Quote:
Originally Posted by TJ Eckleburg12
Definitely more the latter than the former
This kind of gets to the heart of it. If they're being honest, everyone would agree that they would rather not have the composition of earth's atmosphere change materially from where it was before the industrial revolution started and where it was for the few thousand years prior. You'd rightly be very nervous about even minor changes to something as vital and complicated as the air we breathe.
On the other hand, most people would or should (a lot less universality here) admit that radically restructuring our economic system, which has to support 10-20 times as many people as it did in the pre-industrial period (where most everyone used to live on the edge of starvation, to boot), is also pretty nerve-wracking. And decarbonizing the economy, at least in some visions, does entail very radical changes to how the system can function.
A very natural and common reaction to this bind is to try and deny one or the other prong of it. If you're worried that a bunch of lefties are going to impose green communism, it's convenient to belief that there actually is no threat from climate change to even worry about. On the other hand, if you want green communism anyways, it's easy to ignore the risk of massive economic dislocation. Despite being natural, this is a pretty horrible way to approach a real problem. Most scientists believe that climate change is happening and poses serious risks. In light of that, it's certainly a smart reaction to try to put a damper on CO2 emissions (even if we aren't able to estimate with 100% certainty what damage they cause--the EV is negative) and try to develop technologies (electric cars, better batteries and solar panels, better nuclear power, etc.) that have the potential to allow our economy to function in a way that produces less CO2.
Any particular program naturally has its own cost-benefit analysis, but you can't really think that through if your baseline is to try and "prove" that climate change is fine or not happening or whatever.