> Regarding the main part of your comment, what is it you think people should be working on instead?
Well, that's a broad topic! Here's how I look at it:
0 - people are going to continue peopling. Otherwise what's the point? So any argument based on privation ("you need to stop doing everything you like to do because it's sinful") won't work. Some stuff will drop at the margins (I expect meat will become increasingly expensive and other high protein alternatives will displace some of it), but all of that will continue to change gradually, though I hope the derivative will increasing in a non-linear fashion.
1 - concommitent with that: there's an enormous infrastructure of depreciating cap ex. So a power plant built today will be depreciated over the next 40 years. Yes, some economic changes can shorten that but people will try to eke out what they can from them. In fact as renewables increase, the cost of fossil fuels will fall (because of reduced demand) which will make old, polluting plants more viable.
2 - Governments have shown they cannot tackle this problem. I gave a talk at Asilomar a couple of months ago in which I showed a temperature graph and pointed out it's impossible to see the Paris conference on it. This year will be COP 27 and what has changed? Governments have a huge role to play in terms of incentives, but in actual action? Pretty much zip. I think this is an inherent property of some of the good properties of good government so I'm not claiming governments are mendacious, pathetic, controlled by some conspiracy or anything like that. I don't drive a motorcycle underwater, but I would drive one to the beach. Likewise I don't depend on governments to be able to do much directly to improve the global climate, but they can sure help.
3 - We need multiple kinds of improvement:
A - yes, we need emissions reductions and replacements for emitting activity (e.g. "alternative energy"). Though there are many sources of GHG emissons, and I don't see a way to replace most of them (e.g. we can't simply stop growing rice -- see point 0). This is "stop making things worse"
B - Because of point 1, some people need to work on adaptation. The climate isn't going to go back to the status quo ante right away (actually never -- see point 4) so the next 50-100 years will have to presume that the weather is going to get worse (hotter/colder, wetter/dryer depending on where you are). I am uninterested in this problem BTW.
C - Climate repair (sometimes called restoration) is the longest term and most important. We do need ways to change the chemistry of the air and oceans back to 1775.* Reducing insolation, removing GHGs, etc. Like I said, I really only believe in a variety of solar-powered chemistry, both biological and not. Look at some natural processes that can be sped up, like synthetic limestone which has been discussed on HN. (Maybe let's not consider the gold standard of setting off 50 massive volcanic eruptions.) Most of these are only feasible at certain concentrations of a GHG, which is one reason I'm more in favour of biologics which are more adaptable and generally easier to power. I talk with a variety of people about these topics every week, but all my efforts right now are on methane, because there's a small amount of it and it's been responsible for about 1/3 of the temperature rise to date.
There's a subgoal here, which is zapping emissions at the point of generation (so called "point source remediation"). Catalytic converters on cars work for some GHGs (though you can't stick one on a swamp); some efforts to zap methane in barns or mines are under way, etc. We could paint the insides of building ventilation with TiO2 and install UV lamps; if they could be cleaned would they work? Who knows. But stopping the emission when the concentration is highest is generally the easiest place to do it.
4 - in terms of climate repair, we aren't really going to ever "go back". We have no idea what the critical points are (where the path of the hysteresis curve changes) and will be curating the climate indefinitely. That's not terrible; we have been curating the forests of Europe for a thousand years or more (is there any original forest on that continent) and there's little "wild" forest in new england either. So it's quite doable from a social standpoint. We'll just find a point were we find the climate on earth adequate.
5 - Carbon credit can be used to cover a lot of sins (see point 1) and offset credits (don't cut down a tree) are tough to justify. But can be a pretty good way to fund repair and remediation, and could be a good way to shift the cost onto the people who create majority of the problem.
* I used to think that "1775" automatically made everybody think of James Watt's first significant patent, but it seems in the US it makes people think of political events around that time. Apparently not everybody is a steam nerd -- who knew?