Whether or not an energy source is "green" or renewable is not necessarily linked to CO2 emissions.

Biomass harvesting (like gasification of landfill waste or burning cow farts) is considered "green" even tho it still results in CO2 emissions.

Plus, renewable energy is often not green at all, causing massive deforestation, topsoil erosion and ground water toxicity from mining the metals and minerals to produce photo voltaic cells, wind turbines, etc.

Additionally, nuclear power generation is very "green" because its only byproduct is heat, water vapor and depleted uranium. But nuclear isn't renewable since there's a finite amount of uranium on earth.

Most people have no idea where energy comes from and 50% of people have below average IQs so the clean/dirty or green/hydrocarbon dicotamy is a flawed but popular heuristic for when people argue about energy even when they aren't qualified to do so.

I think "green" is a terrible term because most of the greenery on this planet comes from CO2 breathing plants. Plants actually grow faster during seasons with higher winds. In stillness, there is a local deficiency of CO2 around leaves. Plants are starving for CO2 almost constantly.

I used to grow cannabis and the way to achieve max yield was to introduce tanks of CO2 in the grow room. Even cycling in fresh outside air wasn't packing enough CO2 to max out what the plants were capable of soaking up.

I don't think limiting CO2 emissions as a government policy is a worthwhile effort. We'd be better off creating more (or rather repairing) CO2 sinks by planting more trees and restoring old growth forests.

CO2 emissions aren't that bad compared to other types of emissions that often come from burning hydrocarbon. What's way worse is sulphur emissions that create actually poisonous gasses and acidic precipitation. We should limit those toxic gasses for sure.

In general, I think there is CO2 hysteria. If something is actually environmentally harmful, it will be resolved. We saw this with ozone depletion caused by CFCs and also in urban areas with smog from toxic fumes. There was a clear and obvious link between the pollutants and the environmental harm and as a society, we organized to eliminate the source of the problem and nature healed itself.

Sure, you can measure CO2 levels in various locations over time and make conclusions about how fast the levels are rising. You can do the same with temperature and hypothesize that CO2 causes increased temperatures from greenhouse effect.

If this hypothesis is correct, its a good thing for human flourishing! Humans thrive in warmer climates.

The narrative lost me when I'm supposed to believe that increased temperatures will lead to sea levels rising until thousands of miles of coastline are underwater and we're in an uncontrollable death spiral until the earth is a scorched wasteland and human populations decline drastically. To me, this line of reasoning shows no respect for the ability of nature to heal and for humans to adapt. Humans are powerful enough to cause climate change but not powerful enough to undo it? IDK seems like a leap with a lot of assumptions.

I think long-term projections about climate change should be completely ignored. The biosphere is incredibly complex and impossible to model everything. Some of our "best and brightest" forecasted that COVID-19 would be the next Bubonic Plague but those models were invalidated after just a couple months. But somehow, we're supposed to take scientist's predictions about the next 50-100 years of climate data as gospel? Ok boomer.

With all that said, I think societies will still move away from hydrocarbons as a primary energy source. Nuclear and hydropower are better suited for providing reliable energy to the grid. At least in the US, nuclear and hydro are highly-regulated so it's artificially easier and cheaper to produce energy with hydrocarbons. Instead of applying more regulation to hydrocarbons, and subsidizing unreliable alternatives like wind and solar, why not de-regulate the other non-hydrocarbon reliables like nuclear and hydro? I think Bitcoin miners will be instrumental in changing the regulations around energy production in the USA.