How exactly are we supposed to be fixing this?

We will do what we did with the ozone layer: we will create new policies that support things that will lesson greenhouse gas. If we collectively act, we have a chance. How do you do this?

Does your local town have a sustainability and climate action plan? If not, ask them why not. Find other residents interested, and demand they join whatever mayor caucus is near you that is striving to handle this crisis.

Join Citizen Climate Lobby. We have lots of power. The choices we make can make a difference.

For instance, we got a metal roof. Now two other neighbors are getting metal roofs. We are getting metal siding. I am sure I will start a new trend here as well. The beauty of this metal is that the cost is the same as the cheapest Hardie board person I found, but it will last much longer, it is locally produced, and it is easily recyclable. Our choices matter. Our actions matter. BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE. And insist and demand that others care. I started going to board meetings 3 years ago. Now I lead a climate task force and have everyone thinking about how to turn a brownfield into a solar farm. Now I am ear budding the idea of a microgride....the idea of not losing power during climate emergency is appealing to a lot of people. Will it happen? Who knows, but I lose nothing by putting a dream out there.

We are only as powerless as we let ourselves be. I know it seems hopeless. I feel the heavy weight all the time. I was watching 4-5 old Oak trees die every year due to crazy climate stuff. (I started doing treatments to them two years ago and haven't lost a tree since!) But instead of turning to despair, we must fight. We have to fight. Our children and grandchild are depending on us to go out kicking.

And yes! Write letters! I write letters constantly. My latest one is to ban plastic bags.

The most herculean individual activity has a minimal effect in climate change. This is a ruse perpetrated on the public by large corporations and the political flacks they own. We do what we can, but really systematic change (revolution?) is required to self correct the course we’re on. Truth hurts.

Support the transition to a low carbon energy system.

For example, in the US, reward the politicians who enacted the …

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_Reduction_Act

which will spend over $1 trillion in tax dollars to attract another $3 trillion in private investment in low carbon energy. Convince US tax payers that this is a good use of their taxes.

The only way to fix things is to only vote in politicians who actually care about the issue and will do something about it. And the only way that will ever happen is if the majority of the population has some science literacy and basic reading comprehension so they know when misinformation and propaganda is being pushed on them.

But realistically we will "fix" it once the people in power of governments and billion dollar corporations start losing a lot of money, or if they find a way to profit off of it.

Political activism is typically the only thing that works for societal problems.

Your post likely reflects not just the average citizens but also climate scientists who've been attempting to inform the public to bring awareness to critical issues for their entire career much like the hopeless pessimism felt socially by individuals. However if we simplify the complexity what was hard maybe easier then we think individually currently. We as individuals divert the responsibility to "god" or government when a task is beyond the capability of any one individual. When we all do this socially towards the most critical and important life matters that truly matter to life; it's no wonder why we're so hopelessly pessimistic. It's not apathy or indifference but a moral injury and injustice with no end or escape perceived.

The reduction of social uncertainty it times of uncertainty is how we gain certainty socially. We know relying on "god" or government to solve our collective social problems that impacts us as individuals won't be solved with the same ways of thinking. There's necessary, important and urgent tasks needing completion that governments and corporations are simply unable or unwilling to do for whatever reason. If we socially discuss amongst ourselves what is the most critical, urgent and necessary tasks that won't get done without human intervention; we could become the only ones willing and able to do what must be done to save our life on this planet.

The list of what can be done that we think impossible today is only because we don't think it possible. Human intervention and solidarity to be willing and able to change what needs changing is how we fix it. Stopping the cycle of social harms to start the healing process of society takes you, us and all those able and willing to change what we call reality through direct experience.

So the issue is that corporations get to pollute and destroy the environment while us little guys are encouraged to recycle and drive less and reduce our own personal emissions. The latter stance is something that has been pushed by corporations in an attempt to shift blame from them to us. They are the ones who coined “carbon footprint.” In reality, I don’t think we can really do anything other than voting to elect politicians who may be able to make changes. As long as lobbying is a thing and corrupt politicians will accept money to not do the right thing, we’re pretty screwed. Do our own choices make a small difference? Sure. But it takes a hell of a lot of people doing the right things to offset the amount of pollution a corporation does in a day or the amount of emissions a rich persons private jet produces in a single trip. I think we will eventually do what needs to be done about climate change when it starts to effect the upper echelon of society and government. The data we have say it will be too late and huge parts of the world will be affected for a very long time. I don’t want to sound like a “doomer” but history and current day politics don’t make me optimistic and I find it easier to be a realist than ignore how things are playing out

Invest in air conditioning and sun tan lotion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Adaptation

Opinion: We've reached the point where climate change is so "baked in", there are no longer practical solutions.

I believe each of us now need to focus on how we (and our families) can best cope without doing further harm. Examine your personal vulnerabilities and figure out a way to surmount or minimize them. A lot depends on where you land on the age spectrum. At 71, the only action I'm taking is having solar panels installed. I fear grid failures, and I'm not fond of heat. This means I can offer refuge to family around me, at least in terms of surviving heat waves.

If I was twenty, I would be scrambling to add to my skill-sets while locating Goldilocks zones where my skills would be needed.

Forced regulation. Which requires a mostly complete changing of the guard across government, a general age group really just won’t let go but they die like everyone else so there is some hope.

Hey man I know you may feel powerless but that’s okay. I can assure you there are people out there (myself) who are in positions to make massive differences. I work as an engineer in oil and gas. I originally went to school to be an environmental engineer. In both of my oil and gas jobs I’ve been a part of the emissions reductions teams and I can tell you across the board this industry has seen massive regulation towards lowering emissions. One huge example I can tell you which is kind of shocking is that before the last 3-4 years most pipeline operators, when they needed to let the gas out of a pipeline for various reasons they would just open the pipe valves to the atmosphere and just blow out tens-hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gas. Now this is basically not allowed and the solution is as simple as moving the gas from one pipe to another with a hose and compressor. There’s countless examples like this throughout the industry that are seeing massive change. Just keep advocating and helping where you can. Maybe your advocation will catch someone who has the power to make a difference in their job. Maybe that will be you eventually with a decision on how to lower carbon footprint on a massive scale. I also own a small business and buy the carbon credits to offset my shipping costs on each order. You could consider doing this for any sort of thing in your life and advocate for others to do the same. Don’t sweat it though man. Worrying won’t help you or anyone. Just relax and do what you can. Cheers.

we have to worry enough to act, but not enough to despair. Do what we can when we can.

Climate change is but a symptom of the true problem that is overshoot. The only real solution to that as per The Limits to Growth is abandonment of economic growth as the goal, institution of population and industrial controls, implementation of circular/cyclical economy and tech to reduce pollution. The Degrowth and Donut economics collectively would tackle these points. But these are such fundamental changes that no one will even consider them until the problem is in your face, by which point it will be too late.

It’s true it does feel grim. The more you learn about the negative feedback loops associated with climate change, the more it feels like things will just spiral out of control.

BUT, to quote Ayana Elizabeth’s new book “What if we get it right”? There are so many people out there that actually care and are actively doing their part.

A very very very large part of climate change is rooted in government policies, which we regular shmucks really don’t have a lot of power in apart from voting or if you work in policy.

Personally, I have been focusing on tailoring my career to something that makes a difference. I currently work in building decarbonization, and it is fulfilling. I also minimize my personal impact through my diet, amount of plane rides I take per year, clean energy powering my home, keeping my property biodiverse, reducing waste at my home, etc.

There are so many industries that need reshaping. Project Drawdown is a great site that highlights all the most important climate solutions. Look through there and find sectors that interest you or tie into your skills, or ideally both.

TLDR Policy is most important, but we have limited power with that. However, still make sure you vote and get involved in your community policies. Other than that focus on tailoring your career to climate change (literally anything can be tied to climate change, i.e. even an accountant can work for a climate solution company). Also reduce your own personal impact where you can.

We are beyond fixing.
We are like a heavy smoker being told he got lung cancer.
There are plenty of things that can be done to improve our present and future, but those are only a matter of reducing probability of bad turning into worse.
Given the inertia at play, the XXth century is all but gone for the foreseeable future. The only certainty is that the future will be chaotic compared to the past.
We can still limit the scale of the chaos.

This sub is majority doomers. Despite what you may read here, the world isn’t ending (yet). The next few decades will probably be pretty crazy but we’ll get a handle on the climate well before total societal collapse, which is what half the commenters here think is gonna happen next year or next month. The big fixes are going to be the implementation of more and more renewable energy and eventually wide scale geo engineering. Until then you can try to reduce your own contributions to climate change and organize and lobby for change, but that’s not likely to have much effect in the short term.

Try not to let it consume you. It’s mostly beyond your control but it’s not as bad as some would have you believe

Check out Climate Changemakers! I can’t say I know how to fix climate change or how to tell if I’m “doing enough” but joining an action hour to contact my representatives sure makes me feel better than doing nothing!

Plant moss, food forests, native species, create creature habitat. Wash in cold water. Recycle food waste, grow your own food, build community and save trees. Plant trees, and plant Moss....did I mention Moss?

I'm a high school teacher. Between climate change, health care costs, living costs, and tuition costs, students are done. They have no will to fight a losing battle. The general consensus is a hope for an apocalypse that will start society over.

Wow pretty grim replies here. Makes you think that people don't want to work towards solutions. I guess it is easier to say nothing can be done.

Here's the secret: you have immense power at the local level. Join a local climate change team and see what kinds of initiatives they have going on. It doesn't have to be much, but there is power in numbers.

The more you engage and participate, the more you come into your own power. When more people realize this, the language shifts, and we do the hard things a bit at a time.

Oil is the largest, wealthiest, most powerful industry in the history of the world. They are deliberately fighting the clean energy transition. We have no choice but to use every possible means to defeat them: politically, legally, using the biggest popular movement we can. We have no choice.

• Am I supposed to keep my air conditioning off at all times?
• Never travel by car or plane?
• Tell my apartment to get Solar Panels?
• Go vegan and scarf up every bit of food to not have leftovers go bad?
• Never buy food from a grocery store but grow and raise everything myself?

All I can say is, 'that's a good start'.

Any way you want

None of us have control over the fact that our government

that's just flat out wrong. it's your government, chosen by you, to carry out your wishes

You don't fix climate change. You react to it. Even though climate change has been occurring for billions of years, there are those who would have you believe this was all human caused, thus human fixable. Don't fall for it, live and let live, and don't waste brain cells on things you can't change.

No matter what I personally do, it will have zero effect on China and other countries that contribute a large portion of greenhouse gas emissions. That’s why I think it’s really hopeless sometimes. Plus the entrenched powers in the US don’t care and will do nothing. They’re all going to build bunkers or move to New Zealand or whatever.

So TLDR the warming train has left the station but there's a lot we can do to slow it down and get ready for what's on the way.

Working at the local level makes a difference on the resilience front -- so building mutual support networks, getting involved in volunteer disaster response work, any community infrastructure volunteer opportunities (eg wetlands restoration), and giving input at community meetings.

As for mitigation, the movement I've seen to be most impactful, per activist-hour, has been urbanists advocating for more density and bike, pedestrian, and transit infrastructure in their cities. Land use changes are critical to climate mitigation & the move away from cars. Paris has gone to a city where more trips are taken by bike than car, just a decade into the effort to change things, AND they're investing in a metro expansion too. We can and should add density and mode-shift here, and there are tons of opportunities to push for that at the local level.

Once you build your chops locally, you can build more of a career out of it too and start to influence policy.

Alternatively, each person in the public or private sector working on mitigation, adaptation, research, etc is doing their part. There are lots of us too.

Sh*t's already hitting the fan but how much worse it gets is up to us. We owe it to whatever generations succeed us to at least try.

This might give you some hope: https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/so2-injection

We do our bit and if we can, enough for someone else too. When my climate anxiety gets on top of me, I buy more carbon offsets on Ecologi or Climeworks. I won't be able to fix this myself, but I think we can together and helping each other do it is a great way to feel better and do your part in the great collective effort.

I’m making a bicycle trading app.

Every time I post links to it I get banned so no links

acted 30 years ago,

Live your life people. You can change nothing but your own habits. If you manage to change your neighbours you will never change the majority. Take comfort in knowing the “emergency” is more of a political nature.

Here’s my proscription for cutting your carbon footprint. Move to a third world country and give up very luxury. A Kenyan in Kenya has a lower footprint than an average European/American westerner. Why is this? Abject poverty, energy insecurity and the rich white people telling them they are not allowed to build their own resources.

That’s how we solve the climate crisis. We move to the global south and give up all energy security and live with rolling blackouts like South Africans.

It's a predicament. Nothing can be done except to adapt. First to human stupidity, then to nature's consequences because of it.

As a student, it's always at a small scale. Honestly at least for me, our hope lies with the future generation. If we can always have kindness to everyone and the Earth we might be able to live a slightly sustainable future. But also running for positions in power as educated people is always a good option! City/town elections and what not.

Vote blue no matter who

This is my take on the question - we need to do politics - https://climatehopium.substack.com/p/the-main-climate-action-we-should

Cardboard straws, that's how.

Tax, tax, and more tax, shut down nuclear energy, subsidize technologies that require massive mining of precious metals in foreign countries where they use slave labor, limit use natural gas a much cleaner burning alternative that is still cheap and requiring households and business to convert to electric at their expense that will put a greater burden on low income earners. Subsidize only technologies that we know are not only sustainable but won't produce enough energy to fit our needs that will only further hurt low income earners. And obviously, more taxes because taxes fix everything like the ozone layer, acide rain, global warming, ice age, global warming again, asteroids, y2k bug, the Mayan calander, polar ice caps, sea rise, climate change becuase we have already used global warming. If you're old enough, your school desk they used be indestructible and could protect you from literally anything at one time. Seriously, I think they used to make them out of adamantium or vibranium for you marvel nerds. But yes, the answer is more taxes and making us all peasants.

Is every living person supposed to be sending letters and shit to our government? at the very least, Yes

I have a reminder to send at least one email per day to my environment minister and cc to prime minister.

I grow native trees and give them away because the world needs more trees. I also plan to do commando planting, if I can find an area where the local council won’t mow over them.

I also try to waste as little as possible: reuse; repurpose; recycle, etc.

Small things won’t stop climate change, but they can help. Many people doing small things across the globe can make a bigger impact. Voting for public office based on climate goals is another good example of where the individual can make the most impact. So we aren’t quite powerless, but not far above it.

We need governments to tackle big oil (and other climate criminal sectors) - but that won’t happen.

You do realize that our green house gas production is way down. Nothing for the US to do. It is China that isn’t following along much although they are much more receptive to EV’s

That said the vast majority of climate change is more related to things like solar activity and natural changes to Earth orbit that isn’t man made.

The main way that I’m able to avoid getting too bogged down in all of it is to volunteer for habitat restoration. My individual action won’t have a large impact on climate change in general, but I can have a much larger impact on my local climate and ecosystem.

Not going to give you advice on what to do, but as an elder millennial, I can tell you things are looking a lot better from the "how are we solving this" standpoint than they were in the 80's and 90's. 40% of global power production last year was carbon free, in 1990 it was 20%. 95% of new US power generation last year was carbon free, which means that in 10 to 20 years all power generation will be carbon free. California installed 10 billion watts of battery storage in 5 years. Renewables plus storage is objectively the cheapest form of power generation with or without subsidies, which means everything that uses power will switch over sooner or later. We finally have viable electric cars, and it seems like car companies are moving in that direction (thats something you can do directly, walk, bike, take transit, or if you have to have a car, buy an electric one or plug in hybrid.) Electric vehicles for transport are going to take over because they are cheaper to operate and fuel agnostic. If we invent antimatter power tomorrow, electric cars can use it. If you have a diesel generator, you can charge your car. If you have a solar panel, you can charge your car. Electric vehicles free every nation on earth from dependance on those countries that have significant oil reserves. We're making big strides on capturing carbon already in the atmosphere, which we will need to do at some point. We were doing none of this 30 years ago, other than a few hippies in labs figuring it out. All of this stuff is now out of the lab and in most cases starting to replace the carbon intensive old school stuff.

Get rid of the main contributers

Companies that are working to combat climate change are beginning to make a profit. And scientific research is making tremendous strides in the right direction. If you’re able to spare the time volunteer at a nearby university in a department that’s doing work (research) to deal with climate change. You don’t have to be a scientist, there are surely volunteer jobs that aid in the research. I think this will help you feel much less powerless.

After the 2024 election, let's see if the climate change solutions cup is half empty or half full. Be sure to vote!

You can't fix the climate. You can adapt. Simple as that.

Any attempt to make people's lives worse because they claim it will "fix the climate" should be treated as the joke that it is.

IT all begins with your conduct how one uses the resources they have and can get, most like in business is wasted, just turn the light off and use them only when needed, restructuring takes plans and actions constant conflicts only waste energy by both sides that in the end leads to no resources at all or end up in someone else's hands who follow simple rules.

Funny how that works isn't it?

N. S

World governments and transnational corporations have to actually start caring about the planet and the people more than they care about profit and power. The big problem with how climate change is treated now is that all the proposed “solutions” seem to involve extracting more wealth from the poor and working class. We’re encouraged to buy electric vehicles, which, of course, are more expensive than gas vehicles. We’re encouraged to buy organic food. We’re encouraged to buy solar panels. Somehow all the solutions involve us buying stuff. Meanwhile, these global corporations are dumping tons of waste into the atmosphere and the ocean every day. China is building new coal plants at an alarmingly rapid pace. And because of the huge investment in the EV industry, all the major world powers are scrambling to extract lithium (a non-renewable resource) from the earth. Lithium mining requires a huge amount of water, and nobody is talking about the water scarcity problem.

At this point, we can’t “fix” the problem even if there was a collective will to do so. All we can do is try to soften the blow and be prepared to handle the consequences. As soon as humans discovered fire and started burning wood to cook and stay warm, we started polluting the atmosphere. It’s been getting worse ever since.

You can lobby for regulatory changes on specific topics or issues that contribute to climate change.

When the US accounts for a tiny part of global carbon emissions, and not to name names but… China and India cancel out whatever progress we make by 10 fold. I hate to be negative Nancy but until they get fully on board with the rest of the world, our resistance will be futile.

We do not need to despair We have a plan from the IPCC scientists Find out what your personal carbon footprint is Then cut it by 50% over the next 5 years There are free carbon calculators out there such as Cool California

be rich, hire tons of lawyers and drag every politician who took money from the fossil industry, halted or slowed climate action progress and sue the living hell out of them for crimes against humanity and all life. politics would change very quickly if we got some successfull cases.

Fix? We deserve the consequences of our actions.

We had the chance so many times over.

Don’t vote Republican.

we need a collection of people for gathering data and performing analysis to determine the best course of action with the resources at our disposal

if anyone is interested in something other than spinning your wheels getting nothing done, lmk