You don't think taxing meat by its environmental cost will work?
> crack down on resource-intensive industries (almond milk is INCREDIBLY inefficient and only getting more popular, for instance)
Almond uses an order of magnitude less land, emissions and water than dairy so why not crack down on dairy if you feel this way?
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46654042
We already grow then feed soy to cows to get milk, why not just drink soy directly?
Also, you're absolutely correct that dairy milk is less efficient by a long-shot, I was just pointing to it because I know a lot of people I personally know are moving to it and away from dairy as though it's a quality alternative. It's better, but still not great.
Economically, it would work. Politically? At least in the US, people would vote out any party that installed taxes that reduced meat consumption by an significant amount. We don't even have the political willpower to make energy slightly more expensive.
- It still needs energy to be built and to run, so it still (ultimately) depends on petrol to run. Petrol still emits CO2 and, more worryingly, conventional crude oil has peaked in 2008 and is in decline since then: https://damnthematrix.wordpress.com/2019/04/11/iea-2018-worl...
- At the scale we need to capture carbon, we start hitting other issues, namely the shortage of materials needed for building them
Unfortunately those technologies won't "solve" the problem, merely move the goalposts
There's no way humans are just gonna cut back on eating meat, demand a removal of single-use plastics, crack down on resource-intensive industries (almond milk is INCREDIBLY inefficient and only getting more popular, for instance), and fight to pass laws which force companies to get cleaner (thus increasing the cost of those products).
I've met a handful of people in my life who care enough to live a greener lifestyle beyond making one or two relatively convenient changes in their life, let alone overhaul their entire lifestyle.
It's absolutely down to the wizards working on green tech to solve the issue.