The climate crisis threatens human civilization as we know it. Each day brings further evidence of the urgency of the crisis: floods and droughts, wildfires and heatwaves, sea-level rise, and storms. These disasters bring with them loss of life, economic damage, food shortages, adverse public health outcomes, national security risks, and more. All the while, greenhouse gas emissions, the dominant cause of climate change, continue to rise nearly every year.
Despite the growing number of countries and companies that recognize the challenge posed by climate change, the window to prevent the worst outcomes is rapidly closing. Achieving the goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 requires an unprecedented transformation of nearly every facet of the modern economy. New technologies need to be deployed at scale. New business models are needed to reallocate trillions of dollars of capital every year. As Herculean a task as these changes may seem, they still will not be sufficient to avoid the ongoing consequences of the greenhouse gases already emitted.
While scientific research has an enormous role to place in helping understand the climate crisis, the key barriers to progress today are political, technological, financial, and social. Our politicians have largely failed to respond to the complexity and scale of the climate crisis. And in light of the expanding demand for energy from the world’s developing economies, providing the energy needed for economic development without exacerbating the climate crisis may prove among humanity’s greatest challenges.
Higher education is central to addressing the climate crisis.