Why would "convincing people to take the bus instead of a car" require coordinated action? Just stop letting them buy gas. (Where by "them" I mean individual passenger-vehicle drivers. Continue to allow commercial vehicles to buy gas, but require that they show their commercial-vehicle license at the register.)

A country could do it; or it could be done city by city with municipal bylaws to act only upon the worst polluting regions. And, since the only restriction would be on buying gasoline, people who still wanted to drive could just buy EVs.

Just stop letting them buy gas? That would take either:

- That companies (plural) stop selling gas. That's coordinated action, because you need all the oil companies (or all the gas stations) to agree.

- That the government decides it. But in a democracy, that takes coordinated action too. The president does not have the constitutional authority to decree "no more sales of gasoline for passenger vehicles".

On the top level: OPEC (a coalition of mostly totalitarian states) can decide to restrict sale of petroleum to only be purchased by states, not private companies. Where that decision could be forced by just a few other states, at gunpoint.

Let me put it this way: why do you think there isn't an OPEC-like private marketplace for uranium? Because states don't want there to be such a thing. States make themselves an oligopsony for the purchase of uranium, and then regulate its distribution to only parties they want to have it. And people generally like it that way.

(Also, the president of the United States is a bad example of what a country's executive's powers generally are, because federalism. Most other heads of states can just make a decree like that.)

But state action is a less-likely scenario, and also not the one I was really imagining. The more likely scenario is local action — i.e. a mayor enacting a bylaw for their municipality such that gas stations that don't regulate sale of gasoline would be blocked from operating within city limits. (And sure, you could drive outside the city limits to get gas... but presuming the metropolitan area is large enough, you might burn the whole tank just getting back home after doing that.)

A mayor does have that power. They need no referendum, no legislature, to pass such a bylaw. They merely need the people to be okay-enough with the action to not impeach them in response. (In fact, technically, you don't even need the bylaw. Businesses only operate on physical commercially-zoned properties in cities at the city's sufferance; a city government is free to revoke a given business's ability to operate on such property at any time, for no reason. A city can un-make the zone a business is operating under, and replace it with a new zone that has different rules, that then exclude that business. This happens all the time!)

From there, it spreads not by coordinated action, but just by other city governments seeing the idea and copying it.

People are ok with Uranium being controlled because they know that in a concentrated form it is hazardous and they have no use for it in their daily lives. Oil and gas are the complete opposite, they're safe enough for anyone to handle and they are incredibly useful for just about everything you do in your life. If you just tear those away from people without replacing them with something better then at best those people will vote you out or just leave the area you govern for somewhere else. If you make it so they can't do either of those then congratulations you've just created a totalitarian police state with unelected leaders and guards at the borders that shoot you if you try to leave.

> That the government decides it. But in a democracy, that takes coordinated action too. The president does not have the constitutional authority to decree "no more sales of gasoline for passenger vehicles".

California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Washington are going for it: https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/states-banning-new-gas-po...

That's very different from "stop letting them buy gas" - It doesn't punish people for continuing their current standard of living nor forcibly reduce it and it doesn't immediately destroy the value of gasoline passenger vehicles, in fact it may increase them unless charging infrastructure catches up in those places.

No they aren't (or at least that's not what your link says). They are banning sales of new gas-powered passenger vehicles but for the foreseeable future you will still be able to buy gas for your old beater, '67 Mustang, or red Barchetta.

Meanwhile China is bringing on a new coal plant every week. Actually, 2 new plants a week [1]. But you suggest we stop selling gas to people.

https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/china-permits-two-...

So it's Monday morning, the UK government announces that petrol and diesel cars are no longer. They make clear that this is permanent.

A ton of people now have vehicles that are basically scrap metal, they've lost tens of thousands overnight. There are physically not enough EVs, or charging infrastructure, or maybe even the grid capacity in order for people to switch.

By 10am, immigration lawyers' phones around the world are off the hook.

If you phase it, then you're just describing what is already happening, this is what coordinated action looks like.

By 1pm current PM and MPs would meet the destiny of King Charles I. by hand of its own voters.

God Save the King.

Congratulations! You've just made it impossible for the people who operate every essential service on which you depend to get to work.

Slightly more plausible alternative: cessation of fossil fuel subsidies.

We dealt with the ozone hole fairly well. There hasn't been total nuclear war. The Netherlands is ten feet under sea level and does fine. Polar bears and all other bears are absolutely thriving.

Neither of these things required any change from regular people. In fact, today many people say that ozone hole just disappeared, because the changes needed were so transparent, no one even noticed. Is there a way people can continue their normal lives, but still eliminate the green house gasses emissions?

We won't reduce emissions unless there's a massive reduction in population. Otherwise normal people will adapt. Less people will die if the planet warms more. Extreme cold events kill more than heat waves do and that's even without including the seasonal flu and cardiac events related to the cold.

There are hard limits on how much heat a human can take. We cannot adapt beyond, except for literally never going outside again.

Which is the norm and always has been in places like Arizona in the summer. I didn't go out for more than an hour at a time in Tucson in the summer when I lived there. Anything longer and you seriously thought about and prepared for it. This has always been the way humans lived in these areas.

Arizona is a warm, but dry place. Temperature of 38C can be both mildly inconvenient and deadly, depending on the humidity. There are densely populated areas of the world that are much more humid than Arizona and are getting warmer. Eventually people will ditch those places and start to move towards milder climates.

And what do you do if it's not just in the summer, but the whole year? What if it's parts of the earth where a lot of poor people live?

What crops do you grow in those conditions?

So we should be fine with an increasing proportion of the populated environment that never experienced these conditions beginning to?

> Is there a way people can continue their normal lives, but still eliminate the green house gasses emissions?

Yes, but real change can never happen as long as those who are in power continue to remain in power. Though green house emissions are a smokescreen used by serial climate offenders to present a “green” image while causing immense ecological damage behind the scenes. It’s important, undoubtedly, but one of many issues such as habitat destruction, chemical dumping, e-waste, etc.

When they were happening, everyone noticed the changes regarding the ozone hole. Whether they believe those changes were impactful is a different matter.

This take annoys some people but...

That's basically spot on, trying to convince people that they have to drastically lower or stagnant their standard of living is not going to be a successful strategy.

Electric cars only started to gain adoption once they are good enough. Exactly the same with solar panel prices.

We just need more technological breakthroughs it's the only realistic strategy.

>Neither of these things required any change from regular people.

Government regulation on business practices. In 1952, London had a smog event that literally killed 12,000 people. Government regulation cleaned up the air and mostly focused on businesses [1]. LA did the same thing [2]. Cap and trade restrictions on SO2 and NOx in the US and EU reduced acid rain causing emissions faster and cheaper than predicted [3]. Force businesses to reduce their CO2 output from their operations and products and they will find they most efficient and profitable way to do so.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London

[2] https://www.aqmd.gov/home/research/publications/50-years-of-...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain

We dealt with one threat to the ozone layer, which is still recovering to its prior state and will take decades longer to do so all other things being equal. Except that all other things will not be equal due to the climate changing, and we may yet see it degraded from other processes to create a hole over the Arctic soon. A hole over the Arctic would have a much larger effect on human populations.

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...

https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/topics/in-depth/climate-change-...

And a little explainer video on the complexities of differing temperatures at different layers of the atmosphere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y35Lzgc9iJk