The best way forward is to do everything.

Topic Thirty Seven
The best way forward is to do everything.

Keith believes that the world will eventually cut its carbon emissions if not all the way down to zero, then close to it. He also believes carbon-removal technologies can eventually be scaled up to take care of the rest. But all this—quite possibly—will not be enough. During the period of “overshoot,” a great many people will suffer and changes that are, for all intents and purposes, irreversible may occur, like the demise of the Great Barrier Reef. 

The best way forward, he argues, is to do everything: cut emissions, work on carbon removal, and look a lot more seriously at geoengineering. On the basis of computer modeling, he’s proposed that the safest option would be to put up enough aerosols to cut warming in half, rather than to counteract it entirely—what might be called “semi-engineering.”

Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 177). Crown. Kindle Edition. 

There are so many ways to decrease the CO2 in the atmosphere and ameliorate the other negative consequences of climate change. People seem to focus on the magic wand, the silver bullet, the magic key, and, alas, there is no one thing. The situation is multidimensional. So David Keith,  professor of applied physics at Harvard, says that we must do everything. Can we chew gum and dance at the same time?