all the solutions continues to talk about how great a carbon tax will be, while also funding the politicians who will never let it happen.
But, if you want to know what the most sensible answer is then just look at what vaguely sensible countries are doing. What they're doing today is probably what we should all have been doing 20 years ago.
This usually involves putting some kind of financial incentive on electricity producers to move to low carbon alternatives (gas is fine as a short term substitute, but if we'd started 20 years ago we'd no longer need it today) and other CO2 emitters to use electricity rather than fossil fuels (e.g. cars).
Other basic elements are carbon tariffs to stop other countries undercutting your efforts.
It's not rocket science. The whole "this is impossible" stuff is just bullshit from the people who don't want to do it. EVs, Solar and Wind Turbines were all impossible according to the same people. Most of the moonshot stuff is trying to come up with a technical solution to the political issues, and that's hard.