I've heard variations of this from techno-salvationists for years. "We'll invent a solution for climate change! That's just how progress works! The world converges towards whatever futuristic vision I personally hold without regard for logic or material conditions!!"
Tech Trees really just do re-package the whole "Stone age bronze age iron age steam gas atom jet whatever the fuck" mythos, don't they? Like often literally by name.
That and reinforcing ideas about non-European cultures that are harmful. Shit like "Native Americans didn't invent the wheel because they spent all their tax money on war instead of science." Not like the real reason, which is wheels are fucking useless without large pack animals.
Even then, many large pack animals aren't all that. The first 500 years after the collapse of western Rome was dominated by camels and limited road infrastructure.
Water is and remains the most efficient way to transport goods.
Even if it did somehow invent a magic technology to solve climate change these people would just overshoot the capacity of that technology in order to maximise growth, that is just how capitalism works.
There was a post on the old sub that was basically ”Heh, stupid communists believe in their utopian fairy tales. Climate change? We'll just invent magic tech that'll make the problem go away”.
It's a combination of techno-optimism and complete political pessimism, as if the tech billionaires are helpless to actually change anything other than software. And I suspect the tech optimism is increasingly just cope at this point. The ruling class is in serious decline if this is the best they can manage.
I agree. You see it when people talk about "the algorithm" too. They talk about it like it's a thing that exists by itself and not an app that whatever company can change, adjust, or turn off at will.