First red flag right there: this is nature itself we're talking about. There is no "stopping" it. Like Bloomberg called it, this is our new reality. It's not going away and it's going to get worse. If we keep burning C02 at the rate we're already burning it, the endgame is Kevin Costner's magnum opus: Water World. Remember that crappy movie -- the one there's no land and just one giant sea covering the whole planet? That's the ultimate endgame for Climate change. Well... That or a new ice age. That's possible too and not exactly any better for your children's children's children. Either scenario is up there with any other apocalypse setting: scarce resources, limited land, and billions dead from war, famine, and everything else.
So how do we prevent the bad ending from climate change?
Disclaimer: I'm not a scientist. I sure as hell am no expert on the subject. I'm a bastard with a blog. These are more or less the results of watching documentaries on the subject and browsing r/science. So these are basically my opinions.
First: address the cause
First off, we need to address the amount of greenhouse gases: primarily CO2 and methane. Both require different solutions, but resolving one and not the other is not going to be enough to "lower the tides & heal the planet".
Carbon Dioxide is a hell of a drug!
We get CO2 from burning coal to produce electricity. So if we stop burning coal, we solve the problem right? Easier said then done. Coal is still the meat of our electricity production for most of the world. Getting off of it cold turkey isn't going to work. Renewables -- namely solar & wind -- at best right now only make a small percentage of our total energy production. Eventually when battery and efficiency technology catches up there is a good chance we can make that jump.... but we need a middle man.
And that's where nuclear comes in.
But! you say.... Fukishima! Chernobyl! Three Mile Island! OMG NUCLEAR COULD KILL US ALL!!!111 Now that that's out of the way, allow me to explain: those were old nuclear designs. And each one of them had structural and engineering flaws that were bombs waiting to happen. The problem is that the technology we've been using for current plutonium based reactors is old stuff and it hasn't really improved much in the past couple of decade because of political pressure. There are better options out there, but because of the nature of nuclear reactors it's difficult to make progress on that front. The general idea is to make nuclear reactors that have a smaller land footprint that are more efficient and don't create tons upon tons of nuclear waste. This is the kind of problem that it'll take money to fix because the tech is there. It's *always* been there. We had a functional prototype thorium powered reactor back in the freaking *SIXTIES*. But it didn't make weapon grade plutonium so it was shelved.... The first country that makes a working molten salt reactor (MSR) or Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) will have a huge impact on the future of the planet's energy needs. This will give us the middle-man until renewables catch up in a few decades. For more information, Wikipedia has plenty of information on LFTRs. I also strongly suggest Kirk Sorenson's documentary on Youtube.
Okay, so now we've solved the coal problem.... But what about cars? Cars are another part of the CO2 problem? That one's actually an easy fix. In the next decade, everything will be a hybrid. Everything. And thanks to market pressures we'll probably have cheap electric cars in 15-20 years. The transition will take some time (and some effort), but look at what Tesla is already doing with its cars. Before long every gas station will have a charging station for electric cars. Big rigs and planes will take a bit longer to get there, but biodiesel is getting there. In our lifetimes, we could potentially see the independence of our country from coal and oil....
Who knew cow farts were breeding hurricanes?!
This is actually real -- America's need for cheap hamburgers (and bacon and chicken) is warming our planet. So methane is a problem. Fortunately most of this can be taken care of through changing farm subsidies around to force farmers out in the heartland to install methane digesters. Provided our dysfunctional congress can pass the necessary legislation. This could kill two birds with one stone: fix our methane problem and improve the way we get rid of cow shit.
More info here.
Second: Wait
This may prove the most difficult challenge: waiting. Even if we turned off all the coal plants on the planet and made cows stop farting so much, it would still take years to see a real effect on the climate. It might decades -- even centuries -- to undo the amount of damage that we have caused from two centuries of burning coal and oil. Which means we're going to have to deal with the results of climate change for years: more severe storms, more severe flooding, and more severe droughts.
But the results of not addressing the causes of climate change welcomes the inevitable post-apocalypse ending. To quote Socrates: "Societies grow strong when old men plant tree whose shade they will never sit in".
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