How We Fix the Climate

We should act as if this is an emergency, because it is. But part of that is understanding the tools and strategies countries are using to decarbonize and stabilize the climate. This is work that's already being done. We have already decoupled economic growth from the emission of greenhouse gasses which, frankly, was unthinkable just a couple decades ago.

We need to be thinking and talking about this stuff, and one really important piece of that is understanding this stuff so we can talk about it and advocate for it. And, good news, it's all actually pretty fascinating!!

The things I think you should check out include:

This Video I Made on Hankschannel (especially for US citizens)

Pricing Nature (a Podcast)

The Volts Newsletter

Ministry for the Future

Our World in Data

----

[incandescentbri]

I cant even get a single person to talk to me about the climate crisis because of how uncomfortable of a topic it is. This adds to my dread, guilt, and urge of responsibility. Thank you for advocating Hank. We all needed a a refill on hope after seeing those headlines. I will keep making an effort to do what I can and open up a conversation about it.

[sinceritiesofyouandi]

So many around me are worried about the environment. Most people know it’s bad. They just don’t know what to do, they don’t know where to start. Thank you for the video, Hank. We need more of these.

[vmezaaa]

My mom was so emotional about this when the reports came out and was crying, like, "we sung about these issues in the 60s and 70s and nothing has been done."

[queenofpeanuts]

oh my god finally! someone telling us what is wrong, AND informing us the ways it can be fixed, thank you for this video

[Datarror]

As much as I'm nostalgic for ~2010 goof-'em-up Vlogbrothers videos, thoughtful signal-boosting work like this is incredibly important, and I'm so grateful for Hank's work as a science communicator.

The balance of taking a topic like this severely but also maintaining a powerful sense of hope is nothing less than *invigorating*.

[radnukespeoplesminds]

"Buy a smaller home" bold of you to assume i can ever afford a home.

[chloechartier]

As a greenhouse gas analyst, this video was wonderfully informative and a great beginner crash course. When people ask me if we can 'fix' climate change, i tell them that we do have the technology. We as a species have EVERYTHING we need to take direct action. All we need is an adapt or die mentally... here's hoping!

[abidoran]

Videos like this are so important for dispelling the climate dread that many people have. And they help lower the barrier to entry for those who don't know much without being overwhelming or crisis-inducing. I wish I had been able to watch this when I took my first environmental science class a little over two years ago. My professor was excellent and made her best effort to inspire hope, but the sheer onslaught of information instilled so much anxiety. Even when presented with actions that we could achieve in our communities and personal lives, the problem of climate change seemed insurmountable. It still seems insurmountable sometimes.

It wasn't until this semester, when I took a course on climate change, that some of the anxiety started to go away. Not completely. I'm still terrified and furious, but the end of the world via climate change no longer seems like such an inevitability. My change in outlook is partially due to knowing the intricacies of how the climate functions, but also because I had to look at the real changes that need to happen. Our term paper was on the climate action of different countries and how their culture/economy/history impact it. I wrote about Russia. Despite being notorious for supplying the world with fossil fuels, it's actually made a decent amount of progress towards curbing emissions and has already met its goal for the Paris agreement. Yeah, it still has so much more progress to make, but the steps it needs to take are /real/ and actually /achievable/. And the average Russian citizen is just as worried about climate change as we are. It's relieving to be reminded that the global community outside of the U.S. and Western Europe is just as concerned, especially in a media environment that focuses almost entirely on us.

It's a reminder that we're all in this together.

[Jazza]

Loved this video hank, imma vote to try and best not ruin the planet, meanwhile act as best as I can to not ruin the planet!

[koryndv]

I am amazed and impressed that you condensed 14 weeks of 3 hour university courses on environmental policy accurately into 16 minutes. I will be sharing this with everyone I know!

[cloud_appreciation_society]

I feel like I'm in a constant tug of war of trying to make myself research and understand climate change, while also being so angry and scared that my 'monkey brain' defaults to overwhelming despair.

Thank you for the accessible video Hank, finding good resources from trustworthy sources and then forcing myself to sit in the discomfort while reading them is hard. But I can definitely manage a 16 min video, and I know that people staying informed is key to addressing this crisis.

[garethgransaull]

Thanks for the video! A few fact checks:

1) The graph provided at the beginning of this video is misleading. The United States most certainly does not have a level of per capita carbon emissions that is at parity with what it was at in 1918. The only reason the graph appears to claim this is because it relies on production-based statistics, not consumption-based, and therefore it is not trade-adjusted. This is significant given that the United States is by far the world's largest importer, so most of its emissions derive from consumption activity.

2) We are not on track to achieve an absolute decoupling of emissions from economic growth in either the developed or developing worlds, and we are certainly not on track to achieve the absolute decoupling of resource use in general from economic growth. The decoupling of resource use from GDP growth is actually more important, given that the extraction of the Earth's resources is both the largest driver of emissions and the largest driver of all other kinds of ecological disturbances (UNEP 2017). The technocratic approach to 'decarbonization' excludes reference to the politics of extraction and consumption, which significantly misrepresents the problem.

3) Demand-side solutions, such as carbon pricing, are not going to be sufficient to address the scale of this problem. Globally, oil companies and oil-producing nations are planning to extract and burn more 120% more oil than we can safely emit if we want to remain within the temperature limit imposed by the Paris accord (SEI 2020). We need supply-side policies to impose strict caps and moratoria on the extraction of fossil fuels, or otherwise energy policies will remain decoupled from climate policy and the entire paradigm will collapse.

We must try to avoid creating a techno-solutionist narrative that simply reinforces a dysfunctional status quo. The real issue here is the need to build a post-extractive, steady state economic system that exists within the constraints of all 9 of the Earth's biophysical limits (Rockstrom 2009). If we cannot do that, it is game over.

[Yasmine__]

Can't describe how beautiful the phrase: "by the year 2050 you can't be burning fossil fuel anymore" sounded to my ear. I really hope we get there. My country Algeria is burning right now 😔

[demidesi]

I was hoping this week's video would be about the IPCC report and it really didn't disappoint! Thank you so much for making this Hank!

[tess]

People get really overwhelmed by the idea of doing their part perfectly. You don’t have to be perfect. Anything at this point helps. Thrift clothes, compost food scraps, lower your consumption, buy local, recycle, get reusable grocery bags, try to limit things you buy packaged in plastic... we don’t need to be perfect. We just need millions of people doing their part imperfectly.

[SlandersPete]

This video is probably the most helpful resource I've ever seen on the Climate issue. It gives the solution, problems going on, and describes in more detail what we can and need to do. This is so clear and transparent as well, not allowing for any questions to be left unanswered. Most other videos just say "the world is ending because of climate change, here's what climate change is, we're all dead."
Welp, time to read the entire 3949 page IPCC Climate Report in full.

[Efflorescentey]

Hank: “reminder that educational videos are allowed to be over 4 minutes.”
Me: “it‘s only been 4 minutes?”
* checks time *
“Oh dang.”

[carykh]

I loved the format of this video, it helps make an overwhelming topic just that more digestable. BOOST

[NyxGamingAU]

When the scientist said we have certainty. I just cried. I didn’t realise how much fear and disappointment in the world I was holding in. As young people living just above the poverty line, we feel hopeless and it’s effecting our mental health, both consciously and unconsciously.

[EJW]

Forgot the biggest thing an individual can do: VOTE for politicians who support these policies!