How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

the Paris Agreement, in which more than 190 countries signed up to eventually limit their emissions, was such an achievement. Not because the current commitments will make a huge dent in emissions—if everyone meets them, they’ll reduce annual emissions by 3 billion to 6 billion tons in 2030, less than 12 percent of total emissions today—but

Energy source Watts per square meter Fossil fuels 500–10,000 Nuclear 500–1,000 Solar* 5–20 Hydropower (dams) 5–50 Wind 1–2 Wood and other biomass Less than 1

what else it’s going to take to adapt to a warmer climate.

Make calls, write letters, attend town halls.

Know where they stand, ask them questions, and make clear that this is an issue that will help determine how you vote. Demand more funding for clean energy

Without that demand signal, the innovations that governments and businesses invest in will stay on the shelf. Or they won’t get developed in the first place, because there’s no economic incentive to make them.

Finally, after a disaster, there’s the recovery period. We’ll need to plan for services for people who’ve been displaced—services like health care and education—as well as insurance that helps people at all income levels rebuild and standards to ensure that whatever gets rebuilt is more climate-proof than what was there before.

Look locally as well as nationally.

Reduce your home’s emissions.

For example, we saw that pneumonia was behind a large number of children’s deaths each year. Although a pneumo vaccine already existed, it was so expensive that poor countries weren’t buying it. (They had little incentive to, because they had no idea how many children were dying from the disease.) Once they saw the data, though—and once donors agre