> It's like having a meeting about a project whose deadline was 3 weeks ago and the team really cares about making a success of it, but the finance department has told the board privately that if the project is a success it would make most of the rest of their incredibly lucrative business obsolete, so now they need to figure out how to make the project fail slowly in a way that makes it seem to the team that they're trying their best so they don't get the blame for it afterwards.

I disagree with you.

The "team" as you put it does not care about making it a success as we have seen in the last decade. Germany closing it's nuclear reactors and replacing them with Russian gas plants, France pushing diesel engines up until the end of the 2010s and marketing them as a safer alternative to other ICE engines, the list goes on and on with governments doing stupid things after stupid things.

Who is the finance department in this case? the corporations? The oil producers? Because that is not very clear to me.

To put it in Roddenberrian terms (where the Federation Finance Department was never discussed), it's as though the heroic Captain of the Enterprise is ordering the Chief Engineer to replace the propulsion system because its emissions are fouling the Life Support System with toxins.

"Mister, we need to protect of the lives of the crew and sustain the mission!"

"Ah, nyet Captain, I am safe down here so far, maybe we replace you instead."

I am sorry I am not sure I understand what you mean by your comment.

> There's pressure from your peers to meet deadlines you have agreed upon

That is my point exactly, most countries have agreed to targets and deadlines that they have not met either through inaction or something else entirely.

So what is the point of the new targets if the old targets have not been met yet?

> What would you suggest that they should do instead of setting goals?

How about meeting the previous targets before setting new ones? Otherwise you just loose credibility.

> though some countries have the excuse that because the party in Government changes every 4 years, they didn't really agree to anything :/

I mean the agreement is between the countries and not ruling regimes/parties. I would find it hard to assume that a diplomat will say we didn't agree on anything, this was previous government to be very appealing argument. Although there are details like in the US getting back on their pledges and who can say something. But that's more of power dynamics and not actual argument. Otherwise these countries engaged in decades long agreements with many parties (even international agreements) without problems.

IMO: as an answer to your question of why:

Inertia, Investment, (existing) Infrastructure, and greed.

Investment and profit to be made off of it also relate to lobbying, laws, and further investment.

Some related issues for electric vehicles are the increased load on power grid/supply, how Internal Combustion Engines provide (relatively) free heat in cold climates, and that cold snaps require vehicles with batteries to self-heat.

They're issues that have some solutions, but it's not wave a wand at things and they're fixed. The problem also reminds me of connectivity in houses, where by now we should have at least gigabit ports in every room, but increasingly consumers see houses barely suitable for wifi and cell connections.

There are things the market just won't self select despite the good involved for consumers. Maybe if we vote for non-idiots there will eventually be regulation to help.

Maybe because it's not that simple? A new technology and a new infrastructure will be more expensive initially, until it reaches a critical mass. So, to reach that critical mass you need early adopters who take the hit, and to help sweeten the hit, you give them money under the form of incentives to buy the new EV or create the charging infrastructure. That's one of the main duties of a welfare state.

the simple solutions from clueless people are always very entertaining. They got all the fixes for the world’s problems, if only these damn politicians did their work!1!1

Yeah, the hundreds of billions of dollars that the oil economy spends every year is not what creates this distortion, sure. Let’s just wait for the market forces to fix it.

Personally for me a big thing is how finicky EVs are.

If there is no electricity you are out, if it's snowing too much you are out and so on. I don't want to buy something that stops working when anything isn't optimal.

> I wish they (COP crowd) would talk about TFR and do rollouts under worst case scenario.

I wish you had defined TFR so we can understand if you are attacking poor countries or defending the riches

If the argument is that we should now pay up for our ancestors not having the foresight to understand that industrializing during the 19th and early 20th century was going to have a negative impact on the environment, then I also expect other people to pay up for their ancestors during the 19th, early 20th, and even late 20th century not understanding that having a lot of children would have a negative impact on the environment.

Well, one of the points is trying to figure out how that constantly used "per capita" argument ever solves environmental problems.

Exactly why should we reward India when it comes to pollution just because they have a lot of people? What does that do for the environment and for solving the climate crisis?

Should the West start doing their part when it comes to save the environment by having a lot more children?

Every 1$ that's extorted from the citizens of developed nations to give to most of the developing nations (India one of them), is going to build the single most productive industry regardless of how dirty it is. Giving money to these nations, only increases the pollution even more.

The system is totally inverted to the level of insanity. We should be rewarding developing nations that are decreasing their pollution levels, not rewarding developing nations that are polluting even more.