Avoiding Catastrophic Climate Change: Why Technological Innovation is Necessary but not Sufficient

Global climate change is among the world’s most significant and pressing ecological challenges. On some scenarios it could bring about hundreds of millions of refugees, cause a quarter of the world’s plant and animal species to go extinct, and result in trillions of dollars in economic costs. How bad global climate change is going to be will depend upon its magnitude, which in turn depends upon how much more greenhouse gases we emit. In this chapter, Philip Cafaro presents and evaluates a wide range of emission reduction strategies, both technological and behavioral. He argues that both types are necessary, and advocates for several particular behavioral strategies, including eating less meat, flying less frequently, having fewer children, and slowing economic growth.