Reasons for Optimism about CO2

Think of other problems humanity has solved. Colonialism, slavery and serfdom, come to mind. Whole economies and trade links across the world were built around them. Many people could not imagine how to live without them. Abolishing them happened in many different ways in different countries, and they are virtually gone.

Colonialism and slavery were addressed as moral issues. There were violent struggles in some areas, not in others. There were strong interests upholding the moral choices: areas without colonies, areas without slaves, and individual colonists and slave holders who changed course. The parallel now is areas with low CO2 emissions, such as India, and consumers who cut back substantially.

At a more pedestrian level, wood stoves and horse-drawn transport of people and products could not continue when cities became too large. So they did not continue. (The change to fossil fuels led to our current problem, and we need to ensure today's solution does not lead to other problems in the future.)

DDT killed too many birds. People thought they could not produce crops without it. We changed to other pesticides, and birds are recovering.

We have been hooked on cheap energy drawn out of small, distant holes in the ground: both oil wells and coal mines. The solutions will be varied, some cheap, some expensive, some simple, some hard, and different across the globe.