On top of that you have had climate activists pushing for very large change to happen incredibly quickly (arguably needed). But it’s an incredibly hard sell to the public who won’t except a negative impact on their quality of life.
Basically:
1. People are unwilling to make changes that they perceive as being a net negative to their quality of life.
2. Businesses are unwilling to make changes that they expect to have a net negative to their bottom line.
3. Politicians are unwilling to ask for either of the above to happen because they want to be re-elected.
The social fabric of the western societies had been severely damaged.
Trust in science is at an all time low. The absurdly rich are absurdly richer. Not few people are now flirting openly with the idea to simply abandon those bulky civil liberties of the 20th century (2nd half) in order to save the world in the long run. So, in order to satisfy 2. ("green washing") and 3. ("emergency state") 1. (civil liberties) is the obvious pawn "sacrifice".
I don't think that's the case. It's a coordination problem. People don't want to reduce their quality of life if they don't know for sure that others won't do that as well. Most things in life and in human psychology are relative, in constant comparison to our peers.
I think it also helps to give people multiple reasons for making a change. So for example as a household we changed our diet by only have meat once a week now, combination of health and environmental benefits pushed us to make the change (Could never go fully vegetarian though).
Pushing people to walk/cycle works because you have both environmental/health arguments.
The difficult one is encouraging people to not excessively heat their houses (we should all be turning our thermostats down a couple of degrees), but maybe cost is a factor there.
Besides, we don't have to scupper our quality of life. Nuclear remains on the table, for example. And it turns out thumb-twiddling for long enough has made wind & solar competitive and they're getting better. The biggest win would be cutting down population sizes and that seems to be happening naturally because it enables people to live more comfortable lives.
The cloud of massive inequality and diminished opportunities for people of childbearing age has a silver lining after all...
The idea that solving the climate crisis would have a negative impact on people's quality of life is one that has been successfully promoted by the fossil fuel industry. But it's not true. We could get to a net zero economy AND deliver improvements to (most) people's quality of life.
A few quick thoughts:
* I read that the richest 1% of Americans are responsible for 30% of American carbon emissions, although I'm struggling to find the source of that. It was easy, however, to find stats that indicate the richest 1% of people across the globe are responsible for 15% of global carbon emissions, which is nearly twice as much as the poorest 50%. The vast majority of us can keep on living our lives as normal. The 1% need to stop jet-setting and ripping around in lambos. That's not going to harm my quality of life. [1]
* Investments in green energy and related technologies are creating a job boom and plenty of wealth for the people participating in the green revolution. There are lots of direct economic benefits. [2]
* Air pollution from burning fossil fuels is responsible for ~1 in 5 deaths worldwide. Imagine the increase in quality of life for everyone with far cleaner air. [3]
* Millions of people, myself included, suffer from (entirely rational) feelings of anxiety, worry and depression related to climate change. The knowledge that we are destroying the planet, killing off animal and plant species by the thousands, and ruining the future of my children and grandchildren is a daily drag on my happiness and sense of well-being. I would feel so much better knowing that we were actually doing what we needed to do to solve this crisis. That would be a huge benefit to my quality of life! [4]
1: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20211025-climate-how-to-m...
2: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/renewable-energy-jo...
3: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/news/fossil-fuel-air-p...
4: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/06/health/climate-anxiety-th...
Anyway, what is still nice is that it should be easier to adapt to 3-5ºC once we're all doing something for 1.5ºC than if we were doing nothing at all, i.e. static friction is always higher than kinetic friction. I think the true covert goal at the moment is to at least get things moving and have everyone jump on it asap.
Source: I build/code software related to sustainability.
5 degrees is a nightmare scenario for the whole world. Albeit I think it’s far more likely if we have to finally admit we’re on the pathway to 3 degrees, many countries might independently deploy solar geoengineering projects to save their skin (especially island nations)
This, from a business point of view, if we talk about things like "the entire city will flood in 20 years" (which is what would happen to some places on the 5ºC pathway), then there's not really much to do, honestly.
"In 1979, the Charney Report from the US National Academy of Sciences suggested that ECS was likely somewhere between 1.5C and 4.5C per doubling of CO2. Nearly 40 years later, the best estimate of sensitivity is largely the same. This has led some to question why there has been so little progress on estimating climate sensitivity."
Is this quote above now no longer true? If not, please provide a link.
More concretely, have a look at the latest IPCC report [1], page SPM-16. Three of the five scenarios include temperature rises from 3 to 5 °C. Based on the last decade, the world has not reduced total CO2 emissions at all (not even slowed), despite its knowledge about climate change. Therefore, I have reason to believe that the three bad scenarios (intermediate to high CO2 emission), are more likely to happen than scenarios covering halted or little CO2 emission.
[1]: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6...
Climate Emergencies 1966 - Oil gone in 10 years 1967 - Dire famine forecast by 1975 1968 - Overpopulation will spread worldwide 1969 - Everyone will disappear in a Cloud of Blue Steam in 1989 1970 - World will use up its natural resources by 2000 1970 - Urban citizens will require gas mask by 1985 1970 - Nitrogen buildup will make all lands unusable 1970 - Decaying pollution will kill all the fish 1970s - Killer Bees!!! 1970 - Ice Age by 2000 1970 - Americans will be subjected to water rationing by 1975 and food rationing by 1980 1971 - New Ice Age coming by 2020 or 2030 1972 - New Ice Age by 2070 1972 - Oil depleted in 20 years 1974 - Space satellites show New Ice Age coming fast 1974 - Another Ice Age? 1974 - Ozone depletion a great peril to life 1976 - Scientific consensus planet cooling; famines imminent 1977 - Department of Energy says oil will peak in 90s. 1978 - No end in sight to 30-year global cooling 1980 - Acid rain kills life in lakes 1980 - Peak oil in 2000 1988 - Regional drought (that never happened) in 90s. 1988 - Temperatures in DC will hit record high (no records broken) 1988 - Maldive Islands will be underwater by 2018 (nope) 1989 - Rising sea level will obliterate nations if nothing done by 2000. 1989 - New York City Westside Highway underwater by 2018. 1990 - Cellphones caused cancer 1996 - Peak oil in 2020 2000 - Children won’t know what snow is 2001 - WiFi causes cancer 2002 - Famines if we don’t give up eating fishes, meat, and diary 2002 - Peak oil in 2010 2004 - Britain will be Siberia by 2024 2005 - Manhattan underwater by 2015 2006 - Super Hurricanes!!! 2008 - Arctic will be ice-free by 2018 2008 - Climate genius Al Gore predict ice-free Arctic by 2013 2009 - Climate genius Prince Charles says we have 96 months to save the world 2009 UK Prime Ministers says 50 days to “save planet from catastrophe” 2009 Al Gore moves ice-free Arctic prediction from 2013 to 2014 2010 - 4G cell tower causes cancers. 2013 Arctic ice-free by 2015 2014 Only 500 days before climate chaos 2019 - Hey Greta, we really need you to convince them this time. 2020 - Australian bush fires are caused by climate change. 2020 - 5G cellular towers causes cancers. 2020 - Polar bears could be lost by 2100 2021 - Volcano caldera ready to wipe out civilization
I still remember Al Gore’s purchase of a San Francisco waterfront property.
If you're New Orleans, time to give up on being a city. Start preventing new construction. Incentivize people to leave.
Things like that really if we're going to get honest with ourselves about where things are headed.
Just look at the BS they excrete whenever they're forced to address albedo modification at all. [0] "Albedo modification is cheaper and actually possible, but if we do it rather than this much more expensive and totally ineffective thing then we'll have to keep doing it until we can figure out how to emit less carbon, which will never happen so just give us all the money while the world cooks." I'm paraphrasing but that's just because they don't want to publish anything so explicitly embarrassing to humanity.
[0] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/150210-na...
Instead, there is a need for more realistic plans to model and prepare for 3°C or 5°C increase of average temperature by 2060 (or 2100). Looking at these bigger swings in temperature, it is more likely that we're seeing temperature peaking beyond our expectations than below.