This Is How To Beat Climate Change. Now Get To It.

Stop waiting for a big breakthrough on climate change. This is what we’ll get instead.

Brad Plumer, October 18, 2016 (VOX)

“Global warming can sometimes feel like this big, hopelessly intractable problem that no one’s doing much about. But the first two weeks of October have seen a genuinely impressive barrage of climate action around the world…Canada got a carbon tax…The Paris climate deal went into effect…A new global deal [was cut] on aviation emissions…[And a] new global deal [was completed] to phase out HFCs…[It was] all the stuff environmental wonks have been suggesting for years…[W]e’re still not close to stopping global warming...Nor are we yet on a trajectory to do so…That’s far more difficult than anything we’ve done so far…But what the past two weeks show is that the world is starting to gesture meaningfully in the right direction…There will never be one big turning point on climate policy — just lots of stutter steps…

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When the Western states that rely on the Colorado River first realized they were facing huge water shortages in the future, they didn’t all quickly agree on a deal that solved the entire problem at once. That was way too difficult to coordinate. So, instead, they started out by collaborating on much smaller issues, chipping away at this or that aspect of water policy, building trust over time. That enabled them to slowly work toward a bigger agreement on how best to divvy up and conserve the river’s scarce water…If we’re going to solve global warming, it will probably look like that. There will never be one dramatic moment…Instead, countries will plug away at small issues…Will that be enough? I honestly don’t know…The math is too brutal, the momentum too sluggish. But that doesn’t mean it’s time to give up…There’s always reason to push harder.” click here for more

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