Climate Change: Letting go of the Perfect Solution, Necessary

Many here on Justmeans want to be a part of a climate change solution in a big & sustainable way; I decided to start small by joining in discussions on social networking site LinkedIn. The goal was simple, engage conversation online to find the major hurdles people have with climate change (and gain some ideas for this Justmeans editorial). The major hurdle I hypothesized was resistance to enact meaningful solutions. You'd be surprised how split people are on LinkedIn. I get regular updates and there are always two types of posts. One kind of post is the doomsayer - "we will lose it all, and that's all I can say/repeat" kind of discussion. The other kind of regular post is the defeatist - "climate change is real, but we can't do anything or we can do something just don't know what exactly" - a very pessimistic attitude. Either way, real meaningful facts are always lacking.

One particular issue I've come across numerous times was a demand for climate change solutions to have "surgical precision." When I think of climate change solutions I think of funding and the best idea would being Carbon Cap and Trade. If we put a price on carbon we could gather money to use for clean energy projects and afforestation. There are many people strongly against many solutions, creating a lot of confusion. The one clear similarity is the demand for a completely perfect solution; their demand is unreasonable for two reasons.

First of all, 'surgical precision' is a poor & unattainable goal. 'Surgical precision' is a poor metaphor for climate change, which is incredibly complex. When someone does a surgery it involves two parties, the surgeon(s) and the patient, and the results only affect one person. On the other hand when climate change legislation is passed the results can affect billions of people in a billion ways. One good, carbon saving move to support biofuels in Denmark could be detrimental to Brazil's Amazon Rainforest (a key carbon sink). Secondly, 'perfection' at this point of the game is beyond reach. Currently there are no global targets for carbon emissions and the clock is ticking. Demanding a perfect game plan for a game with no rules and no goals is rather pointless.

The more appropriate metaphor is that we need to go to war on climate change. War is imperfect, it's ugly, and we do whatever we need to in order to win. We ration food and supplies. We focus our energy away from leisurely trinkets and create factories dedicated to weapons (for climate change that means renewable energy, energy efficiency measures, nuclear power, and CCS coal). Waste is also eliminated: wasteful use of gasoline, electricity, food, and even trash (waste to energy power plants). Recycling is optimized to include every scrap of aluminum, metal, plastic, and glass. Forget perfection, a solution that gets this job done IS the best solution.

Photo Credit: Flickr