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I think that tackling climate change is hard because it is a massively collective action problem.
The payoff matrix of anyone likely to drown when the ocean level rises basically does not depend on how much CO2 she emits, only how much CO2 the rest of the world emits. Thus, even she does not have skin in the game in the sense that she will personally benefit from any choices she makes regarding limiting her CO2 emissions. She will drown or not depending on the actions the rest of the world take, but her own consumption choices only influence how much she has to pay for her car.
I think that for some topics, it is very hard to find a person who has something riding on the outcome which is proportional to what society has riding on the outcome. Climate change is one such topic. Geostrategic matters are another, perhaps. You have a bunch of military leaders who recommend this or that action, buy an aircraft carrier, invade Russia in the winter, get out of Afghanistan, whatever. Their pensions do not depend on how well their country does with their advice. In fact, their personal interests may lie diametrically opposed to that of their country sometimes: large scale conflict is generally bad for the general population and has bad outcomes for at least half of the countries who engage in it, but for general it can be their chance to shine. Of course, the incentive of a grunt who does not want to die in some ditch is also sometimes misaligned to the incentives of a country.
"Could" can mean a lot of different things.
For example, we could likely put a 100 people on Mars within a decade (if we made that the global focus of our economy to the detriment of every other goal).
Or NATO could invade and occupy Switzerland (i.e. it is technically possible but nobody has any incentive to do it).
Or we could build a Tesla with six instead of four wheels (if we pay Musk a few billions, he will likely design a prototype for us).
Or I could pass you the salt over the table (i.e. just ask and I will do it, no trouble for me).
Where on this spectrum do you think 'mitigate 90% of the negative effects of climate change' falls?
On the order of $100 billion we could do it. So somewhere between the Tesla and Switzerland options.
Is this sulphate aerosol geoengineering, or are you thinking about something else?
I'd also like to know the answer to that question.
IIRC the likely-better short-term alternative to sulfate aerosol is calcite aerosol (so the main side effect is to reduce rather than increase ozone depletion), and the likely-better long-term alternative is enhanced rock weathering (to actually get excess CO2 out of the atmosphere rather than just papering over a few of the problems it causes), but IIRC they're even further back in the theoretical/experimental stages.
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So we are talking about mitigation of effects, not getting rid of GHG, I guess?
I have not done the math, but I can see that kind of money building a lot of dams to counter rising see levels. I don't really see how it is enough to combat the expected heat waves, though. It will not buy half of Africa air conditioning for their homes.
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