One of the first steps to stopping human-influenced climate change is to lower, if not eliminate, the amount of global greenhouse gas emissions produced by our activities. Carbon dioxide is one that we need to be particularly aware of, mainly because we’ve been putting billions of tons of it into the atmosphere every year over the past 150 years. The vast majority of the CO2 comes from burning fossil fuels. Deforestation is also a problem. Forests are important because they naturally pull carbon dioxide from the air, so the fewer trees we have, the higher our carbon dioxide levels.
The two main ways to stop the increase of greenhouse gas emissions in our atmosphere are to stop producing them with greater energy efficiency or increase the earth’s ability to absorb them. The approach is referred to as climate mitigation. Fortunately, there isn’t one way to mitigate climate change; in fact, we must chain together several solutions to stop the planet from warming to the point where food security, economic security, and human health are no longer viable.
In this article, we’ll go into some of the methods developed and used to reduce or mitigate climate change. The good news is that many solutions are already being implemented worldwide. Some of these are used by individuals to reduce their energy footprint, riding a bike instead of driving, or switching to an electric car. Others involve getting the region and communities engaged in working together to switch from coal-burning and oil-burning power plants to solar and wind.