Like many human-created problems, climate change is resolvable. A range of solutions — encompassing technology, policy, incentives, education, science and more — can be employed to reduce, forestall or adapt to the damage created by fossil-fuelled global heating.
But it’s a bit like the arcade game Whac-A-Mole. You bop one mole and another pops up. We can reduce automobile sector emissions through polices and technologies that drive us from gas-burning to electric vehicles. We can regulate caps on industry emissions and engineer drought-resistant crops. We can invent ways to capture some carbon from the air. All are important, but they don’t solve the overall problem.
If we continue to adhere to economic and political systems that encourage waste and destruction, we’ll keep on whacking moles until the machine breaks. To truly address the climate crisis — and other human-caused catastrophes — we must change our ways of thinking and acting.
With atmospheric carbon dioxide levels higher than they’ve been for at least two million years, and global temperatures as warm or warmer than they’ve been for 125,000 years, we’re already experiencing accelerating consequences: less predictable and more extreme weather, raging wildfires, prolonged droughts, rapid sea level rise, water shortages, plant and animal extinctions, agricultural failures, spreading diseases, increased conflict and human migration, extreme heat and more. If we continue at this pace, scientists warn, “the economy and society will cease to function as we know it.”
A big part of the problem is that we measure “progress” by how quickly everything increases, from population to profit. We rely on “gross domestic product,” or GDP, which was never meant to be an all-encompassing system to measure and guide human activities.
United Nations secretary general António Guterres put it bluntly. “We must place true value on the environment and go beyond gross domestic product as a measure of human progress and wellbeing. Let us not forget that when we destroy a forest, we are creating GDP. When we overfish, we are creating GDP,” he told the Guardian after a recent meeting of global economists.
Moreover, much of the growth in wealth that GDP measures isn’t distributed equally. Throughout the world, many people are dying of starvation and lack of proper shelter, water and health care. And while large numbers work long hours and still struggle to afford food and housing even in relatively well off countries like Canada and the United States, the billionaire class is doing better than ever.
An Oxfam report finds that globally, “Billionaire wealth jumped by over 16 per cent in 2025, three times faster than the past five-year average, to $18.3 trillion — its highest level in history.” It’s increased by 81 per cent since 2020. Oxfam notes, “This comes as one in four people don’t regularly have enough to eat and nearly half the world’s population live in poverty.”
In some countries, especially the U.S., policies and regulations designed to protect people and the ecosystems we depend on are being overturned and support is being given to polluting industries, including coal — all for the benefit of the already obscenely rich.
This is unnecessary and unacceptable. The world can provide enough for everyone, but too many greedy people are hoarding wealth and resources and destroying natural life-support systems to accumulate more money and power.
“Moving beyond gross domestic product is about measuring the things that really matter to people and their communities,” Guterres said. “GDP tells us the cost of everything, and the value of nothing. Our world is not a gigantic corporation. Financial decisions should be based on more than a snapshot of profit and loss.”
A report published by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, leading Indian economist Kaushik Basu and equity expert Nora Lustig argues that, in the face of the “triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution,” the need for an economic transformation is urgent.
“If all the new income accrues to a few individuals, and the GDP grows, all citizens are expected to cheer,” Basu said. “This is feeding hyper-nationalism, inequality and polarisation.”
Going backwards, as the U.S. is doing, will seal our fate. We can continue with stopgap measures, but that will only slow our march to doom. We need rapid systemic change if we are to survive and thrive as a species.
