alt Hacker NewsAh yes it could have been so easy: All we needed to do was convince everyone in the world to behave a certain way.
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Exactly, kinda like what we did with CFCs!
Granted fossil fuels are much more ubiquitous than CFCs and comparatively more difficult to replace, but we have prior art for changing industrial practices in the interest of improving climate conditions.
It really was very achievable, the main reason we didn't was we had a bunch of people spreading lies about it for 100 years or so.
Most people agree on basic values. It's really not that big a stretch to appeal to such common values, seeing as rapid global warming would cause mass relocation, suffering, adaptation costs for those who can stay put, etc.
individual people don't matter, they're peanuts. otoh the single biggest consumer of fossil fuels is the US DOD. and why is that, really?
There is currently a multi-billion, if not trillion, dollar industry (advertising and marketing) that is convincing everyone to behave the opposite way, i.e. maximize consumption with no regard to negative externalities. If we simply curb them, or better yet, use those same mechanisms to propagate a more rational message, yes, that that's all we need to do.