The problem is that, given we're failing the straightforward task of curtailment even now, what are the chances that we can successfully achieve curtailment and sequestering in the required time-frame?

Curtailment is a large task but we know what to do. Sequestering would also be a large task but what to do is uncertain. Curtailment so far has been a corrupt circus with "pledges" and other indirect inducements ("carbon credits") being most of what was done. These indirect inducements primarily served as speculative vehicles and advertising gloss.

And here, I just google'd up what you'd expect: A bitcoin-based platform for trading carbon credit. Now you can use the certainty of damaging the environment to make a promise to repair it.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/ibm-and-veridium-transf...

On the other hand, global fossil fuel use has not peaked yet. Global population has not peaked yet. Many countries have worse cost-and-schedule problems with attempted deployments of nuclear reactors than they did 40 years ago. We are barely reaching "maybe starting to flatten out emissions" -- actually trending down toward zero is just a mirage in the distance at present. The opportunity to stabilize the climate just by cutting emissions is now in the past.

I feel like humanity is moving toward making the changes it needs, and has a better toolset for those changes than before, but is changing much slower and later than it should have. We're out of completely safe options and have to try to navigate between various risky options. I can understand the perspective of people who feel like we're acting too late and there is no chance of industrial civilization surviving into the 22nd century, even though I don't share that perspective.

Indeed, but if solar power is now the preferred energy source, solar power could be being used for all new energy need as well as help us cut back on fossil fuel's original usage.

But it's not. That's a world-killing problem.

What we're out of is laize faire options. Neither sequestering nor dramatic winding down of fossil fuel consumption is going to happen without a world level authority dictating things. Sadly, that seems unlikely.

Although it seems unlikely today, a military coalition to enforce stricter emissions standards may be something that comes together in the future.

Unfortunately the only parties interested in winding down fossil fuel use are Europe and China. If Europe is further disrupted by the infusion of right-wing politics, that might leave China going it alone.

At some point this will tip from "wouldn't it be nice" to "this is a battle for survival". A tactical strike on coal plants or other sources of egregious carbon emission seems ridiculous today, but it might be no different than striking a nuclear weapons lab is, something that's got the potential to cause immense harm that needs to be eliminated.

That's not a bright future at all.

Another way to put this - we're not out of safe options if we're not doing the safe options. We may need to do risky options once we are fully engaged in doing the safe option but today, now, we have not yet acquired the ability to even do the safe options consistently.

Sure, maybe the risky options will be necessary but if efforts to do the safe get pissed away with corrupt deceptions, how are we expecting efforts to do the risky efforts won't suffer the safe fate?

That some amount of CO2 production is being reduced almost at random isn't much of an argument that human society has the ability to choose a path and follow it effectively. How many fake versions of sequestering do you think scammers will come up with if the money ever appears?

A regulatory body capable of doing CO2 reduction might have the competence to then regulate sequestering. Random activity by supposedly concerned citizens or something just invites abuse.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=36812

Coal consumption in 2018 is on track for a 4% decline below 2017:

https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/coal.php

That same short-term outlook predicts a further 5% drop in 2019 over 2018.

It is at least physically possible that the US could consume more coal in 2019 than in 2018, though only a sucker would take that bet. But it's not even in the realm of possibility for the US to consume an all-time-high amount of coal in 2019, greater than 2008. Too many coal plants have already been shut down and scrapped since 2008. It takes years to build a new plant. There would be years of advance warning if the US were going to reach a new peak of coal consumption, because there would have to be a large wave of new coal plant construction first.

And it’s not as if the world has been standing still over the last decades, huge progress has been made and many technologies are at the borderline of being economical or cheaper than the alternatives, and are continually falling in price. Once we push the boulder over the crest of the hill it will roll down unaided. The economy can change much quicker than we think.

I agree that many technologies for replacing fossil usage have now achieved or are close to economic superiority, and that change can come very rapidly with economic superiority. But I also think that reaching this point has taken too long and now we will need active measures as well as emissions cuts.

So, due to these different marginal costs, there's no way even completely practical, economical solar can stop fossil fuel usage quickly without active regulator intervention.

Note that there is also quite a bit of already-built fossil capacity that can be retired early by economic pressures. Not every big fossil project has operational costs as low as Saudi oil.

For example, the Navajo Generating Station is the largest American coal plant west of the Mississippi River. It was built in the 1970s. It has a stable, low cost for coal since it is supplied by the nearby dedicated Kayenta Mine. Just a few years ago it was planned to run until 2044. But the falling costs of gas and renewables have made it economically uncompetitive. It's now going to close at the end of 2019, 25 years early:

https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/energy/2017/0...

I agree on the broader point that fossil fuel emissions won't be curbed quickly without active regulator intervention. Since that intervention may arrive late-or-never in different nations, it's one of the reasons that I believe active carbon dioxide removal measures will be necessary in addition to emissions reduction efforts.

Both regulating carbon emissions and active carbon dioxide removal measures will, in the end, come down to some state or world body acting in a coordinated way to push money at this problem. It seems like people are imagining active removal would be easier in this fashion than basic regulation. Why?

The largest one build seems to be 10 GW between Xinjiang and Anhui. It's still quite a bit from the scale we'd need to wean of natural gas however.

Operators, by the way, love this concept. It means they can continue production basically forever, if they want. But there's a big economic disadvantage in being the first mover, which is why we need government regulations forcing it.

If you do something fairly extreme for curtailment, like a tax on fuel that motorists really notice, the other party will get voted in and they'll undo it. Now you've got kicked out of office, with no environmental benefit to show for it.

And if you go further with something like a ban on pet dogs or ban on meat-eating? Same thing but faster and with more certainty.

The world needs to declare a WAR ON CO2 and put it on a war-time footing. Further considerations of tinkering around with an environment we've already de-stabilized only shows we haven't learned our lesson. We don't know enough to know what's safe... except the way things were.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.

Given more time I'm sure he would have come up with other world destroying chemicals.