Interlocking challenges for a climate solution

Four things we can do to avert climate catastrophe

Civilization faces four major existential threats in this century. They have overlapping and sometimes contrary requirements. They need to be tackled together for they will not resolve separately.

1. Energy and infrastructure including dwindling petroleum reserves and a need to develop a renewable energy paradigm. Along with that, fixing inadequate infrastructure including water systems, roads and electric grids vulnerable to hacking.
2. Carbon pollution and a need to remove some carbon from the environment.
3. Population overshoot or too many people sharing the planet and its over-taxed resources.
4. Water and resource allocation, we’ll need to make things like fresh water that we’re accustomed to getting for free from the ecosystem.

Not having the US performing its usual locomotive function to change the world exposes all of us to a very unsettled life as we go deeper into the 21st century.

Energy and Infrastructure

Yes, roads and bridges are in bad shape in the US, but so are dams and let’s not discuss airports right now. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers keeps an inventory of 90,000 dams across the country and 70 percent of dams in the US will be more than 50 years old by 2020. Almost 2,000 state-regulated, high-hazard dams in the US were listed as being in need…