Thread by @JeffAndDonkeys

Fictional Oval Office speech:
"My fellow Americans:
"My administration, in meetings with the leaders of France, Germany, Canada, and Mexico, has concluded that it is time to tell you, our citizens, the unvarnished truth about climate.

2. "There is not, today, any possibility that building a global renewable energy infrastructure to attain a hypothetical net zero emissions level in the foreseeable or likely future. The up-front production emissions can never be removed in the predicted emissions-free out years

3. "As you are aware, our national high speed transportation infrastructure is collapsing and can no longer safely carry the load we are putting on it.
"As you may not have been informed, building concrete based transportation infrastructure is one of the most emissions centric

4. ... activities available to industrial societies.
Therefore we are separating the infrastructure discussion into two buckets: drinking water, and everything else.
"It is obvious that a nation which cannot provide safe drinking water to its citizenry is a failed state.

5. "Although Flint, MI, is the best known city with toxic drinking water, we find that the condition prevails in much of the nation, in both rural and urban settlements. This is not tolerable.
"Therefore, all infrastructure construction will be put on hold until, at minimum,

6. All Americans living in communities have access to clean, safe, sanitary drinking water.
"Due to the vast scale of this project, we will focus in each region on using available human power to do the necessary Earthmoving, using shovels, hoes, buckets, levers, and animal power.

7. "Because, as I said at the beginning, it is time for us to tell the truth about climate, about CO2, and about the known science.
"The practice over the past 40 years of saying, 'Climate change is a crisis. We must increase CO2 emissions / energy consumption to combat it,'

8. "This practice has obviously failed.
"2021 is the worst year ever, for climate catastrophic events. "The global south is becoming uninhabitable; the global north is on fire.
"Before that 2020 was the worst.
"Before that 2019. 2018. This can't go on.

9. "My fellow Americans, this isn't about 2050, or 2040, or 2035. This is about right now. Civilization is quivering on the edge.
"Therefore, we are going to take the disintegration of our fifty year old national concrete transportation infrastructure as an opportunity.

10. "Starting today, American, French, German, Mexican, and Canadian climate policy will be to find means to directly reduce emissions by applying lower levels of energy to all processes.
"Specifically, we in the US will be lowering our national speed limit to speeds

11. "which our disintegrating national transportation infrastructure can support without further rapid failure.
In case if any road or bridge which cannot be made safe by speed / energy / impact reductions, we will reduce allowed loads.
"Any bridge, in particular, which

12. "cannot be safe at reduced speeds or loads, will be closed and removed.
"I understand that this is not what you have been told. You have been told that increasing production of steel and concrete, and increasing emissions if fossil fuels to remove biological overburden...

13. "to prepare land for new pavement and construction, would lead to a future where the atmosphere allowed climate and biosphere stability and we could go on like this, more or less, forever.
"I'm sorry. That is simply not true. To the extent I have contributed to that falsehood

14. "I deeply apologize to you.
"This is a crisis greater than any civilization in all of human history has ever faced. Somehow we all decided to face it by continuing to do the same things that caused it - oh yes, we know exactly how we caused this - as though that was real. No.

15. "We have known, for hundreds of years now, that only photosynthesis removes significant quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere, and that, given a chance, that photosynthesis and related natural processes, eating, excreting, decomposition, and others, bind that carbon,

16. "to the solid portions of Earth, as living things and organic (recently living) matter.
"Therefore rather than employing otherwise unemployable Americans to emit more CO2, prepare more land, and pour more concrete, we will be employing them

17. "to remove excess concrete wherever we can live without it. This work will be powered, indirectly, by food, directly powered by the muscles of humans and animals. We will not be emitting and CO2 to power this project.

18. During World War II, Americans accepted a reduction in the national speed limit to 35 mph. Americans accepted gasoline rationing. Americans happily planted Victory Gardens to feed themselves in lieu of a nationwide fuel energy food supply chain.
We're in a worse mess now.

19. "Therefore, the national speed limit is hereby set at 55 mph maximum, and will be actively enforced.
"All federal subsidies for fossil fuel production and transportation will immediately cease.
"The national speed limit will be reduced by another 5 mph annually until it is 15

20. "This will be the most difficult battle humankind has ever faced. It already is. As your President I have decided to face it straight on, honestly.
"We have a huge amount to learn. It's time to start.
"Thank you for your time and attention."

21. Following on here, here's an explanation of how slowing down works.