Forget the progression.

Getting back to pre-industrial CO2 levels will take millenia if we don't do anything.

If we start spending 50% of our energy budget (and let's say that energy generation magically became all renewables and nuclear starting tomorrow) on scrubbing all the CO2 out of the air, we'll still need over a century to get back to pre industrial levels, and that is not counting CO2 storage and or conversions to (for example) plastics. If we include that too then it'll be multiple centuries.

Let that sink on for a second. No matter what we do, none of us, none of our children, none of our children's children will ever see normal CO2 levels in their lives.

And in the meantime we bake, loads of animals will die, food production will be fucked up, and we'll get mass starvation which likely will trigger war for food resources.

I'm painting a pretty picture, don't I? I do fear it's going to be even worse than what I see right now because until now, most climate change predictions actually turned out worse.

We might stand a chance with atmospheric engineering. Start seeding the upper atmosphere with sulfides. They'll cause acid rain over time, but at least block enough sunlight to stop us from cooking. It's done before (80's pollution, volcanos) and it works and we'll need it sooner rather than later

Don't invest in the future, don't have kids. Be here for a good time not a long time. Fuck the world.

Sad part is we've more or less figured out on paper how to cut our emissions while retaining a fairly high quality of life. Not perfect obviously and we'll lose a lot of the amenities people in developed countries have gotten used to, but to say the path to sustainability is uncharted is simply not true, and it could have been implemented 20 years ago, it can also be implemented today. But it would require gutting the wealth of the rich, totally overhauling the economy, government, and society as a whole, and everyone from all socioeconomic statuses agreeing that it should be done. So it's basically impossible under capitalism. Most of the upper class/upper middle class people in the West won't even entertain the idea of not owning a car, living in an apartment, or cutting out meat from their diets, let alone the radical changes needed for our species to actually be sustainable.

2 decades is likely optimistic. 5 is probably more likely. that said at what point do we just reach absolute nihilism and just stop giving a fuck. We're well past the point of no return. Our emissions are still INCREASING despite knowledge that it's going to destroy the liveable planet as we currently know it causing mass extinction events.

If we don't have any sense of urgency at this point, I can't see it starting anytime soon.

Everyday we delay we make it worse. what's worse than catastrophic?

I'll point out we did have a brief decline in emissions during covid and in 2009 during GFC but that was accidental becuse people stopped spending and travelling.

By the time we actually make serious change, it will be far too late.

Optimistic of you to assume that we will ever make serious change.

I'm surprised that there isn't an open source guide on how to be an effective eco terrorist and what the most vulnerable global chock points are. People have gone to war over less.

What also worries me is that there's a lot of talk about the environment collapsing in a century; however, given how things are going, I'm starting to suspect these people are seeing exponential change and slapping on a more linear approximation to predict what will happen. No one really knows what's going to happen, but we do know that it's happening right now and all we can do is try to protect what's left from the absolutely moronic shitheads that have their heads so far up their ass they look almost normal until they start speaking.

If we stopped the economy and stopped all emissions worldwide, this progression would still occur for more than 2 decades.

The economy did basically stop for a month in March 2020, and pollution dropped incredibly.

Change is possible. We just don't want it.

Maybe we shouldn't have unplugged our computers during y2k

we are now on the cusp of an extinction level event, Godzilla help us all

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event