I wish I could recall (or find) the precise quote, but I do believe it was Mark Twain that said something like, "we are destined to outsmart ourselves.". No doubt we are a clever and creative species willing to tackle the thorniest of challenges. Except when it comes to changing beliefs and behaviours. With so much of climate change mitigation, we appear unwilling to change values and expectations, beliefs and behaviours. To drop our feelings of deservedness (especially relative to comfort and convenience and consumption) and to let go of human exceptionalism. No amount of extraordinary engineering will do as much for humanity as developing a reverence for the natural world and all that is in it rather than continue to hold values based on extraction and exploitation. We have a history of bad choices when meddling with nature [1]. I suspect there have been some successes, too, but we largely remain ignorant, to a grand degree, of the interconnectedness and dynamics of most natural systems and ecosystems.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/22/what-hap...