>I know it does. That's why we are well and truly screwed. But to be honest it's the only thing I can think of that would give us even a fighting chance
Agreed. We either have to kill 90%+ of the population or get a similar amount to agree to sterilize themselves.
I am NOT saying we need to start kicking down doors and shooting people or tranq darting them and snip-snip-snipping but unless an alien peacekeeping armada fills our skies with their ships and starts handing out free fusion plants and food replicators and machines to pull the carbon dioxide out of the air that manufactures inert carbon ingots... we're truly screwed.
Tech types are entirely too optimistic, they think just because we will need to figure something out that we will.
Ok, let's say fusion. Let's say someone got a fusion reactor online TOMORROW and that over the next 6 months they found ways to scale and mass produce it.
Now let's say they can start mass producing everything needed on multiple continents while construction companies set to work building all the facilities needed to replace the 60,000 something power plants on the planet. The construction of the buildings alone would take several decades purely to supply all the needed concrete (which itself creates absurd amounts of carbon dioxide).
So great, we create a solution to our energy problem which would let us drastically reduce our carbon emissions but under realistic conditions it takes us decades to convert fully to that energy, still spewing tens of gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year which would continue to worsen weather conditions, further acidify the oceans, likely lead to crop failures, kill more species that can't handle even modest temperature changes...
Sigh.