The bigger hurdle is the billions of people who believe climate change is real and refuse to do anything about it. Apathy is our collective undoing.

Any proposed approach to large-scale change that essentially says 'billions of people should just do x', regardless of the nature of x, is dead before it starts. That's not how change works. Contra the simpler-minded pop variants of libertarianism, humans just don't spontaneously decide on their patterns of life. Indeed that we don't is almost as good a definition of what it is to be human as any: we are acculturated beings to our core.

There are a bunch of ways large complex cultures have empirically (historically) been shown to change - via external shocks, leadership, social movements, technological innovation etc. Not one of them involve billions of people all spontaneously deciding to be exceptional (a mathematical impossibility!) and behaving counter-culturally as you might wish. If that's your only hope, we're done.

I don't think that's necessarily the hurdle. The people that believe climate change is real are more likely than not billionaires or wealthy individuals. Right now, there's a real divide between what people believe and the actions of their representatives because attempting to fix the climate isn't profitable. And capitalism is real bad at solving problems without a profit incentive. This combined with industries and individuals whose lives depend on climate change not being a threat means that it's just another class warfare battle.

Solving this problem requires new elected officials who believe climate change is an issue and then taking actions that'll likely outright destroy prior industries.

> The people that believe climate change is real are more likely than not billionaires or wealthy individuals.

I'm not understanding this point. It seems people at many different economic levels believe that climate change is real. It's not only the wealthy who believe...

That's easy to fix if we can just put a price on carbon, as proposed in HR 763 (mentioned further up in this thread).

I've never really understood why that's significant other than perhaps degree of motivation. Even for someone who doesn't believe in climate change or the man made aspect of it I'd have thought, say, cleaner air, cars with instant torque and cheaper energy would be broadly desirable.

They would be broadly desirable if there were no downsides to them.

A $2500 used Toyota Corolla beats a Model 3 on purchase price, insurance, 5 year TCO, and on "how far and flexibly can I road trip it?"

Dealing with climate change is going to cost a lot of money and require companies to change their behaviors. If they don't even believe there's a problem, then it will be harder to convince them to change.

>> cars with instant torque and cheaper energy <<

Certainly not cheaper or cleaner.

It's not, a lot of people are driven by spite and actively reject those things:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2013/04/13043...

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

The biggest hurdle is the two largest nations on earth not caring about it

Which country are you referring to for #2? Canada? Or China?

China and US (in that order)

https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/sc...