It is too late to slow climate change with just windmills, solar panels and Teslas. On Oct. 24, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released a report asserting that “negative emission technologies” that scrub carbon dioxide from the air will be essential if we plan to contain climate change. This news comes on the heels of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that the nations of the world have a decade to shrink emissions drastically enough to restrain global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. If we fail to meet this goal, “tens of millions more people could be exposed to life-threatening heat waves and water shortages, and the world’s coral reefs could disappear almost entirely,” according to an Oct. 24 New York Times article. The methods scientists have proposed of chemically scrubbing carbon from the air are unproven and still in their infancy. As we sink resources into them, we must adapt to what will inevitably become our reality: using less of everything. 

Even as we dangle in peril, we fight to preserve a lifestyle that grows more unsustainable by the day. Our avocados come from Florida, electronics are designed to be discarded and single use plastics clutter our lives and landfills. 

According to a fact sheet the Earth Day Network produced this year, the world uses 4 trillion plastic bags per year, only one percent of which are ever recycled. It isn’t entirely our fault: Companies spend their energy making us want more things, even as those things become increasingly unsustainable to produce and destroy. The reality of an economy that favors a short-term profit motive is that companies and sectors avoid responding to looming catastrophes for as long as they can. Governments, rightly fearful of eliminating jobs and causing resulting social problems, are toothless to stop them. 

Environmentalists put stock in international agreements like the Paris Accords to hold countries accountable for their emissions. But in order to paint a brighter picture for politicians, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose numbers the Accords were based on, “speculated on the hope of future technology,” to “assure us that we can get by with much more relaxed emissions reductions,” according to a July 3, 2017 Guardian article. When the IPCC removes carbon-scrubbing speculation from the equation, avoiding catastrophic climate change “requires that we slow down and gradually reverse the pace of economic growth,” says the same Guardian article. By counting on technology to save us before it exists, the IPCC leaves no room for error, and everyone knows what happens when those with good intentions are content to assume.
What this means, then, is that individuals and nations are approaching the problem of climate change by marking it as a distant concern and not an immediate one, and making it seem less bad than it is, respectively. As nobody else will, grassroots movements have taken up the task of encouraging sustainable living. For example, as of September 20, 349 cities, counties and states have banned or taxed plastic bags, which are estimated to have a 12-minute lifespan from shopping cart to trash can, according to a Sept. 20 Forbes article. When California banned plastic bags in 2014, residents kvetched for a short while and then got used to it. Starbucks should be next. No thermos, no coffee. We can all drive a little less, purchase a little smarter, and repair instead of replace. A momentary inconvenience is a small price to pay for reduced waste and emissions and a healthier planet.

Scientists have many ideas of how best to zap the estimated 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, which will likely be necessary by mid-century. Some are low-tech and community based, such as planting more trees and no-till agriculture, which can trap more carbon dioxide beneath the soil, as well as “encourage plant growth and increase farmers’ profits,” according to a March 3, 2015 New York Times article. Others are still in the pipeline but becoming more feasible, like direct air capture,” in which  fans blow air into a chemical solution which captures and treats carbon dioxide, per a June 7 ScienceMag article. These more technical approaches, which are not yet large-scale, are what the National Academies hope the government will earmark billions of dollars in funding for. 

Carbon capture and scrubbing technologies represent an important, and apparently necessary, development in combating climate change. Yet we cannot wait for technology to save us from the storm. We can live smarter and with less now, by choice, or we can pump through what is left of our resources and be forced to change later. The promise of technology gives hope that our children might see the Great Barrier Reef, but it should not pacify us to continue living wastefully.