Saving us from ourselves

As many people have pointed out, dealing with the catastrophic warming of Mother Earth by our insistence on extracting and burning every single hydrocarbon on the planet is a difficult proposition.  By our very nature, humans are in the main incapable of sacrificing long term to ameliorate something as difficult to quantify as climate change.  We go about our daily routine without seeing the insidious nature of the threat until it overwhelms us.   Climate scientists are unhelpful because of their professional reluctance to connect the dots between increased hurricane intensity, wildfires and other harbingers of the change.   Kevin Drum can only think of two instances in the last 100 years where we sacrificed to defeat an existential threat;  the ozone depletion and the Cold War.  As Drum points out, the banning of CFC's was a minor inconvenience and the Soviets were a concrete threat we could meet with a united front for over 50 years.  Climate change is not like the Cold War, but more like the ozone hole; something that can be overcome if the cost is not high.  If we can make renewable energy sources cheaper than fossil fuels, virtually no one will object to the change.  What Drum does not posit is the necessary leadership to build out the infrastructure and advertise the virtues of renewables.  We are desperately short in that regard.  Electing tRump as president* may be the single worst thing to happen to the environment since the industrial revolution.