> A handful of smart people just needed to get together
Things don't work this way, unfortunatelly. This kind of thinking just pushes the problem to someone else do deal with, which only serves to shift up blame. Small groups are vulnerable to corruption, or distractions, or silly power plays.
We needed _lots_ of people with good education and reasonable awareness of the risks, it was the only way to have a chance to develop a more solid plan.
However, you got your way. There are small groups of smart people working on these issues. But many, many of us know that their chances are slim (due to the shortcomings mentioned earlier). Unfortunatelly, not that many to form a critical mass.
Things do in fact work that way. Here's a list of things that a small number of people changed without the consent of the public, all before we got a single workable plan for climate change:
The internet, cell phones, social media, fracking, AI, the fall of the Soviet Union, war in Iraq, changes in attitudes towards family, sexuality. Just to name a few.
All of these things just kind of happened without the public having asking for them. Why then has a slight, gradual reduction in greenhouse gases been so hard?
Because climate change is more similar to erradicating polio than selling cellphones or toppling leaders.
In the whole human history, only one disease was erradicated: smallpox. It took centuries, countless smart people, reasonable awareness of many counter-intuitive ideas, and we almost failed. Going to the moon was easier.
Things don't work this way, unfortunatelly. This kind of thinking just pushes the problem to someone else do deal with, which only serves to shift up blame. Small groups are vulnerable to corruption, or distractions, or silly power plays.
We needed _lots_ of people with good education and reasonable awareness of the risks, it was the only way to have a chance to develop a more solid plan.
However, you got your way. There are small groups of smart people working on these issues. But many, many of us know that their chances are slim (due to the shortcomings mentioned earlier). Unfortunatelly, not that many to form a critical mass.