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To Fight Climate Change, We Need to Go Beyond Burying Fossil Fuels
The latest environmental rallying cry—“Keep It in the Ground”—will help stop pollution. But that policy’s effect on carbon emissions isn’t as clear.
The last few months have been pretty good for saving the planet.
Environmentalists have claimed a string of victories with Arctic oil drilling, the Keystone XL pipeline, the Paris climate change deal, and a moratorium on new federal coal drilling. Climate change has raised the stakes about as high as they can go, and climate activists have to decide where to focus their energy and political momentum next in the critical years before global warming becomes catastrophic and irreversible. For the time being, the movement has coalesced around the idea of keeping fossil fuels in the ground.