Quick summary of premises of this question:
- There's major anthropogenic global warming going on, and predictions say it will accelerate the next 50 years if global and radical action is not taken
- Everything seems to indicate that such global and radical action is not going to be taken by most countries, for various and numerous reasons that would be out of scope to cover here.
- If any single country takes radical action alone, its economy will be unfairly disadvantaged on the global market and people will import goods from other countries not taking action, meaning all effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is futile until done on a global scope.
Viewed from a small country, (such as my own, Switzerland), it seems much more effective to assume that global warming is happening anyway, and invest money for protecting against negative effects of global warming locally, such as: Planting trees massively in cities to protect from the warmth, invest to adapt agriculture and leisure to new climate, protecting the population from natural disasters and secure drinkable water supplies.
The current way politicians are leading to, investing massively to reduce greenhouse gas emission in the gamble that all countries will do the same, when everything seems to indicate they won't do it and don't want to do it, seems hopeless. Why are we still aiming this way ?
- Global reduction of global warming is very expensive. It's a gamble on foreign countries and chances of any global success appears to be very low as this is written (2019).
- Local adaptation to global warming is very expensive. But it's effectiveness is 100% guaranteed.