Youth activist Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion have recently ratcheted up the state of worldwide alarm over climate change. But alarm alone does not address the climate problem.
Climate change mitigation has been increasingly framed in absolute terms, a perspective that divides the world into two camps, heroes and villains.
This is hampering progress.
The world is filled with people who care about addressing climate change but who are workers who need good jobs to support their families, governments who need tax revenues to fund services, businesses who need inexpensive energy to provide competitive goods and services, citizens of developing countries who need to rise out of energy poverty, entrepreneurs looking for technical and business model opportunities, and scientists searching for scientific and engineering breakthroughs.
These people are located in regions and countries with differing endowments of natural energy resources, differing infrastructure systems and differing vulnerabilities to climate change.
Truly mitigating climate change calls for both transformative and compensatory behaviors, technologies, and policies for a modern world that was built on fossil fuel energy.
This address will look at the global context for climate change and chart a real road ahead.
