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Language: en
there's a solution to climate change
actually there are a lot of them
humanity has a problem on its hands our
climate is changing and humans are the
primary driver of that change even
thinking about how to solve this problem
can feel overwhelming but there's
actually a wide set of climate change
solutions one way to think about solving
this crisis is to boil it down to trying
to minimize suffering from climate
change related impacts now some life on
the planet is already grappling with the
early consequences of climate change and
some populations are worse off than
others if we do nothing the consequences
are just gonna get even worse but there
are a few things we can do think of it
as three kinds of speed bumps we can
build too slow and possibly stop us from
getting to a really bad outcome the
first speed bump is prevention which may
have the biggest effect this is where we
stop putting greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere and where technologies like
wind solar and nuclear energy come in
prevention would likely be the cheapest
and most straightforward solution bring
our emissions to zero fast and a lot of
the worst consequences of a warming
world would be avoided
the problem it's probably too late to
prevent climate change entirely people
have already added a lot of carbon
dioxide to our atmosphere enough to warm
the planet by more than two degrees
Fahrenheit in fact our planet hasn't had
this much co2 in the air for millions of
years we might need something more
the second speedbump undo the problem if
we can't stop emitting greenhouse gases
entirely can we at least start taking
them out of the atmosphere or keep the
planet cool some other way this is where
negative emissions technologies come in
stuff that sucks co2 out of the air
including natural processes and machines
and even solar geoengineering which
reflects some of the energy of the Sun
away from Earth thereby cooling the
planet a bit to counteract the warming
from greenhouse gases the undo plan is
somewhat controversial it could be more
expensive than prevention demand a lot
of energy resources itself or have some
severe unintended consequences the third
line of defense adaptation this means
developing ways to live on a warmer
planet a human being could probably live
in a world that has way more carbon
dioxide than today the dinosaurs did it
but civilization would be hugely
disrupted our coastlines redraw our
agricultural land moved if we could
somehow adapt to these changes then
theoretically we could still prosper
this is where technologies like sea
walls or drought resistant crops come in
and it doesn't actually have to mean
admitting defeat implementing adaptation
strategies today will make us more
resilient to the vulnerabilities we
already face but adapting to a
worst-case scenario may mean a
gargantuan shift in the world order as
we know it
and there's a lot we can't plan for for
example we can't predict all of the
consequences of changing weather
patterns or mass extinctions that's why
the adaptation solution alone won't fix
the problem
the higher the Prevention speedbump the
lower the others can be but the reality
is we're already seeing the effects of
climate change and so many argue we'll
need to develop all three of these
solution sets in tandem how much we
invest in one over the other
well that's where the debate is at now
science tells us how the world is likely
to change if we continue on our current
path but we also have the knowledge and
tools to change that trajectory if we
choose to use them follow us on social
to watch our next episodes that dive
into the solution sets on preventing
undoing and adapting to climate change
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