As a kid, I was hooked on science fiction TV shows: Star Trek, Doctor Who and more. My inner nerd loved these incredible stories.
They usually followed a standard plot. A terrible crisis would unfold, threatening almost certain doom, until – in the last few minutes – a hero unveiled a technological wonder that instantly solved the problem. Whether it was Scotty working his miracles on the USS Enterprise or the Doctor using his sonic screwdriver, we were sure of one thing: future technology would save the day.
I loved those stories when I was a kid. Part of me still does. And I honestly wish that some new technological marvel could save us now by averting the planetary crisis of climate change. I’d love to see a hero swoop in, set their phasers to decarbonise and zap away our greenhouse gases. Sadly, that’s not going to happen. Today, as a scientist, I know why.
The fundamental reason high-tech solutions won’t save us from climate change is simple: time. Time is by far the most important variable – and the one thing technology can’t give us more of. Climate change is a cumulative problem.
The warming we see now is caused by the year-by-year, decade-by-decade build-up of greenhouse gas pollution in Earth’s atmosphere. The severe climate disruptions of 2023 – the record temperatures, storms, fires and other disasters – weren’t caused by 2023’s emissions alone. Nor were they caused by those of 2022. They were caused by our long-term, cumulative emissions, building up over many, many years.
undefined
Over the past several decades we’ve been emitting a lot of greenhouse gases – tens of billions of tonnes each year, adding up to a staggering amount of pollution dumped into the atmosphere. The cumulative impact of that pollution has fundamentally changed our atmosphere and climate system.
The longer we keep emitting greenhouse gases, the more this pollution builds up in the atmosphere, and the more climate heating it causes. It’s a process that effectively locks in warmer temperatures on our planet for thousands of years to come. The only solution is to stop polluting as quickly (and as safely and equitably) as possible.
To avoid the worst outcomes of climate change, we need to start lowering our emissions immediately. By cutting emissions now, and continuing to cut them in each consecutive year, we can reduce the future impacts of climate change. Every tonne of greenhouse gases we don’t emit, starting today, will help reduce the amount of warming we’ll see. Every tonne matters. Every year matters.
Solutions today for saving tomorrow
That’s why we need to focus on the solutions we already have. Despite what some think, climate solutions are already here. In fact, today’s climate solutions are abundant, whether they’re achieving huge gains in efficiency, reducing food waste, deforestation, and other destructive processes, electrifying our homes and vehicles, plugging methane leaks in oil and gas, or switching to zero-carbon energy sources. My organisation, Drawdown, is the world’s leading resource for learning more.
Better yet, we should focus more attention on the fastest ‘emergency break’ climate solutions that have an immediate impact on the atmosphere, quickly helping drive down emissions.
The top such measures include stopping deforestation (which accounts for about 11 per cent of global emissions – more than the entire US economy), curbing methane emissions (which have a disproportionately fast impact on climate), and cutting energy, food and industrial waste as rapidly as possible.
These fast-acting climate solutions can buy us time for other tactics – building new power-generation systems, transmission lines, energy-efficient buildings and transportation infrastructure – to kick in.
The worst possible thing we can do is wait, hoping that a new, ‘better’ solution will arrive to solve the problem. Waiting means we continue to spew pollution into the atmosphere, locking in more warming. Waiting is the enemy of climate action.
At the COP28 conference in November, Bill Gates once again told the world that we can’t solve the worst of the climate crisis with the technologies we have now. But that’s not really true.
We can – it’s just that some of these solutions are inconvenient or expensive. For the most part, we have the tools we need. What we don’t have, is time. That’s why we shouldn’t wait for new technologies.
Fusion's for the future
We shouldn’t wait for fusion. Government research into fusion energy has been going on since the 1950s, with little of substance to show for it. Despite rosy hype, decades of effort and billions spent, we’re still many years away from a commercial energy source. As the wry saying goes: fusion energy is 20 years away… and it always will be.
We shouldn’t wait for advanced nuclear power, either. Nuclear energy generation is stagnating across much of the world, hit by lengthy delays and cost overruns. Promises of better, cheaper, faster, safer nuclear power plants, repeated over decades, have never been met.
The last hyped-up technology, the Small Modular Reactor, has recently faced embarrassing delays and failures, casting doubt on the commercial rollout of this technology. And we shouldn’t wait for industrial carbon capture techniques.
After decades of work and tens of billions of dollars spent, such technology is still incredibly ineffective at removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Projects are still laughably small, wildly expensive and consume massive amounts of energy that would be better used elsewhere.
It’s unlikely that these technologies will make any real dent in the atmosphere for decades to come, if ever. Their only use, so far, is as a PR fig leaf for fossil fuel companies.
In the race against climate change, it’s quite simple: time is more important than tech. Wishing and waiting for solutions that may never come is exactly the wrong thing to do. So, for now, we must stop dreaming about being Captain Kirk or Doctor Who, and start deploying the tools that are available now.
There are science-backed solutions we can use today – and there’s no time to wait to see what else science fiction can conjure up at the last minute.
Read more: