CONCLUSION
For those immersed in climate change research, energy systems engineering, and clean energy policy, most if not all the content of these five pillars may seem obvious. However, even if experts understand each of these pieces individually, it is rare for policy proposals or advocacy initiatives to tie more than a few of them together into a unified vision. It hasn’t happened yet that a serious national political proposal in any country has laid out specific steps that add up to addressing 100% of the global problem of climate change by 2050.
Current youth movements, from high schoolers in Europe inspired by Greta Thunberg to Millennials in the United States participating in the grassroots Sunrise Movement, are putting climate change higher on the political agenda. This trend is likely to increase in the next few years as today’s young generations become an increasing portion of voters, policy thinkers, and organization leaders.
But to achieve the goal laid out for us by climate scientists—negative emissions by 2050—government leaders will have to take steps at massive scale over the next thirty years. Given the timeframe for both developing and scaling up or rolling out technologies and practices, a lot of the relevant work has to happen in the next ten years.
With the urgency and the required scale in mind, activist movements must use these five pillars as a common frame of reference to judge proposals, make asks of political leaders, and ensure that steps eventually enacted add up to 100%. The timeframe is shorter than many people are considering. The scale of action needed is larger than most political leaders and organizations have acknowledged. And yet the solutions themselves—innovation, job creation through manufacturing scale-up and research, partnerships with companies, farmers, and governments around the world—are both politically popular in general and possible to carry out incredibly quickly under the right leadership.
As bolder climate change policy proposals develop, and (in the United States especially) as potential presidential initiatives take shape, it is crucial that activists and thought leaders consider proposals in the context of a 100% solution.
Two-thirds of emissions come from developing countries that don’t have the economic ability to adopt more expensive clean options like their industrialized counterparts can. So a solution that adds up fully by 2050 must make virtually every clean option cheaper than current systems. Industrialized countries must lead this effort—which will also benefit their own economies—by creating moonshot-style innovation projects in partnership with research labs, companies, and other countries. These projects can coordinate and fund research, development, testing, demonstration, and scale-up to ensure that each needed technology is cheap enough in time. The projects should include a global outreach initiative to shift farming practices, prevent deforestation, and start sequestering CO2 in soils and forests. Policies including carbon pricing, mandates or subsidies for clean technologies that are still slightly more expensive than fossil options, and international pressure to speed each country in reducing emissions will play a role in guaranteeing negative emissions by 2050.
Through this work, a relatively small number of political leaders—the president of the United States or China, or a collection of European prime ministers, and the activists and thinkers who will influence them—can drive a thirty-year transition in the global energy and agriculture systems that achieves net-negative greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
In the process, not only will leading countries boost their own economies, but they will guarantee greater energy access in developing regions through lower costs. The health benefits from reduced pollution will be immense. Improved technologies, available to more people with fewer negative side effects, will rapidly improve quality of life and speed up economic development around the world. Solving climate change, by definition, will be one of the fastest improvements in economic well-being in human history.
That transformation is worth achieving, but it will not happen without intense levels of focused activism and leadership. It will not happen without people breaking away from the incremental mindsets that have defined climate change policy for decades. We must all keep in mind the comprehensive picture of what must happen to add up to a 100% solution. We must set aside cynicism and 10% thinking and acknowledge the need for global transformations. We must elect and support and pressure officials who will take the truly bold steps that can set the world on a path to negative emissions. The scale is enormous—new industries, massive public projects, trillions of dollars shifting toward cleaner investment—but the world we build will be more prosperous, just, and safe.
Now is the time to heed the call of our youngest leaders and act—and to do so with the comprehensive strategies that will make a 100% solution not only possible, but likely. Let’s get to work.