> do you think decarbonizing the economy should be a national priority

Yes, absolutely. Global, really.

> what is the proper approach to take?

I am glad you asked this question because my follow-up to the above was going to be: Judiciously.

One of my pet peeves when it comes to all things related to the set of subjects orbiting the general idea of cleaning our collective act is that the popular narrative has lost most connections, if not all, with reality.

The story has to begin with data. We have lots of it. Here's the source for the last 800K years of atmospheric CO2 concentration:

https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/trends/co2/ice_core_co2.html

This graph, in particular, is very interesting:

https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/images/air_bubbles_historical...

If we draw a few lines on it and take rough measurements...

https://i.imgur.com/37AKa8L.png

we might observe that, historically speaking, a 100 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 took in the range of 25K years and a 100 ppm decrease 50K to 75K years.

What is interesting about this data and charts is that it gives us a baseline that is, in my opinion, important to keep in mind if we are to be intellectually honest about this subject:

Baseline: If humanity left the planet tomorrow, the rate of change
for the natural reduction of CO2 is approximately 100 ppm in 75K years.

Let's call that 1 ppm in 1000 years for short (it's just a thinking tool, not a precise calculation).

As a "solution", I can't think of anything more extreme than humanity evaporating from this planet tomorrow. And, if we did, it would take somewhere around 100K years for atmospheric CO2 to come down from the current 400 ppm range to, say the historical peak of around 300 ppm.

I also think this perspective also informs us about the scale of the problem. Any solution that purports to be able to take the natural rate of change from 1 ppm/ 1000 years to anything in the scale of a human lifetime has to provide proof as extraordinary as the claim being made. For example, a claim of being able to drop atmospheric CO2 concentration by 100 ppm in 30 years would represent a rate of change over 3000x faster than the no-humans-on-earth baseline rate. That is an exceptional claim that requires even more exceptional proof.

In understanding certain topics I feel it is important to achieve what I like to refer to as a "tangible sense of proportion" about things. Once you understand what it takes to send a satellite into orbit you know it can't be done with 1/10th. the energy. For me, the no-humans-on-earth knowledge provides this baseline that cannot be explained away with the usual hand-wavy argument that seem to permeate this domain.

Another interesting look is the CO2 contributions of various countries or regions. Here's a look at that:

Here's a picture of that answers that question:

https://i.imgur.com/wbHptnf.png

Looking at this it is clear we have a very serious challenge in our hands. To repeat myself, if all of humanity was beamed into space by Captain Pickard, it would take a thousand years for a 1 ppm drop in CO2.

Clearly, looking at this graph, completely erasing a number of these countries off the face of this planet would not be equivalent to all of humanity disappearing into space. Which mean, by simple deduction, that the rate of reduction of CO2 --if any-- would be much slower than 1 ppm per 1000 years.

Erasing the entire US from the planet would have no effect whatsoever. The US and China? Same problem. Erase 3/4 of these planets and the problem remains: The rate of change will never be better than 1 ppm per 1000 years.

Well, then, does this mean efforts to reduce CO2 emissions are pointless, futile, nonsensical?

No, of course not. I do think that we are pushing a massive lie by claiming to be able to materially affect matters of planetary scale in just a few tens or dozens of years. It just makes no sense at all. In fact, it is my opinion that such talk is truly counterproductive and should be treated as comedy or, at best, opportunism aimed at making money given the current drive to promote such matters.

There are, of course, lots of reasons to decarbonize to the extent possible. I think most of them boil down to living in healthier environments, healthier cities, homes and buildings.

Most people don't understand the environment they live in on a daily basis. These are two images from my office. The first is with windows open for an hour or so. The second could be any other day of the week, with windows closed all day.

https://i.imgur.com/k9qufys.png

https://i.imgur.com/DQL2Kr2.png

Just looking at CO2, that's a 1000 ppm delta. This is why I urge people to spend a few dollars and get an air quality meter. You'll learn things about where you live and what you do every day you could not imagine. For example, driving in a car for a couple of hours per day means you are in a 1400+ ppm environment for the duration of your travel.

Product Idea for Your Startup
-----------------------------
Provide for an easy way to inject clean air into an environment.
It could be as simple as a 1 inch tube that makes it into the air
handler through a HEPA filter and injects fresh air into the system.
Almost anything is better than recirculating bad air.
Today most homes don't have a sensible way to accomplish this.

These things, to me, would be truly disruptive (like the easy-to-install zone system). Otherwise you are competing with the same product against established companies with products that are not materially different in a way that matters.

Going back to your question: What would be the proper approach?

Almost impossible to answer. It's like going back 50 years and asking someone from the 1970's what the world might be like in 2023. No clue.

I would say we need to continue pushing for everything we do to be as clean and environmentally friendly as possible. Not due to a delusion about being able to save the planet or reverse climate change. I am not sure I have seen any evidence of this being realistically attainable. No, we do it because it will make for healthier living and health is crucially important.

We can justify full electrification and migration away from burning fuels in the long run based on this premise, that of creating a healthier future for everyone on the planet. That, to me, would be a sensible narrative everyone could get behind. The problem with pushing a questionable narrative is that the entire planet will eventually see the "emperor has no clothes" effect. The backlash would not be trivial at all. It is better, in my opinion, to talk about healthy living than claiming to be able to affect rapid change of a planetary scale.

I'll leave you with this link to a paper published some time ago by Google Research. I admire the guts of the researchers who dared publish such a conclusion at a time when this could be career-ending. Their conclusion still holds. And, yes, pushing for us to get cleaner at all levels still has significant value.

https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-...