To seek solutions, identify the problems

• • Claiming ownership. Carrying the debate. Why do public opinions matter? Why might there be a sense of urgency? Who has the access to the media to get across their viewpoint(s)? Why do so many Americans think climate change doesn’t and won’t affect them?
  • Who has professional and scientific credibility?

Greg Craven (2009) suggests a spectrum or continuum of credibility. Most credible are professional societies with reputations to uphold and members at the top of their fields. Least credible are individuals, especially those well outside of their area of expertise (you can see above that the ‘skeptics’ column has many individuals, few professional societies, the ‘Warmers’ column is the inverse).

• Social movements — there are groups of scientists, (e.g., UCSUSA), groups of activists (such as 350.org), and industry groups posing as grassroots movements (for example, Climate Depot), and attempts to discredit global warming science as ‘junk science.’
• Technologies
  • • Cleaner fuels, transportation changes
    • Stabilization wedges — What kinds of measures will ‘flatten’ out the yearly global increases in greenhouse gas production of industrial societies?
    • Biomimicry (Design principles that follow Nature’s laws)
    • Supply-side versus demand-side policies–new fuels, or conservation?
    • ‘Supply-side’ would mean new power production from renewable sources–solar, geothermal, wind, tides, etc.
    • ‘Demand-side’ means tackling conservation. Less electricity used ‘saves’ energy and reduces the need for new plants
  • Geoengineering — technical means of addressing symptoms (for instance, increase the ‘white’ surface area in the troposphere to reflect more solar radiation)
  • Upcycling — changing the linear mode of thinking on production and consumption.

• Actions/technologies by category (from the book Drawdown):
  • Energy–switching from non-renewable to renewable fuels (solar farms, rooftop solar, wind turbines (on land and offshore), geothermal power, wave and tidal action, biomass, using ‘micro grids‘ instead of centralized electricity grids (which also have posed fire hazards), etc.
  • Food—shifting diet, producing meat in a non-factory setting (e.g., eliminating confined animal feeding operations), reducing food waste, permaculture (that requires less chemicals and conserves precious and non-renewable topsoil), agroforestry (growing crops in layers, vertically, not just annual field crops on the ground), composting, etc.
  • Buildings and cities–some covered under ‘smart growth’ above, but also: heat pumps, LED lighting, ‘green’ rooftops, more bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, etc.
  • Transportation—mass transit, electric and hybrid vehicles, electric bicycles, trucks, more rail vs trucks, carpooling, aviation, shipping, etc.
  • Materials–recycling (household and industrial), materials recovery, ‘upcycling,’ eliminating plastics, methane recapture from landfills, water conservation, alternatives to cement and refrigerants, etc.

• Changing behavior
  • Personal changes (carpooling, conservation, etc.–‘reuse, reduce, and recycle’)
  • Consumption–Inherently a problem, but some level is essential to life, and if we’re going to consume, we can make ‘greener’ choices (some information sources)
  • Cultural changes (in schools, etc.)–‘ecological literacy‘ (imagine if everyone understood the first and second laws of thermodynamics …)
    • A big obstacle: Human exemptionalism (the notion shared by many people in many societies that humans are somehow exempt from natural laws)
  • Institutional changes – mass transit, economics, energy policy, ‘smart growth‘
  • International cooperation–agreements, treaties governing carbon emissions
  • Political behavior–voting??
  • Market– versus government-based solutions–pricing/taxing goods and services to change behavior. Who benefits? Who pays?
    • Carbon tax–this would be a more market-based solution to the problem (more conservative, versus a liberal approach that would entail more government regulation)
    • Cap and trade–the goal is overall reductions (does it help communities near heavy polluters?) How to enforce?
    • Ever heard of an ecotax? What if we reduced taxes on things we valued, like people’s labor (income tax), and increased them on things like environmental ‘bads’ (driving Hummers, using inefficient lighting, coal-fired electricity generation)?
    • The BlueGreen Alliance is an effort to find common ground between business, government, and citizens

You don’t need to memorize all of these. But it would be wise to have a sense that, first, humans already have a pretty good idea of what needs to be done, second, there are specific actions and measures to consider, each responding in some way to the problems of industrial societies with massive carbon footprints. And third, not all who claim ‘expertise’ are actually experts. It’s not science when you can predict the outcome every time. This is why even climate scientists disagree and models are not perfect. But they’re preferable to scientists working for the fossil fuel industries, paid well mostly to do public speaking and earn their keep.

Greg Craven. 2009. What’s the Worst that could Happen? NY: Perigee.