I would argue that no one has an adequate sense of how to approach any problem this huge, complex, and consequential. Anyone who tells you that they do have such a sense is either insanely delusional or a sociopathic liar attempting to manipulate you into doing their bidding.
Which isn’t to say that there aren’t some possibilities. Geoengineering is a good prospect, particularly seeding the open ocean with iron to induce plankton blooms. There are technologies that remove CO2 from the air, and even turn it into usable products. The best bets are those proposals which actually remove CO2 from the atmosphere. But you won’t find those solutions to be politically popular. Why? Because they are in fact solutions (and you can’t run on a problem you’ve fixed), and they don’t provide anyone with any power or control over others’ lives. Neither are politically feasible solutions to anything.
Government funding of cronies through “green” subsidies are actually, if anything, getting in the way of real solutions. Wind turbines slaughter hundreds of thousands of birds, especially at night, when they can’t see them. Batteries of all sorts require rare earth metals, and those are extracted in places like China where strip mining is not remotely a thing of the past — and nobody cares about renewing the land when it’s stripped of its resources.
There are people who are doing it, but those people don’t make the news. If you follow the scientific publications carefully, you will see a lot of work being done. If nobody is noticing, it’s because none of those solutions are politically beneficial. Let’s be honest: there’s not a single politician who actually cares a bit about saving the earth. Politicians care about two things: getting re-elected, and gaining more power. They will literally let the earth burn so they can have power now. If you understand that, you will at least understand that there is no such thing as a political solution to this problem — there never has been, and there never will be.
The bottom line is this: the scientists are looking to solve these problems, and the entrepreneurs are looking for the solution that will make a profit. It’s the latter who will end up saving the world, though it will certainly not be their intention, much as they have lifted practically every person on earth out of abject poverty, and will continue to do so only so long as governments stay out of their way.
If I knew the solution to these problems, I would have done it by now — and become a billionaire from it. However, I do know the kind of environment which provides the rich soil, steady rains, crisp air, and sunlight needed to make it so that solutions will be able to germinate and grow and bear fruit. We need millions more minds to solve these problems, and we need them to have the proper incentive structures. That’s what I can help teach people, if they only have ears to hear. It’s the only way to save us all.
