Sure, you could handwave the "mass societal pushback" and change it to "cheering societal acceptance" and then fudge away the costs associated, but that's simply not what is going to happen.
You have to account for greenpeace and all the organized opposition. You have to account for the politics
That's why you need to go off of concrete material historical reality - if you're free to apply counterfactuals as you please than practically any conclusion is permissible because we can tweak and modify whatever we need.
Just like the "business as usual" advocates are hypothesizing a globally deployable massive carbon sucking technology to somehow exist in the future without a shred of evidence that it's at all plausible. It's extremely dubious gambling with the future of society.
Reality overrides counterfactual hypotheticals every time. When ambitious next-generation nuclear is ready to go, then there's a possible opening but right now it's simply not there.
You have to account for greenpeace and all the organized opposition. You have to account for the politics
That's why you need to go off of concrete material historical reality - if you're free to apply counterfactuals as you please than practically any conclusion is permissible because we can tweak and modify whatever we need.
Just like the "business as usual" advocates are hypothesizing a globally deployable massive carbon sucking technology to somehow exist in the future without a shred of evidence that it's at all plausible. It's extremely dubious gambling with the future of society.
Reality overrides counterfactual hypotheticals every time. When ambitious next-generation nuclear is ready to go, then there's a possible opening but right now it's simply not there.