Most of us just aren't buying what you're selling, that's all. From an energy standpoint, we want a certain amount of work done. We don't care if the energy generation is CO2 producing or not. Make it cheaper and more plentiful. We want to live in the future, not the stone age.
Let's play "trolley problem".
There is a switch in your house, as there is in every house in the City Of Hypothesis. It has two settings. "Safe" and "Unsafe". Every day you have to put a dollar in the machine or it trips back to "Unsafe". Every day, if less than (say) 1% of the population put a dollar in the machine, a random person in the city falls down dead. Nobody is quite sure what would happen if we tried to do away with the switches, but everyone thinks it would be terrible.
Do you have a moral obligation to put a dollar in the machine? Sometimes? Ever?
Does it matter how big the percentage is? At 1% I suspect enough people would do it every day that it would never be a problem. What about 10%? 50%?
(People have suggested centrally monitoring the switches, but this has been rejected on grounds of privacy. You don't know who's setting the switch unless you look in their house.)
Cheaper and more plentiful? Sure, those are helpful to talk about. Whether the government should be subsidizing particular things? Also useful.
"Making me feel guilty" or the science? Probably not productive.
No it did not. It said "stop using guilt to try to change behavior".
People hate that, and it turned this subject in a political issue (which it should never have become) instead of the engineering issue it should have been.
Guilt -> backlash -> people reject science. That sounds an awful lot like you're saying science would drive progress but people aren't changing behavior because "you're" making them feel guilty.
It's not _just_ an engineering issue, but if you believe it is why on earth are you contributing to the politics?
It's a science and engineering problem, not a moral one. The religious fervor around much of the environmental movement (complete with significant social virtue signaling) turns me off both the person and the message by association.
I do think it's a little short sighted to the ignore moral/philosophical implications of anything that effects large groups of people. But it doesnt really matter if you can stay reasonable The kneejerk "don't tell me what to feel guilty about or I'll do the opposite" reactions are pretty funny, though.
I'm as anti-judgy and anti-bad argument as anyone but this seems a bit silly. Yes people are awful at convincing other people of things, but it's entirely unreasonable to expect anyone to package up knowledge in a way that soothes peoples' feelings.