Why do you presume it won't respond quickly enough?
I think that if the EU made any carbon fuel that was created from the atmospheric CO2 free of any and all tax ... we would see it on the market in a few years at max with plants cropping up very quickly. When that industry matures in a few years just force anyone polluting with CO2 to buy and sequester this carbon fuel.
Besides that's only half of the solution. The other is pragmatic policy. If the green movement was pragmatic they would have championed "EU builds 200 nuclear plants in <10 years". All the problems with nuclear right now (who will build it? it's expansive, takes too long etc.) go out the window when someone like the EU decides to build 200 of them. Wind and solar are nice and all, but they can't do in 10 years what a few dozen, let alone a few hundred, nuclear plants can.
Solutions are there. But solutions are not the point. Getting elected is the point. And that's where ideology and election-efficiency (it's much easier and cheaper to campaign on emotional social issues and virtue signaling that it's on suboptimal, ideologically-unpure, hard, painfull, expansive solutions) reign supreme.
And regarding the pandemic thing - the question you should ask: "wrong choice for whom?". The general population? Or the people in power? The biggest problem in our society is that we've fallen for the lie "in a democracy the general population rule and the system inherently works in their best interests". Democracy has nothing to do with taking care of the people. It can be used for that ... WHEN the general population realizes that it first has to BECOME a power player in the game of politics.
Simple enough--there is not enough time. Even if we were to stop dumping CO2 into the atmosphere today, the global temperature change will exceed acceptable limits. If we continue with business as usual, substantial parts of the earth will become uninhabitable. Nothing on a global scale can be done in the twenty or thirty years. Collaborative global problem solving does not seem to work.
Besides that's only half of the solution. The other is pragmatic policy. If the green movement was pragmatic they would have championed "EU builds 200 nuclear plants in <10 years". All the problems with nuclear right now (who will build it? it's expansive, takes too long etc.) go out the window when someone like the EU decides to build 200 of them. Wind and solar are nice and all, but they can't do in 10 years what a few dozen, let alone a few hundred, nuclear plants can. Solutions are there. But solutions are not the point. Getting elected is the point. And that's where ideology and election-efficiency (it's much easier and cheaper to campaign on emotional social issues and virtue signaling that it's on suboptimal, ideologically-unpure, hard, painfull, expansive solutions) reign supreme.
And regarding the pandemic thing - the question you should ask: "wrong choice for whom?". The general population? Or the people in power? The biggest problem in our society is that we've fallen for the lie "in a democracy the general population rule and the system inherently works in their best interests". Democracy has nothing to do with taking care of the people. It can be used for that ... WHEN the general population realizes that it first has to BECOME a power player in the game of politics.