Then we shall continue on the road we have been on, consuming enough fossil fuels to affect climate change. Hence the conclusion one comes to is to live it up while we can.
That's a false dichotomy. It's not "raise fuel prices 5x to 10x or fail". We should be working on a constellation of initiatives that move things forward but without leaving significant chunks of people behind.
If the bottom 25% of the economic ladder get stomped on and pushed into poverty (when not already there) how does that help? It will set things back: Because the people getting stomped, going hungry, working 2 jobs and 60hours a week-- they're not going to sit back and suffer in silence as things get worse. The backlash would be enormous and political pressure insurmountable.
We need solutions that account for the people impacted by them or we'll get nowhere. Throwing your hands up and saying Fine, "live is up while we can" because a simple solution doesn't solve a complex problem is defeatist. And stops you-- likely a very smart person-- from contributing to the dialog of how to solve an extraordinarily complex problem and implementing some of those countless big and little things we can do to keep moving forward.
