I'm trying to find a good way to articulate how stupid and dangerous this attitude is that you see from enlightened centrists - that climate change is real, but we don't have to do anything drastic (i.e. costly) this moment because we'll "innovate our way out of it" because "we've always done it."

This can sound true-ish because of past existential crises that were resolved through technological innovations, for example, World War II and the Space Race. But what is missing is the urgency that's actually needed to do anything meaningful. It's like if FDR said "we need to defeat the Nazis but that costs too much, here's my plan for defeating half of the Nazis over the next 50 years" or if JFK said "we're going to put a man on the moon by 2010".

Also, since an actual solution would require a great deal of global cooperation and coordination, I don't think there's any scenario where the US is capable of addressing climate change in any meaningful way.

  • D61 [any]
    ·
    3 years ago

    No new technology is needed to try to survive climate change only new ways of thinking and the will to act on them.

    • Mother [any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      What we need is a complete reanalysis of how we interact with nature. If someone invented a whizz banger that sucked out all CO2 from the atmosphere humanity would still go extinct it would just take longer (and not too much longer at that). Or optimistically, we would end up in a world where the only trees are grown for profit, the only animals are farmed for eating and three people own all seven continents. That’s a Richard Powers paraphrase (from the overstory)

      • sooper_dooper_roofer [none/use name]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Or optimistically, we would end up in a world where the only trees are grown for profit, the only animals are farmed for eating and three people own all seven continents

        Bon jovi voice
        WE'RE HALFWAY THEEEERE

        (more like 3/4 tbh)

    • Norm_Chumpsky [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      True. Mitigating technologies like carbon capture will never be as good as not burning the fuel to begin with. It's a shell game to feel like we're doing something without doing the one thing that's actually necessary: reducing consumption.

    • UlyssesT
      ·
      21 days ago

      deleted by creator

      • D61 [any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        There was a time when I was one of those people. I still think for those of us living outside of large cities, its still useful but mass transit is definitely going to be doing the most good.