Nutshell
The truth? “Solutions” is the wrong word.
Difficult as it is to communicate, absorb, process, accept, and as shrill / alarmist as it may sound, our shared atmosphere is on an accelerating course to reach a state of potentially unsurvivable, global climate extremes during the lives of today’s children and teens.
The climate (energy / population / democracy / justice) crisis is a clear, present, dire EMERGENCY that ALREADY displaces and KILLS millions each year and compromises the lives of billions RIGHT NOW.
It is no longer preventable. Things will get much worse for a long time to come no matter what. And the risk of sudden, catastrophic system shifts, tips, flips that can occur over time frames as brief as a few years (as they have in the past) is upon us.
So the only “solution” would require time travel or reversal back to at least the 1960s, when everything began to get carried away.
There ARE many potential responses that are within our current means and technology, AND possibilities yet to be discovered.
But our core afflictions — psychological and anti-science resistance and denial, political and ideological gridlock, delayed, minimal, incremental action, and our insane, oppressive, growth and inequality-based, fossil fuel-reliant economics that perpetuate, compound, and are the root of, the crisis — are contrary and disproportionate to the reality / physics / bio-chemistry and non-linear (unpredictable, abrupt, runaway) nature of the threat.
No less than the fate of all generations of all peoples and most species hangs in the balance TODAY. We’re in a race against time to prevent irreversible, worst-case, apocalyptic outcomes. And it’s far too late in the process for a gradual ramp up (mass, collective delusion) approach to have significant enough impact.
We must take extraordinary, disruptive, inconvenient measures to do as much as possible very SOON and very FAST.
That requires a sustained, ‘state of global emergency’-scale level of international urgency, cooperation, research and development, mass mobilization and implementation, resistance and protest — on a vast multitude of fronts — just to level off, let alone reverse and restore our destabilized global climate to the safe balance that allowed us to evolve.
Below is the start of a collection of best proposed (and necessary), least-awful responses / possibilities to attempt to confront — rethink, transform, mitigate, adapt to, drawdown, refreeze, reforest, rewild, survive — what is ALREADY the greatest crime against humanity, most life and future life EVER. (Compilation: Betrayal of Life.)
Specifics
The big picture comes down to these 3 things:
1. If we can’t change our economic system, our number’s up, George Monbiot — “To succeed is to destroy ourselves. To fail is to destroy ourselves. That is the bind we have created. Ignore if you must climate change, biodiversity collapse, the depletion of water, soil, minerals, oil; even if all these issues miraculously vanished, the mathematics of compound growth make continuity impossible.”
But system change won’t and can’t happen soon enough, so…
2. Project Drawdown “…maps, measures, models, and describes the 100 most substantive solutions to global warming. For each solution (and remember, “solution” is the wrong word), we describe its history, the carbon impact it provides, the relative cost and savings, the path to adoption, and how it works. The goal … is to determine if we can reverse the buildup of atmospheric carbon within thirty years. All solutions modeled are already in place, well understood, analyzed based on peer-reviewed science, and are expanding around the world.”
- Article – “Drawdown” ranks the top 100 “solutions” to climate change, VOX
- Book – Drawdown: The most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming, edited by Paul Hawken
- Page – “Solutions” list, Drawdown.org
- Website – Drawdown.org
A lot of essential options that must be pursued to their fullest potential (though a few are problematic). But as the link below explains, even all of that by tomorrow would not be enough because the processes / physics / bio-chemistry of climate breakdown, disruption, destabilization are already too far along. And so there is no choice but to contemplate the hornet’s nest of hornet’s nests…
3. Geoengineering, climateye compilation — Whatever your position, important considerations and complications (con and pro) are discussed, like how carbon emissions reduction isn’t simple because there would be consequences, just as there would be tremendous risks and uncertainties in any attempt to manipulate the global climate (as we’ve done for many decades, by the way). But here we are. Out of time. Lousy options. And in quandary over least-worst.
Individual – Click image below to enlarge

Individual – The big 6
- Get informed, inform others, don’t be silent
- Participate, organize, mobilize
- Avoid flying — The single largest personal climate impact we can avoid
- Avoid meat — The 2nd largest personal climate impact we can avoid
- Avoid driving
- Have smaller families
Individual – More sources
- Study: The most effective individual steps to tackle climate change, Phys.org
- Reduce your carbon footprint, David Suzuki Foundation (DSF)
- 4 places to cut your carbon (transportation, energy, food, action), DSF
- Food and climate change, DSF
- Get on your bike — and off oil, DSF
- 20 things you can do to address the climate crisis, The Leap Blog
- What you can do, Lester Brown, Earth Policy Institute
- Article – Forget shorter showers, D. Jensen, Orion Magazine
Political (more to come)
More
Books, articles, posts
A lot of white, male authors of a certain age and class, based in rich countries. Love to have a more diverse list. If you know of any others, please be in touch (contact).
- Book 2017 – Drawdown: The most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming, edited by Paul Hawken
- Book 2015 – Shifting from fossil fuels to solar and wind energy, L. Brown
- Book 2013 – Feral: Rewilding the land, the sea, and human life, G. Monbiot
- Post 2013 – Doubling down on our Faustian bargain, D. Spratt
- Post 2012 – Serious geo-e talk better than pious hand-wringing about 2C, D. Spratt
- Post 2012 – Beyond the carbon price, a Faustian bargain, D. Spratt
- Book 2012 – The new geopolitics of food security, L. Brown
- Chapter 2012 – Beyond dangerous climate change, K. Anderson (25-page PDF)
- Book 2012 – Carbon Zero: Imagining cities that can save the planet, A. Steffen
- Book 2011 – How to prevent economic and ecological collapse, L. Brown
- Book 2011 – Worldchanging 2.0: A user’s guide for the 21st century, A. Steffen
- Post 2011 – How the world could attempt to stabilize at 450 ppm, J. Romm, CP
- Book 2009 – Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to save civilization, L. Brown
- Book 2008 – Climate Code Red: The case for emergency action, D. Spratt, P. Sutton
- Book 2006 – Heat: How we can stop the planet burning, George Monbiot
Websites (more to come)
Essential climateye compilations
- Compilation: “Solutions” (responses, possibilities)
- Compilation: EMERGENCY human impact reports expose the greatest crime against humanity, most life and future life EVER
- Compilation: CON JOB – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 (especially Part 3)
- Compilation: The psychology of climate crisis denial, inaction, immobilization
- Compilation: +4°C by 2060s or sooner incompatible with organized civilization
- Compilation: Arctic meltdown / methane time bomb global climate EMERGENCY
- Compilation: The sixth ‘great’ mass extinction, wildlife population decimation, biodiversity liquidation and the global climate EMERGENCY
- Compilation: Ocean acidification and the global climate EMERGENCY
- Compilation: The threat of sudden / abrupt system shifts / tips / flips and the global climate EMERGENCY
- Compilation: Sea level rise, commitment, acceleration and the global climate EMERGENCY
- Compilation: Ocean circulation disruption and the global climate EMERGENCY
- Compilation: Food / agriculture & climate EMERGENCY
- Compilation: Geoengineering and the global climate EMERGENCY
- Compilation: Rio+20 UN Earth Summit: The future written-off to privatize / commodify nature for profit, betray life and just sit around talk’n!
- Compilation: Big banks, markets & business as usual
- Compilation: Obscene fossil fuel industry profits, perverse government subsidies
- Compilation: The war on science and the global climate EMERGENCY
- Compilation: Dr. James Hansen and the global climate EMERGENCY
- Compilation: Peak oil featuring Richard Heinberg: Life After Growth
- Compilation: Car ‘culture’ and the global climate EMERGENCY
- Compilation: Aviation and the global climate EMERGENCY
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