“The country may have achieved abolition in a decade or three without civil war.”
Well, we’re well and truly OT now, but I have to say I doubt this.
At the time of the South’s attempted secession, the President had explicitly, loudly, and repeatedly stated that he had no intention or even inclination to “interfere with the institution of slavery.”
So it is hard to see how slavery could have been left to “wither on the vine” avoiding civil war, if the mere election of someone who opposed the extension of slavery to the North was all it took to set it off.
Not related to moral imperatives, it may be that the climate wars fade away in a decade or three with no real consensus ever achieved on the underlying science around CO2 forcing:
- Human CO2 emissions may not reach projected levels.
- Atmospheric CO2 may not increase as projected in response to those emissions.
- Other cooling forcing may become more important (solar, particulates, interstellar dust cloud).
While doubtless the climate wars, like all political conflict, will eventually fade away or transmute into something different, I find the specific scenario you outline extraordinarily improbable. Atmospheric CO2 has been steadily increasing at an accelerating rate throughout the whole of the instrumental record. Emissions could end up 10%, 20%, or 40% under — or over! — what analyses project — these are based on economic projections, which are not known for being highly accurate. But even if human emissions undershot projections, they would still be far too high to prevent atmospheric CO2′s relentless rise. Only deliberate, collective action can do that.
As for “white knight” cooling influences — also very unlikely. The sun can’t do it — cf this graph of the projected effect of a new grand solar minimum: http://theidiottracker.blogspot.com/2011/06/big-minimum-solar-discussion-in-one.html. Interstellar dust clouds? No. For many reasons, no.
Much more likely that unexpected cooling in the 21st century is unexpected warming. Remember, the changes in the solar forcing that pushed the world in and out of ice ages are miniscule compared with the anthropogenic forcing. If those slight nudges can trigger 5-6C of global warming, what is the sledgehammer of AGW going to do?