If you had enough energy because of “cold fusion”, you wouldn’t need the world to switch to it. You could just use it to synthesize hydrocarbon fuels from the air and water. I don’t think this is a panacea, but in principle, if a single medium-sized developed country actually had a big enough qualitative breakthrough in energy production, they could probably afford to either undercut the actual oil and gas industry or else just eat the cost of sucking all the extra CO2 out of the atmosphere. (Personally I think there are other possible approaches that may present easier solutions or mitigations; I don’t think this is literally the exact way we end up addressing climate change.)
Part of the supposed “social coordination problem”, from a certain perspective advanced by some environmentalists is the belief that ordinary people need to make serious qualitative sacrifices in their lives for the sake of stopping climate change. They might retreat to the motte of “the oil and gas companies are running the world” but in reality, their version of the “social coordination problem” is that ordinary people like being able to drive places or cook on a gas stove, and they’re frustrated and annoyed that they can’t scold them into abandoning these preferences. I personally am of the opinion that these people are creating more social coordination problems than they’re solving.
Nonetheless, as far fetched as it might seem that technological innovation can solve these problems, it seems even more far fetched that social coordination is going to solve them. And there’s a long history of these types of problems being either solved or made completely irrelevant by technological change. Which sometimes introduces completely new sets of problems, but then those get solved too.
Part of the supposed “social coordination problem”, from a certain perspective advanced by some environmentalists is the belief that ordinary people need to make serious qualitative sacrifices in their lives for the sake of stopping climate change. They might retreat to the motte of “the oil and gas companies are running the world” but in reality, their version of the “social coordination problem” is that ordinary people like being able to drive places or cook on a gas stove, and they’re frustrated and annoyed that they can’t scold them into abandoning these preferences. I personally am of the opinion that these people are creating more social coordination problems than they’re solving.
Nonetheless, as far fetched as it might seem that technological innovation can solve these problems, it seems even more far fetched that social coordination is going to solve them. And there’s a long history of these types of problems being either solved or made completely irrelevant by technological change. Which sometimes introduces completely new sets of problems, but then those get solved too.