The Haber-Bosch process requires nitrogen pulled from petrochemicals (there are no other large sources of nitrogen we can use at scale) to feed a large portion of the worlds population. We literally *CANNOT* go back to guano - people would starve to death.
Seems like we could cut out most fossil-fuel consumption without making any sacrifice on this front.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#Economic_and_env...
We already have an equivalent alternative for internal combustion engines for passenger cars, plus some other types of vehicles in some situations. No, not every situation and every vehicle, but if we could replace all passenger cars with EVs overnight, that would make a huge dent in emissions. Yes, we'd still have all sorts of construction equipment, 18-wheelers, etc. running off gasoline. But that's ok, for now. Of course we can't even replace passenger cars; most legal efforts to phase out ICEs in passenger cars have timelines that we should have already hit, but are still years, and in some places decades, away -- if they exist at all.
On electricity generation, new renewable plants are coming online at a decent pace, but we could be so much farther along by now if it wasn't for special interest groups and lobbyists clinging to the status quo. At the very least, we should have our daylight-hour needs 100% met by renewable sources by now, but we're nowhere near there. It's pathetic.
Cars and electricity generation are but a fraction. We need heating, shipping, goods production, agriculture all to become climate neutral or we'll simply continue on this path of ever increasing catastrophe.
What is your argument for electrifying cars being ok for now?
No evidence to support such a bold and frankly uninformed claim. If we could have fixed this we would have - but right now we have so many complex systems which we only think we have some semblance of control.
"The massive carbon reductions being called for won't happen once people realize the massive toll in human suffering they would cause. A pre-industrial Earth couldn't support anywhere near 8 billion humans." << -- More troll lunacy.