> What are the chances that the US will cut CO2 emissions by 50% in a decade or two? I'd say that it's about zero. I agree. But so does everyone else. So why

> What are the chances that the US will cut CO2 emissions by 50% in a decade or two? I'd say that it's about zero. I agree. But so does everyone else. So why point it out unless to argue in favor of despair? Placing a sufficient price on CO2 emissions would probably do it. Odds of getting our legislatures to do this may be slim, but why not try? > Exaggeration doesn't help the argument that anthropogenic climate change is a serious problem. I'm not exaggerating. The EPA's forecasted temperature increase over the next 83 years is a confidence interval with upper bounds at 12F for the USA and 8.6F for the global average. (https://www.epa.gov/climate-change-science/future-climate-change https://www.epa.gov/climate-change-science/future-climate-ch...) A change of that magnitude will have tremendous consequences: - Changing rainfall patterns and foundering marine ecosystems might threaten public food and water supplies. - The resulting economic fallout might create large migrations of people who will have to compete for space in regions of the world already overfull. - Large regions of the country would become unpleasant to reside in on account of the temperature alone. - Violence and poverty could become widespread. These seem to me to be genuine threats that it is realistic to believe that people alive today might face in their old age.