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Climate policy is too often designed around how the world operates today, rather than how the world will operate tomorrow—or how, in our wildest dreams, it could operate. Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University likened this conventional approach to “driving down the road into the future looking in the rearview mirror.”
This backward-oriented approach to climate policies and solutions means that limited, near-term ideas often crowd out more visionary ones. For instance, engineers have developed a process called enhanced oil recovery, in which they inject pressurized carbon dioxide deep underground to extract more petroleum from depleted wells. Some portion of the injected carbon dioxide then remains sequestered beneath the Earth. Industry groups have hailed this approach as a way to tap more oil reserves while also capturing carbon using existing fossil-fuel infrastructure. But many climate activists have raised concerns that this strategy could prolong the life of industries that should instead be making a complete shift to clean energy technologies.
Another example of go-with-the-status-quo thinking can be heard in the growing hum of energy-inefficient air conditioners, which are being installed around the world in response to the increasingly frequent and intense heat waves. In their rush to keep up the pace of development and to respond to the urgent health risks associated with extreme heat, policymakers have broadly ignored longer-term strategies to promote passive cooling techniques (relying on shading and natural airflow, for instance) that consume less energy and that, by extension, generate less greenhouse emissions. Efforts to expand access to air conditioning have also in many cases silenced broader discussions around where and how communities should be developed, and whether these plans are sustainable on a changing planet.
Limited, near-term ideas often crowd out more visionary ones.
Both enhanced oil recovery and the installation of air conditioners, in their own ways, address pressing needs of the moment using existing immediately available technologies and approaches, but as such they are fundamentally built on the past. The challenge for the next generation of leaders is to balance the rapid deployment of today’s best climate solutions, while cultivating a visionary mindset that allows them to consider fresh ideas and approaches. In other words, we need to accelerate rapidly while looking forward.
Forward thinking is essential for tackling environmental challenges that are vastly bigger and more complex than any we have confronted before. In the 1960s and 1970s, when DDT was poisoning the environment and smog was filling the skies, environmentalists were laser-focused on fixing the errors of the past, primarily through chemical bans and regulation of polluting industries. But the problems we face now are of a totally different magnitude. In 1972, when DDT was banned, the amount of carbon dioxide was 329 parts per million (ppm). Today it is 426 ppm, representing decades of emissions from every part of the world. Reigning in past mistakes with bans and regulations will not be enough this time.
Moreover, bans and regulations have intensified the political polarization around climate action in the United States. Many voters still view “climate” as a partisan issue, with only 23 percent of Republicans viewing climate change as a major threat (versus 78 percent of Democrats), according to a 2023 study. That split represents a failure on the part of leaders to overcome the negative framing of climate action as taking things away rather than adding new technologies like quiet and powerful EVs or emission-free solar panels for the home. Technological innovations and clean energy industries will be a major source of jobs and economic growth; the Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2022, has ushered in a large wave of this potential growth.
If leaders were to better articulate the big opportunities that lie in the clean energy transition and other environmental policies, they could increase the number of voters who count climate action as a priority. To do so, government agencies, environmental groups, and industry partners must be willing to break from the status quo, envision a planet that can benefit everyone—and be willing to implement the forward-looking policies necessary to create that future.
Thinking about the future of the planet can feel overwhelming to researchers, politicians, and the public alike. That apprehension encourages band-aid fixes even when the problems are right before our eyes. For example, many states and communities are implementing more rigorous building codes in areas where sea level rise is predicted to overtake the coastal community, rather than exploring ways to move communities out of those flood zones. By merely tinkering with past systems, policymakers are missing the chance to articulate a bold new vision designed to address the realities that await.
We already have a lot of data about what our future world could be like. The Rhodium Group, an environmentally focused think tank, predicts that by century’s end, global temperature will increase between 2.3 and 3.4 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The analysts forecast that carbon emissions from electricity generation and transportation will drop significantly toward the middle of the century, due to the adoption of more green energy and electric vehicles. Cutting carbon emissions from heavy industry (including from the production of iron, steel, and cement, along with the ongoing production of oil and gas) will be much more challenging.
China, the U.S., and other high-emitting countries are predicted to lower their emissions by mid-century, but emissions in India and many other countries in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa are expected to increase as those countries’ economies grow. Overall, the Rhodium Group forecasts that global fossil fuel consumption will continue to increase through 2060, peaking at more than 60 percent above today’s levels.
Reigning in past mistakes with bans and regulations will not be enough this time.
The forecast is not set in stone, however. Investing in mature clean-energy technologies in rapidly developing countries like India could head off that continued expansion of fossil fuels by driving down the costs of clean energy, for instance. The scale of the necessary investment is immense, and would require a correspondingly immense response. According to a report from the International Energy Agency, clean energy investment in emerging economies will have to reach more than $1 trillion a year by 2030 in order to meet 2050 goals of net-zero emissions: no longer contributing to the overall amount of carbon in the environment. Public funding cannot support this transition alone—but it can be used to mobilize private capital by making clean-energy infrastructure projects more appealing and less risky to investors. Such financing strategies could help prevent the predicted rise in fossil-fuel use while presenting significant economic opportunities for developing nations.
At a closed-door Aspen seminar for climate and energy leaders in the winter of 2023, we asked participants to draw pictures of the future, envisioning the world of 2050. The resulting sketches were largely optimistic, depicting abundant clean electricity from solar panels, wind turbines, and nuclear reactors, along with zero-emission flying electric vehicles. But these blue-sky imaginings were mixed with touches of pessimism. Some of the illustrations depicted burning forests, fighting people, a gravestone for the United Nations, and carbon-capture facilities dotting the skylines while oil companies continue pumping out fossil fuels.
We often hear similarly conflicted perspectives in policy conversations among leading climate and energy experts, who are steeped in the everyday push for short-term fixes amidst calls for urgent action and rarely are given the chance to step back and re-examine the bigger picture. The pace of their work makes it difficult for even optimistic policymakers to consider and to confer on what a new path forward could look like.
How, then, can we switch to a truly future-focused approach to climate change? The leadup to the U.S. presidential election is a great moment to pause and consider that question carefully. The incoming administration could have an opportunity to enact big new climate legislation, if we build political consensus across the aisle. Both major parties have a strong interest in creating jobs, building infrastructure, and improving American industrial competitiveness.
As laid out by the Biden-Harris White House in a report envisioning its path toward eliminating net-carbon emissions around the world by 2050, the next round of infrastructure-oriented climate legislation could include virtual power plants, additional electricity transmission, grid interconnection, permitting reform, increased incentives for industrial heat production, more efficient buildings, and investment to make vulnerable communities more resilient to climate disasters. Artificial intelligence, powered by clean energy, could also play a big role: guiding climate-smart farming, monitoring the energy grid in real time, and helping to accelerate the pace of battery development, to name just a few possibilities.
Beyond the specific policies, the institutions responsible for promoting and implementing those policies must also themselves adopt nimble new strategies. Across the democratic world, nations have seen environmental backlashes and sharp political shifts over the past decades, reinforcing the importance of framing climate action in bipartisan and economic-focused terms to ensure the strength of policies to withstand changes in political winds. Government agencies and industry and community groups should also seek to collaborate more efficiently so that bureaucratic hurdles don’t inhibit necessary climate action.
Can we switch to a truly future-focused approach to climate change?
These sweeping ambitions become clearer when explored in terms of specific problems and solutions. Maritime shipping, for example, is the backbone of our global economy, but it is notoriously dirty and difficult to reform. Between 80 percent and 90 percent of all goods transported in the world today are moved on a ship. Today nearly all the vessels on the water run on “bunker fuel,” also known as heavy fuel oil. Collectively, global shipping emits nearly 1 billion tons of CO2 per year.
In one effort to tackle this enormous source of greenhouse emissions, our program at the Aspen Institute has worked for the past three years with leaders in private shipping to develop plans to decarbonize global ocean trade. As part of this process, we have brought together leaders across industries to talk candidly with each other about the policies, economic models, and technologies needed to achieve zero-emission shipping. In 2023, in collaboration with Amazon, outdoors-supply company Patagonia, and German coffee retailer Tchibo, we launched a first-of-its-kind buyers’ group within the shipping industry, the Zero Emissions Maritime Buyers Alliance (ZEMBA). Starting in early 2025, ZEMBA will run a second campaign to enlist even more companies, which will help drive down costs and expand the market for zero-emission shipping.
ZEMBA was conceived to spur a market-driven transition to cleaner shipping fuels. In the near term, ZEMBA is focused on switching container ships to cleaner fuels, such as hydrogen-derived methanol and ammonia. In the long run, the goal is to make it easy for any business customer around the world to purchase economical, zero-emission shipping services for their freight. Seventeen global companies have already committed to buying services on ships fueled by waste-derived biomethane in 2025 and 2026; these ships reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90 percent compared to their fossil-fuel powered counterparts.
By driving change in container shipping—an industry widely regarded as resistant to environmental transformation—ZEMBA demonstrates what can be achieved through high-ambition, collective action.
We and our colleagues have been working to instill a similar, forward-looking culture across the climate-policy community through a variety of meetings and workshops. For example, we convened three roundtable conversations that yielded Building Cleaner, Faster, a 2021 report advising the U.S. Congress and the executive branch on ways to streamline approval for clean energy projects and to reduce bureaucratic hurdles to reducing carbon emissions throughout the economy. In particular, we proposed reforms of the federal environmental review and permitting processes, seeking to accelerate and expand the development of solar and wind power along with other green-energy projects.
We also recognize that politicians cannot implement forward-looking climate policies without the support and understanding of the voters. To that end, we launched This is Planet Ed, a climate-action initiative aimed at the 73 million youth under 18 and the nearly 19 million students enrolled in higher education institutions—together, about 25 percent of the total U.S. population. This is Planet Ed provides roadmaps, resources, and videos designed to prepare students with knowledge about climate change and the tools to take action. We have also helped mobilize school districts to consider their own environmental impacts—for example, to upgrade America’s 480,000 K-12 public-school buses to electric power, as is underway in New York City. Through these programs, we hope to empower the next generation of climate leaders.
Katharine Hayhoe, a climate researcher who has worked extensively to communicate across political lines, spoke about the magnitude of the challenges we face at a recent Aspen Ideas event. “Today we’re on a curve larger than any we’ve ever negotiated in the history of human civilization,” she observed.
With an impending change in U.S. leadership, and with the many elections across the globe happening this year, scientists, engineers, policymakers, industry leaders, activists, and the public as a whole have a remarkable opportunity to rethink how we are navigating this curve. If we work together—with vision, ambition, and a shared sense of optimism—we can implement the forward-looking policies necessary to accelerate toward a better climate future.
This article is part of a series, Science at the Ballot Box, which is an initiative by the Aspen Institute, published in partnership with Nautilus.
Lead image: robertindiana / Shutterstock
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