Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You know it's an emergency when the status quo is completely unacceptable and the government takes drastic measures So if we never acknowledge it it is never an emergency? > every physically able man/woman forced to work on whatever solution is chosen to help Doing what? How will the physical power of the masses help us here?
> So if we never acknowledge it it is never an emergency? Exactly. Do you think an emergency has some objective trigger?? No it does not, it's subjective, the people involved in the event are the ones who deem whether it's an emergency or not, even if they may be wrong about the gravity of the situation (which is why sometimes the rescue service may disagree with you whether you're in an emergency situation or not an…
No. But it feels faulty to define an emergency by the reaction of the government. For example if we would have multiple years of crop failures, with associated mass starvation and unrest but let’s say the government sticks their fingers in their ears and proclaims “let them eat cake”. That would not count as an emergency per your definition. Do you feel that is right?
In fact when people are arguing if it is an emergency or not, they often argue about it because they do expect their government to do/don’t do things based on which side they are arguing. If we would define an emergency based on the actions of the government solely this would be totally falacious. But it is not. “We are in a climate emergency therefore the gov should do X.” is a perfectly valid thing to believe in. (And so is the opposite of course.)
> Think about the Marshall Plan...
Did the Marshall plan employ every able bodied adult? I must have missed that part of the history.
> I am sure we can get every man and woman to work on the manufacture and use of whatever device can collect CO2 from the atmosphere or whatever.
I will go with whatever then. We have these things called factories. They made manufacturing very efficient. There is zero chance that you could employ every man and woman meaningfully on a task like this. Simply you would run out of raw materials or organisational capacity before that happens.
There is a more fitting historical paralel to what you are proposing. It is very much akin to Mao’s Great Leap Forward. He got a lot of people to do a thing, but since it wasn’t the right thing to do it ended up as a total catastrophy.