Climate change is not slowing down, and its effects are now estimated to materialize much earlier. In 2024 some expect 1,5 degrees heating, and higher temperatures are considered locked in. Politics is to preoccupied with using fossil fuels (increasing economic activity) to stop using fossil fuels and to much advised by the fossil fuel lobby to plot a serious route out of dependency let alone one that deals with the dangerous temperatures.
This and coming years will be marked by large famines accross the globe. This will cost lives and wars. You can expect many asians to seek shelter in the west, not only those form Honk Kong, and if the west doesn’t want them this will cause conflict. Not to mention the Middle East that is already erupting in multiple small wars, Turkey/Lybia/Armenia/Syria/Azerbedjan etc. Where will this end?
As long as the minds in Europe control a large manufacturing base and energy supply (yes, oil, coal, gas) moves can be made. The minds however are slaves to ambitions that prohibit it from forcefully steering away from dangerous fuels. For that to happen these minds would have to be replaced, and it is highly unlikely (looking at the political direction of police brutality even in Europe, which is pro-fossil) this would ever happen without a fight.
People who understand the consequences of CO2 emissions are not the kind that force themselves into power. Vice versa, those that push themselves into power are not the kinde to stop for remote risks. With todays commercialized political campaigns you just can’t make it without embracing the fossil/banking system that is the problem. As a result a US style ‘democracy’ is fundamentally unable to fight climate change.
Perhaps the only option that could work is a total breakdown of the economic machine due to disruption of the fossil fuel supply. Say because Israel dropped a big bomb on Iran and no oil can flow from the Middle East, nor any ocean traffic through the Suez Canal. Or Turkey getting into a war with the surrounding countries. Then the well will run dry in about two weeks as was demonstrated in France during a strike of petrol tank truck drivers. Then the situation would be super problematic, and focus would be on restoring the supply asap, with the same pro-fossil goons at the helm.
So in this chaos these people would have to be replaced or one would have to admit you can NOT allow the supply to collapse, or not at least in ways that allow a fix. In the absence of fossil supply most of our planet would be thrown in the same poverty as that suffered by people not yet using fossil fuels. Growing food is already becoming a challenge, now ad to that the fact that soils are depleted from intensive use and only recover very slowely. You could not just plant and hope for a harvest as normal without the intensive treatment. It takes about 5 years to recover from it.
Already we are seeing a rise in government by criminals, which has to say something about the quality of the justice system and police force. Real criminals meanwhile have evolved into the stuff of nightmares. All this is because of poverty, and poverty will only make it worse. So as fossil fuel use collapses, and the supply chains related to it (plastics etc.) one would have to focus on renewable energy sources and battle off rising crime. What helps is that moving around will be harder (including moving drugs or humans), so crime may die down a bit or change character.
In this basically chaotic environment an effort would have to be staged of building massive solar and wind and battery capacity, of planting massive amounts of trees, of deploying technology to capture and sequester CO2 all around the world. How could that happen?
It seems that in defence of order one has a solid reason to build super large scale renewable energy projects. Simply to make it possible to respond in the case of a catastrophic disruption of the fossil energy supply. The response to global heating is really a one shot thing and a long term commitment. Work should be done today of creating places which will be safe and sufficient to live in for the next 500 years, instead of economically milking the underestimation of the threat.