“Limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require ‘rapid and far-reaching’ transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities. Global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) would need to fall by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030” (IPCC, p. 2). The way I see it, technological fixes in this context would allow everyone to keep living relatively the same, but with fewer emissions. The first thing that comes to mind is a technology that effectively reduces the amount of carbon dioxide produced by engines and large facilities, possibly similar to the mechanism that removes arsenic from mining operation emissions. In theory, we could have large scale technological fixes employed within the time frame, but this would require our government to fully accept that climate change is real, happening now, and being caused by us. Only then can we begin to make real progress.
Historian Michael Reidy’s article about John Tyndall and the articles from the IPCC make it blatantly obvious, at least to me, that climate science hasn’t been in its infancy for well over a hundred years. Tyndall knew in EIGHTEEN SIXTY-ONE that changes to the atmosphere could have a catastrophic effect on the world climate. Research on the subject has increased exponentially since then, to the point where we have practically exact numbers of how much we are contributing, how much we need to change, and how long we have to do it before we cross a point of nearly no return. Just because climate contrarians didn’t hear about global warming until 2006 doesn’t mean the research started in 2005. People have known for a very long time.