There are even more reasons to phase out fossil fuels.

They are non-renewable, meaning the more we use them the more we have sunk cost in an energy infrastructure that in the long term can only get more expensive and more scarce. That's the opposite of what you want. It also means there's hard limits to how big they can scale, and the more you scale them the worse their scaling gets. Also the opposite of what you want.

They are geopolitically problematic and bind us to foreign conflicts.

Many of the most virulently anti-American and anti-Western ideologies (like fundamentalist radical Islam) are propped up and funded by petrostates. Domestically a lot of authoritarian far-right ideology (which IMO is also anti-American if you think America should be a free country) is funded by the fossil fuel industry. The term fundamentalism comes from a tract called The Fundamentals published by an oil baron.

Many, many reasons to phase out fossil fuels.

I grew up thinking there was a decent chance we would run out of oil and civilization would collapse. EVs were not a thing and I remember reading about how an economical battery big enough to give a car good range was not possible, and that modern civilization in general was impossible without cheap oil. I read detailed articles about how impossible powering modern society without fossil fuels was… articles that are now clearly wrong.

My parents grew up thinking they might die at any moment in a nuclear war.

I’m not saying nothing will happen. Obviously we are already dialed into this and it’s physics and it will have effects. I’m also not saying past successes guarantee future ones.

I’m just saying that every generation since WWII has grown up with at least one impending doom scenario and yet here we are.

“May you live in interesting times.”

Personally I think we will be forced to adapt to climate change, and that it will be expensive and in parts of the world ugly. It will drive migration and conflict. It will rob us of dividends we could have spent on better things but instead must be spent on infrastructure mega projects. It will kill and impoverish and start wars.

But we will make it.

People will say never again, let’s never ignore warnings like that again. But we will probably forget that lesson, unfortunately, and future generations will grow up under some other avoidable doom cloud.

> to make power, and therefore cooling, more stable/cheap.

and make the problem even worse. lol. There's only one actual solution to this problem but no one wants to talk about it :)

In Europe, during each heatwave of the recent years, some people have died.

Obviously, until now the victims have been among the most vulnerable, i.e. old people with cardiovascular diseases.

Nonetheless, there is a non-negligible risk that in the future the heatwaves will become so intense that they could affect even the healthy people.

In most countries the majority of the people cannot afford air conditioning.