It’s definitely not the kind of thing where I would engage in hand wringing over human stupidity. It sucks and it’s unfair, but it’s the situation we have to deal with.
Are we really so against the wall that we cannot come up with something better than the economically suicidal shutdowns?
on my side of the pond we've committed to a 50% reduction in emissions by 2030 as compared to 1990... that's just 9 years, and we are _still_ at 1990 levels or thereabouts, meaning we have done essentially _nothing_ in 30 years.
I'd damn well say we're against the wall.
CO2 emissions went down during the early pandemic, but quickly started climbing back towards normal again.[0] In 2020 overall, global emissions fell 6.4%[1]. If we maintained that trajectory, it still wouldn't be enough to stop climate change.
[0]https://time.com/5943530/covid-19-co2-emissions-climate-chan... [1]https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/08/carbon-d...
"Cuts" means cuts in the release of new CO2, it doesn't mean that this has to be accomplished through shutting down the economy - you misunderstood the statement.
We're not going to deal with it. We're going to continue partying for another 200 years. Then we're all going to get woozy and stupid. Then the population will crater. I don't think humanity will go away entirely, but I don't see a reason to be optimistic about the next 500 or 1000 years. This is the peak.
The way I see it it's gonna be all about energy. There are absolutely insane amounts of it everywhere, and all our power generation is like nothing compared to what's going on at planetary, cosmic scales. The question is are gonna be able to tap into it, and make use of it? If so, all our problems will seem silly, but for that to happen we need to keep up the innovation, keep up improving technology, keep the economy running and don't fall into the trap of regressing into a dark age.
If we just shut down everything and go back into the woods, we're definitely gonna be at the whim of whatever is going to happen and there will be nothing we can do about it.