2418. State of affairs.

Fossil fuel is a core aspect of modern society. It is putting huge amounts of co2 into the atmosphere. There is no plan to directly cut fossil fuel use by significant amounts (car electrification takes decades, shifting houses to electrical is hard to scale), the amount already in the atmosphere guarantees rising temperature past 3 degrees even if we stopped new co2 now. There are policies some even in place that would make a significant difference (caveat coming) but there are no serious plans to implement those policies.  The issue of cost and scale and lack of political power  suggest no serious action is coming. Cutting  50% by 2035 absent a plan as as to what to do the rest of this year is useless. What is already happening is storms and droughts and migrations, species loss and ocean decay. That is with what we have now.  The fossil fuel companies and supporting banks and other infrastructures are in control and are working to preevent a direct attack on fossil fuel use, such as mandating to further exploration.  The social reaction - people not coming top work, broken supply chains, broken families, are happening and are probably going to move faster than the events they anticipate. The idea of a greener economy is motivated by the same drives for profit that have concentrated wealth and will lead to wide scale cynicism and then on to anger. This will happen fast. Watch COP 26.

In this view many at significant mainstream organizations  have concluded that it is too late, we are past or near tipping points and there is no countervailing power to prevent the worst.

My own proposal is to take economics' back to its Greek root, estate management, but realize that the estate now is the whole earth and the management task is the ethical integration of humanity with that estate.

I like the quote from Richard Feynman...

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.