Four things we need to solve climate change

Like solving Rubik’s cube, fixing climate change involves several simultaneous actions. Here are the primary challenges and how to deal with them.

Carbon emissions take up the majority of any climate change discussion. The Paris Climate Accord is all about limiting emissions, car makers try to design cars that pollute less, and everyone seems to agree on the need to eliminate coal burning power plants though we keep building them. But there’s already too much carbon in the air and the rest of the environment and reducing emissions is very much different from reversing the trend. Slowing emissions gets us to the same place — a vastly changed environment — just slower.

Solving climate change is like solving a Rubik’s Cube. You must solve all sides of the problem at once else you’ll get one perfect side where all the tiles are the same color, but the other sides will look like a dog’s breakfast. If we’re serious about limiting climate change, we need a complete solution and that requires multiple approaches. Here are the principle parts of a solution.

Reduce the use of fossil fuels as much as possible

No kidding, right? But how? We still need fossil fuels, but not for burning.

If you think we can simply quit fossil fuels cold turkey, think again. You might be able to build an electric car but Boeing and Airbus won’t be introducing an electric passenger aircraft that flies from New York to Los Angeles in…