I am pretty convinced nothing serious will be done. We may get lucky and technology will improve to reduce CO2 output but most likely we’ll just deal with the consequences of climate change. The world has been always been at flux so we may see refugees, wars and realignment of political power. As it has always been.

And IEA admitted that peak oil (conventional) occurred in 2008 and that shale oil may peak before 2025. Russia announced its own peak oil for 2021.

We'll be struggling soon with the worst of climate change at the same time we'll run out of fossil fuels, with no serious alternative available. This looks decidedly like the "Business as usual" World3 simulation of "Limits to Growth"...

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

The issue is that we seem to have triggered two positive feedback loops; methane release from melting ice and loss of Arctic albedo. This means the Earth will continue to warm even in the absence of new emissions, in a runaway fashion.

The runaway fashion isn't obvious to me. Once the ice is gone the albedo won't get worse, and atmospheric methane decays in some decades.

Oh my god, the ice "being gone" is basically the definition of catastrophe. If we get that far then it's way, way, way too late. Saying "once the is is gone the albedo won't get worse" is kind of like saying "eventually the plane that hits the mountain has to stop, and the crash can't get any worse".

And yes, atmospheric methane does decay in decades but the point is that before it does, it depletes sea ice and warms the ocean. The absolute worst-case scenario in a runaway climate model is something like the clathrate gun. [2]

> "One of the most eminent climate scientists in the world, Peter Wadhams, believes an ice-free Arctic will occur one summer in the next few years and that it will likely increase by 50% the warming caused by the CO2 produced by human activity" [1]

[1] : https://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf (sorry, not the primary source)

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis

Depends on what you mean I guess with runaway. Dinosaur age tropicals everywhere? Maybe not. Runaway as in deserts making their way into where they were not before, winters disappearing in many places we are used to having them, coastal cities having to pack up and move. Yeah, I can easily see that over a century or two.

I believe that 2 degrees is possible. Extremely difficult, but possible. There is a solution to the global coordination / first mover problem. Google for Nordhaus' climate club proposal.

The time it takes to hit 2C makes a huge difference. Pushing things back even 1 year means lots of infrastructure that needs to be replaced anyway can be rebuilt in a better location.

The trend of rapid world peace destabilization and depleting (which is somewhat disputed) oil reserves gives some hope to the radical environmentalist that world wars and famine might improve humanity's ecological footprint. What a dark time it is that we have to turn to fantasies like that to feel hopeful.

I enjoyed skimming through the Deep Adaptation paper. I expected a strategy for preventing climate crisis, but found a sobering look at how to approach it and deal with it.

Some form of socialist planned economy will be necessary, you're right that world capitalism can't do it.