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That's a great back-of-the-envelope calculation. Main takeaway is that it is probably solveable, but only by government-scale efforts (philanthropy can't cover

That's a great back-of-the-envelope calculation. Main takeaway is that it is probably solveable, but only by government-scale efforts (philanthropy can't cover it). The real problem is that it costs a lot and captialism shows no quarterly gains for preserving humanity. The best bet would be to have an international contribution agreement that ties something like defense spending to CO2 reduction. Fat chance of that happening, but it could really improve two situations at once.

hwillis 9y ago
> Main takeaway is that it is probably solveable, but only by government-scale efforts (philanthropy can't cover it). Well... Technically possible, yeah. One of the more expensive projects the US has ever done is the Apollo project, which was a bit over $20 billion annually in todays money, or .1% of GDP. Even building the nuclear arsenal was only $100 billion annually. So as a country the best we've managed is .5% of GDP, against the much more politically actionable threat of the USSR. A 1-2 order of magnitude increase over that is pretty unlikely. Hell, global defense spending in 2016 was only 1.6 trillion.