Technology really is the only way out.

With very few exceptions, any affordances technology brings are consumed by humanity's insatiable appetite before they can benefit the environment. If technology figures out how to make $X more energy efficient, we just run more $Xs such that the (trajectory of) energy consumption is constant.

A big exception is energy. Net electricity usage per capita has leveled out or declined in the developed world since around the year 2000.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.ELEC.KH.PC?locat...

Isn’t just counting the developed world missing the problem though? We also moved all of our manufacturing to the developing world at the same time and they saw a much greater increase.

Shipping stuff around the world and moving your pollution to Asia doesn’t do much good when we all share the same atmosphere.

This is really interesting; I wasn't aware. That said, "per capita" is the wrong metric since we're discussing humanity in aggregate. I might still be wrong about energy in general, however. In any case, I think the broader principle holds.

No. Political will is the only way out. Technology alone is not going to help when politics is geared to subsidize dirty fuel, permit polluting industry and avoid economic interventions that would help, like carbon taxes.

Technology makes cleaner solutions cheaper, rendering all that irrelevant.

Over time, perhaps. But we don't have time. Where are the low-methane cows? The low-carbon flights? When will cement pollute less? Why are we still generating 61% of power with coal and gas [0]? Part of the answer to all of these things is that there is a lot invested in maintaining the status quo. Airlines getting away with tax-free fuel isn't a technology problem. How long, realistically, until any significant proportion of current meat eaters switch to lab-grown meat or other alternative? And how much political capital will alternatives need to accumulate to take on the meat industry?

Sure, technology can help with any of these problems but it'll take forever as long as governments only pay lip service to wanting to change things.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation#Methods...

I think you're both right. I don't think we'll get much mileage by limiting consumption via legislation, but I do think subsidizing industries like renewables and green research (and phasing out dirty energy subsidies) combines policy and technology to get us there faster (in time?).

I think political technology is the way out. Right now we can't coordinate political will efficiently enough. Nations aren't powerful enough in a global capitalist world economy and even our best flavours of representational democracy doesn't have enough integrity to make the right decisions.

"It doesn't matter if I take the cost for changing my ways if I can't trust the others to not eat the benefit."

My big hope is that technology will evolve to a point where we don’t need physical bodies anymore and pretty much live in cyberspace.

Yes, assuming you mean "way out" in the same sense the parent post meant "getting off at the station".