Maintaining anything like our lifestyle in a low-carbon world requires widespread electrical energy storage. (Nuclear plants cannot load-balance by starting and

Maintaining anything like our lifestyle in a low-carbon world requires widespread electrical energy storage. (Nuclear plants cannot load-balance by starting and stopping. Fusion is unlikely to overcome this limitation in the foreseeable future.) Such technologies are in their infancy. Political and economic reform may not be happening at the pace it needs to, but developing energy storage technology will go a long way towards being able to implement the reforms when people are willing to accept them. The same argument applies to lab-grown meat and some kinds of carbon capture for industrial processes that necessarily release CO2, particularly cement and steel production. Ensuring that we have the technology makes it easier to use it when people are willing to.