Transportation and energy account for a little under 60% of the problem.[0] (There's a lot more to those than electricity and cars) Another more mainstream issue is agriculture, but people pretty much talk exclusively about water usage and emissions from animal byproducts. This has a political motive. It is the majority of that sector though, to be fair to the vegans. If cows were a country they would be the third worst polluter (please support lab grown meat and reduce your meat intake. Even just eating red meat once a month and chicken the rest of the time has a significant impact on your personal emissions. And please don't bring up cows eating algae).

But there's a lot of less sexy parts that we're nowhere even near close to solving. Concrete and steel production is one of them. These are the largest contributor to emissions in construction, and pretty much the only way to solve this issue is with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) or new materials that we don't yet know about. [1] The same is for plastics. Frankly, we don't have a good way around steel, concrete, or plastics without making some extremely hard compromises. These materials MAKE the modern world and literally save lives.

Another less sexy issue is air-conditioning/refrigeration and heating. These systems are almost pure emitters yet we never discuss them. Again, we're nowhere near solving these issues. Again, these technologies save lives and enable the modern world. They are extremely difficult problems and even harder to scale.

I'd suggest reading some of Gate's Notes, since they do provide a good high level introduction to the material and I think he is pretty informed on the subject (unfortunately much more than any politician that I'm aware of). I'd start with: A Question To Ask About Every Climate Plan[2]. And then: Climate change and the 75% problem[3]. For another perspective I'll suggest Rees's blog post: Don’t Call Me a Pessimist on Climate Change. I Am a Realist[4] (article includes link to part 2).

I work with some climate scientists and these blogs reflect a lot of their concerns (in much more approachable ways). I'm actually deeply upset that the topic has become so politicized. I personally do not feel that either side is taking the issue seriously (though one side is at least acknowledging the problem and partly addressing less than half the problem but also encouraging the infighting. Better than nothing I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

But if you're wondering why climate scientists outright say: "We're fucked" are are extremely pessimistic, this is a short introduction to why. We don't have the technology to fix the problems, we aren't willing to admit many things are problems, a significant part of the political elite won't acknowledge that the problem even exists, and even if we solved all of this in America that only accounts for 20% of global emissions and how can we ask developing nations to either go without modern technology and let their people die or emit greenhouse gasses? I'm pretty on board with the "we're fucked" sentiment. But I hope we're wrong and I hope people can learn the facts and the non-sexy parts can become of great concern (i.e. get a shit ton of funding). And for the love of god, I hope CCS stops becoming a political topic...

[0] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis....

[1] I personally get upset about the people that don't want to use CCS in gas and coal facilities partly because of this. It is a great way to force mass adoption of these technologies. Plus, it isn't like we can just dump coal at this point. Pretty much for the same reason a heroin addict can't cut cold turkey. We're in too deep /minirant

[2] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/A-question-to-ask-about-ev...

[3] https://www.gatesnotes.com/energy/my-plan-for-fighting-clima...

[4] https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/11/11/Climate-Change-Realis...