  Anthropogenic emissions of CO2 must soon approach net-zero to stabilize the
global mean temperature. Although several international agreements have
advocated for coordinated climate actions, their implementation has remained
below expectations. One of the main challenges of international cooperation is
the different degrees of socio-political acceptance of decarbonization. Here we
interrogate a minimalistic model of the coupled natural-human system
representing the impact of such socio-political acceptance on clean energy
investments and the path to net-zero emissions. We show that incentives and
carbon pricing are essential tools to achieve net-zero before critical CO2
concentrations are reached, and deep international coordination is necessary
for a rapid and effective transition. Although a perfect coordination scenario
remains unlikely, as investments in clean energy are ultimately limited by
myopic economic strategies and a policy system that promotes free-riding, more
realistic decentralized cooperation with partial efforts from each actor could
still lead to significant emissions cuts.
