The basic form of my question is: Should nations refrain from contributing to climate change, or work to reverse it at the cost of contributing to it temporarily?
I think that they should attempt to strike a balance. Some ways of contributing to climate change, like lack of recycling, littering, or use of unnecessary products (makeup, etc.) which are bad for the environment have nothing to do with researching environmentally friendly alternatives to environmentally negative practices. As such, a nation could enact laws to discourage this type of behaviour, like fines for littering or cash incentives for recycling. However, they should not focus on preventing climate change at the expense of stopping technological progress in areas which can potentially help the environment. At this point, climate change has gone too far to simply stop. Unless humanity takes an active role in actually reversing the effects of climate change, global warming will continue regardless of humanity's contribution to it. Furthermore, most people will likely object far less to developing environmentally friendly technologies than to ceasing their use of technology. Therefore, I do think that nations should focus their resources on developing ways to help the environment, but also implement measures to help prevent further contribution to climate change as long as doing so does not set back this research.
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