When Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos this week committed $10 billion to fighting climate change, he became the latest philanthropist to take bold action on what he called “the biggest threat to our planet.” Just a week before, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced that the same issue would be a major new focus of its philanthropy.
It is very good news — but not especially surprising — that people like Bezos and the Gateses are stepping up. As the reality of climate change hits home with its onslaught of heat waves, wildfires, droughts, superstorms, and megafloods, public concern is spiking. Media coverage, kitchen-table conversation, and boardroom discussions are becoming more urgent and focused. So, it is only logical that foundations and individuals with the means to address this crisis philanthropically are looking for ways to engage more deeply.
The climate crisis is unlike any ever faced by civilization, so addressing it philanthropically is likewise daunting. Global warming knows no political boundaries, its effects are highly variable according to geography, and it threatens every facet of well-being for humans and the natural world. To solve it, society must take aggressive and sustained action now, well before its worst impact is felt.
These levels of complexity demand a systemic and global response at a time when our mechanisms of global governance are in disarray. Climate advocates and the philanthropic leaders must work together to harness a range of social, political, economic, and technological forces. That will require philanthropists to take bigger risks — becoming more like venture capitalists, who balance the chance for extraordinary results against the possibility of failure. In this case, however, success means preserving the stable climate system on which life as we know it depends. We see three critical paths for philanthropy to take on this problem, and all three must be advanced simultaneously.
The first is to drastically reduce greenhouse-gas pollution, moving to net-zero emissions in the developed world by midcentury so we are not adding any more climate pollution to the atmosphere than we can absorb from it. Achieving this 100 percent clean-energy economy requires transforming electrical generation and distribution as well as transportation and industrial systems. And the world must also curb methane pollution, a highly potent greenhouse gas, from the oil-and-gas system. Methane accounts for more than 25 percent of the global warming we are experiencing now.
This is a sobering to-do list, but philanthropy is already making a difference in all these areas. Individuals and foundations are funding effective work to speed the transition to clean energy in the United States (Energy Foundation) and around the world (European Climate Foundation), and to retire coal-fired power plants across the United States (Sierra Club). And an affiliate of Environmental Defense Fund, our organization, is designing and building MethaneSAT, a satellite that can quantify these emissions regionally and identify hot spots where leakage or venting of methane can be easily remedied. The new data, paired with outreach and advocacy, aims to reduce this pollution by 75 percent — the most cost-effective way to curb the temperature increases we will otherwise see over the next 20 years.
The most effective way to accelerate the transition to clean energy is to impose a cost and an overall limit on climate pollution. Philanthropic investment is needed to rally support for this and other smart policies, while helping knock down the obstacles that stand in the way, including entrenched political opposition and financial disincentives to clean-energy investment. An array of national groups, including the Center for American Progress, NRDC, and EDF, are deeply involved in these efforts.
While the U.S. administration has been moving backward and Congress has been stalled, meaningful progress is being made by other countries, and within the United States by cities, states, and corporations. That progress serves to hasten the day when opposing climate action becomes bad politics for any U.S. federal officeholder. Education and advocacy campaigns are needed to channel the voice of an American majority, including a large and increasingly activist youth movement, that demands climate action. Philanthropic dollars are the fuel that such campaigns need to achieve real impact.
That’s a tall order — yet even it will not be enough. The second path is to reduce the total atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases by drawing them from the atmosphere. In a recent report, the National Academy of Sciences concluded that by midcentury, the world will need to remove some 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the air each year, about twice the current CO2 emissions of the United States.
Natural approaches such as regenerative agriculture — a set of farming practices that boosts biodiversity, enriches soils, and captures carbon — can accomplish some of that, although scientists urge caution about the wildly optimistic claims of some proponents. (Practical Farmers of Iowa is just one of the nonprofits doing important work in this area.) Carbon-removal technologies are also emerging, but remain prohibitively expensive. Philanthropy can and should spur more government and private investment in their development, especially in the precommercial stage. More immediate progress can be made if philanthropists fund creation of policies that value standing forests, healthy oceans, grasslands, and well-managed working lands, which have been our planet’s natural carbon sinks for millennia. We must make these vital parts of our world’s nature infrastructure worth more alive than dead. Groups working in Brazil, such as the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, are some of the most powerful advocates for this work. Local and national land trusts and conservancies also play an indispensable role.
The third pathway to a stable future requires us to recognize that no matter how successful we are in reducing emissions, we can’t do anything about some of the damage we have already sustained. We have no choice but to adapt to the changing world by boosting resilience for communities and natural systems in the face of the damage we cannot avoid. This means building natural barriers to coastal storm surges and pulling people and businesses back from living and working in areas that rising sea levels will render uninhabitable.
Floodplains that once absorbed millions of gallons of flood waters require restoration. It means managing fisheries so they are healthy, abundant, and have a chance to thrive even as oceans become warmer. And it means better managing our agriculture, dealing with water insecurity, and addressing a host of other natural systems that will be severely stressed. Organizations like ours, as well as the Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, and the World Wildlife Fund, tackle these issues every day, knowing that nature’s well-being and our own are inextricably linked.
Climate resilience is not a glib assurance that everything will be okay. It is a careful assessment of how society can continue to thrive in a climate-changed world. It is also a recognition that vulnerable communities around the world must develop the necessary protections.
There is much that needs to be done. It will take all the people and organizations currently addressing the crisis — and then some — to tackle this immense challenge. It is time to dive in, understand risks, and be willing to make informed bets. Nothing short of the future of our world is at stake.
