No, that does not require some incredible earth-shattering event. It requires political consensus of a majority of nations. Like was done to forbid emissions of ozon-layer damaging chemicals.
People thought that obviously, all countries would see the common interest in protecting Earth's climate. There was ONE major rogue nation in this big plan: USA. G.W Bush was the one who presented climate change denial as a respectable policy. I am not sure people measure the impact of this position.
Most other advanced countries cut down their emissions, much more than the US did (no, it is not a matter of density, distance between cities or so on: even if you remove all emissions due to vehicles, USA is still way above EU).
The developing world wants modern life, and if they have to burn fossil fuels to catch up, they will.
China will peak at a much lower level of CO2/capita than the US currently has. Given the current trajectory, it is quite possible that China will never in its history emit more CO2/capita than the US.
Extraordinary visionary leadership in the right place at the right time
Give me a break. Listening to the consensus of experts, both international and domestic experts, on issues that threaten the whole ecosystem, is not "visionary leadership". It is called "not electing a cartoon villain in office".
even if we magically had a green revolution and became the worlds first zero-emission nation
You would also need to nuke Bhutan and Suriname, two carbon-negative countries.
Comments
No, that does not require some incredible earth-shattering event. It requires political consensus of a majority of nations. Like was done to forbid emissions of ozon-layer damaging chemicals.
People thought that obviously, all countries would see the common interest in protecting Earth's climate. There was ONE major rogue nation in this big plan: USA. G.W Bush was the one who presented climate change denial as a respectable policy. I am not sure people measure the impact of this position.
Most other advanced countries cut down their emissions, much more than the US did (no, it is not a matter of density, distance between cities or so on: even if you remove all emissions due to vehicles, USA is still way above EU).
China will peak at a much lower level of CO2/capita than the US currently has. Given the current trajectory, it is quite possible that China will never in its history emit more CO2/capita than the US.
Give me a break. Listening to the consensus of experts, both international and domestic experts, on issues that threaten the whole ecosystem, is not "visionary leadership". It is called "not electing a cartoon villain in office".
You would also need to nuke Bhutan and Suriname, two carbon-negative countries.