Stopping climate change

While various goals have been set and nominally agreed to by most nations, carbon emissions keep going up instead of down, with the U.S. among the worst offenders — heading toward a global 4 degrees C temperature rise, rather than the survivable 1.5 degrees C target.

If we’re serious about not handing our grandchildren a death sentence, here are a few relatively simple remedies: 

Limit annual gas sales per owner to 200 gallons (that’s 6,000 miles, at 30 miles per gallon), and commercial air travel to 10,000 miles (that’s one round trip to New York or Washington, and one to Dallas or Chicago).

Add 50% to the price of imports and exports of anything that can be made domestically (i.e., German cars and Chinese TVs coming here, and U.S. cars and beef going there).

And plant 4 trillion trees globally. That sounds like a lot, but participating Ethiopians planted 350 million in just one day. With the whole world involved at that level, we’d be done in under three months.

Nobody said it would be easy. But we made the mess. And we have to clean it up.

Mark Behrend

Redwood City