How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need

Broadly speaking, you can think of adaptation in three stages. The first involves reducing the risks posed by climate change, through steps like climate-proofing buildings and other infrastructure, protecting wetlands as a bulwark against flooding, and—when necessary—encouraging people to relocate permanently from areas that are no longer livable.

Many of these policies that prize efficiency over emissions are still on the books, restricting your ability to lower your emissions by swapping out a gas-burning furnace for an electric heat pump—even

Local agencies, like their state and federal counterparts, oversee different policy priorities. Building departments enforce efficiency requirements; transit agencies can go electric and influence the materials used in roads and bridges; waste management agencies operate large vehicle fleets and have influence over emissions from landfills. Back to

dedicated to food for people or animals. Some advanced biofuels will be what experts call “drop-in” fuels—meaning you can use them in (or “drop them into”) a conventional engine without modifying it. One more benefit: We can transport them using the tankers, pipelines, and other infrastructure we’ve already spent billions to build and maintain.

Here are some specific steps the private sector can take along these lines: Set up an internal carbon tax. Some big companies now impose a carbon tax on each of their divisions. These companies aren’t paying

One is by using public policies to create demand for clean products—for example, by creating incentives or even requirements to buy zero-carbon cement or steel. Businesses are much more likely to pay the premium

Make a ton of cement, and you’ll get a ton of carbon dioxide.

about how the world might decarbonize airplanes. Warren asked, “Why can’t we run a jumbo jet on batteries?” He already knew that when a jet takes off, the fuel it’s carrying accounts for 20 to 40 percent of its weight. So when I told him this startling fact—that you’d need 35 times more batteries by weight to get the same energy as jet fuel—he unde

Because it would run on commonly available elements like hydrogen, the fuel would…

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