The massive problem of climate change confronts people all over the world. Can we solve it? That’s a question that has been asked from scientific, policy, and common-sense perspectives. If huge changes aren’t made and made soon, will human beings even be able to exist on the planet in 50, 100, or 1,000 years? And if the situation isn’t that bad, what can be done to ensure that future generations can live on Earth? Still, in this intimidating challenge, we can find an opportunity for change—a change that is not merely incremental but revolutionary. Indeed, we believe that the serious and even devastating effects of climate change can be averted through our concerted actions. We can change our ways, both as individuals and in the context of the industrial societies we inhabit. In this essay, we lay out these actions and their potential impacts in considerable detail. The many ways in which these strategies are combined do more than solve today’s environmental problems. They create the right kind of culture, one that fosters responsibility and imagination—essential virtues for mending the long-term health of the planet. This eight-point exploration will show exactly how and why the combined impact of each of these strategies seems to be Earth’s best hope.
The first and one of the most direct steps individuals can take to confront climate change is the reduction of carbon emissions. This can be accomplished through a number of means, both individual and societal. At the individual level, people can make choices in their everyday lives that decrease their carbon footprints: riding a bike instead of driving a car, for instance; or flying less; or eating less meat. Taken together, these actions can make a real difference. Suttle and his colleagues (Suttle et al., 2007) report that the mainstay of predictions that ecologists make about the global effects of climate change is something called a “direct” effect. They mean by this the simple physical changes that will occur in the average weather and climate of some region. For instance, if the average conditions of a region get a little bit hotter, so that the “climatic envelope” for some species is enlarged, we might reasonably expect that those species will also “enlarge” their ranges (change their distribution) because they can now live a little bit farther north. On the other hand, Suttle et al. also report on an attempt to figure out if there is a dampening effect that applies when we consider what we know about the physical responses of the many different plants and animals in the kinds of communities that are most likely to feel the effects of climate change. In essential terms, moving to renewable energy sources—like the sun, the wind, and the power in our rivers and oceans—cannot wait. It’s not just that the investment is one of the most direct means of reducing demand for fossil fuels. It’s also one of the most potent ways of creating good, green jobs and industries. At the same time, greening manufacturing and particularly a sustainable farming sector can help ensure that we don’t just clog the bad aspects of the current economy (the half a trillion dollars of waste we generate each year) with half a trillion more of what’s sure to come next (and far too much that we can no longer just throw away). With an amalgamation of personal and team efforts in the right direction, we can see a path toward resolving the serious problems caused by climate change.
Expanding on the essence of cutting down on carbon emissions and encouraging renewable energy sources lies a crucial component that often goes overlooked in the climate change conversation: sustainable practices. A 2017 report by the University of California, Berkeley’s CoolClimate Network put it in clear terms: Mitigating global climate change will require a host of local solutions. “As citizens and society lacks a feasible, affordable substitute for many of the goods and services that generate emissions, efficiency and conservation are as important as any renewable energy supply,” the report stated. Sustainable agriculture provides an outstanding illustration of this interconnectedness. For instance, crop rotation—a fundamental practice of sustainable agriculture—can help to prevent erosion and enhance the soil’s capacity to store water. Crop rotation not only decreases the need for using synthetic fertilizers but also provides a habit for beneficial soil organisms to occupy. Those creatures help plants take up nutrients and break down organic materials into the kinds of constituents that are at the foundation of healthy soil. Green infrastructure in urban planning can manage stormwater runoff more efficiently, even while offering an opportunity for improved biodiversity within our city limits. Scientists and engineers are increasingly adept at using natural systems to help and—if possible—kid the first parts of our stormwater system. The work of the past two decades has shown that if you can infiltrate rain quickly and cleanly even in the cities where it falls, you can save billions of dollars in urban areas, just by causing less flooding and fewer property losses. In the end, we will counteract the harmful consequences of climate change if we do two things: get serious about individual lifestyle changes and take a hard look at industry and community practices that are causing systemic harm—that is, change the very composition of those businesses or communities (if not the whole society).
“Building on an emphasis to change systems in different parts of society, it’s also incredibly important to look at the much larger context in which those sustainable practices need to become a part of people’s lives. Whole communities have to be involved, with the policies of those communities changing, too. If it’s up to the individual, then the policies that underlie people’s daily decision-making must change as well. The intricate relationship between societal health and the health of one person is something that not enough people think about in regard to climate change. It also underscores the urgent need to see a sustainable “way of life” in action at the individual, community, and societal levels.” Creating an environment in which sustainable projects can succeed requires a mixture of policy, education, and grassroots efforts. Policy, for instance, can encourage renewable energy development and make coal and gas power plants less profitable. It can impose carbon taxes (although fair enough for many reformers to call for a return to the burning of bankers instead of the creation of “sustainable development” enterprises since climate change is so fundamentally tied to capitalism and imperialism). And. proponents can (and do) also rightly point out that sustainable development programs and green technologies allow for future economic growth and therefore permit capitalism to continue to flourish. Take the urban community garden, for instance. This is not just something to “do” for the urban poor, but it has clear positive effects on community resilience across a host of subject matter. Designing for the diverse needs of an urban garden can allow for a presence of new “green” that diversify the kind of parts of the urban ecosystem can thus allow urban food to happen, and can also in short order all but erase unwanted heat islands. While the poor work on the bottom and the police of the ecosystem create a harmonized policy green space, the sine qua non for any urban community garden working at its best is brilliant policy reform across the board in our cities that satisfyingly addresses all the environmental matters that should be fixed.
This essay has emphasized that it is both possible and needed to reverse the damaging impact of climate change. To do this, we must undertake individual and collective actions. We can respond to environmental threats effectively with a combination of strategies. To achieve this, we can cut carbon dioxide and other problematic greenhouse gas emissions. We can promote the use of clean, renewable energy to substitute for the burning of fossil fuels. And finally, we can carry out sustainable practices across varied human endeavors, such as farming and industry. In sum, environmental fortitude can come from good works for many sectors. Good works can grow on a number of strategies. Though it is necessary for people to make personal decisions in favor of the environment, the most significant change towards sustainability must be pursued at the industrial level. Policies that guide the large-scale shift in industrial practices are a linchpin of any real path forward. It is the structural, not the acrobatic, choices that smoother the way to the kinds of wholesale change required for Earth’s best chance at remaining a habitable planet. Furthermore, when we infuse sustainable practices into all aspects of society, they can greatly enhance the policies, the education systems, and the communities that they touch. It is crucial to the health of the Earth as a whole to not only come up with solutions but to also give them clear pathways that indicate where these solutions begin and end and who, in this very pathway, solutions affect. It is not enough to present solutions; it is much more important to show a clear and well-defined pathway that outlines just how the problem can be solved. And that is why I think the work Robert Solnick does is so very powerful. There are still some problems left, and it is going to take more research to really make these strategies work just how we want them and need them to. But if we turn this roadmap into our own set of national and global commitments, those with the power to make a difference will add vital political will and much-needed resources. The task before us is urgent. It should push us to not just respond rapidly but also to take a hopeful, imaginative approach and to implement solutions that might be transformative, that might make a real, significant difference in changing our path and bettering our societies and the world in which we take part.
References
Suttle, K. B., Thomsen, M. A., & Power, M. E. (2007). Species interactions reverse grassland responses to changing climate. science, 315(5812), 640-642.
Joy, R. (2021). Unsustainable: the urgent need to transform society and reverse climate change. Policy Press.
Solnick, S. (2012). Reverse transcribing climate change. Oxford Literary Review, 34(2), 277-293.