In addition to actual reporting, the NYT creates newslike ads for the fossil fuels industry. This results in disproportionate attention on high-risk approaches that involve anything other than phasing out fossil fuel use.
Wouldn’t cutting down emissions be less precarious, easier to implement gradually, less unpredictable, more economically feasible in the long run, and less risky to fall on our heads?
Global warming is not something that would have been prevented by not industrializing. It would have instead been slower and more gradual, but inevitable all the same. What is fucking the planet is not the fact it’s happening, it’s the rate at which it’s happening. If all human-created global emissions were to cease immediately today, disasters would still happen regardless. This is why some scientists are proposing geoengineering solutions: to prevent the inevitability regardless of CO2 release.
If we eliminated all CO2 emissions tomorrow, we would still be stuck with all the CO2 we’ve already released. A lot of the CO2 we’ve released has been taken up by the oceans. We have to find a way to sequester that C02 “back in the ground” in order to back to levels we had years ago in order to head off/reverse global climate change.