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Welcome to the anthropocene. If you didn’t know that we are in a new geological age, now you do. This is the geological age defined by human influence on the climate. The primary driver of the volatility of the planet’s climate is known to be human activity. This is actually good for humans. For a while, we were thinking the point of life was just to make money, but now we have a meaningful project to work on. Our project is to be the stewards of the climate.

We can start by achieving a net neutral greenhouse gas footprint. This will take a couple decades. And, we’ll also need some tools to reverse the greenhouse gas effect or remove greenhouse gases form the atmosphere. We’ll also need to clean up the oceans and solve the ocean acidification problem. And, we need to reforest the planet. Planting a few billion trees would be a good start. All of these tasks seem pretty straightforward. Humans have the intellectual capacity to do all of these things. It is simply a matter of will.

Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, said recently, “This is the year 2019. This is not the time and place for dreams. This is the time to wake up. This is a moment in history where we need to be wide awake.” It is unfortunate that a 16-year-old has concluded that this is not the time for dreams, but she is right. Humanity has a problem that needs to be solved immediately. And, the solutions exist or could exist with some investment of time, money, and creativity. We’ve basically been procrastinating like teenagers for decades, and now we are realizing the paper is due tomorrow and we’ve only written 10% of it. It makes sense that a teenager would call out the world’s leaders on this.

Hopefully, Greta Thunberg being named the TIME Person of the Year will be the notification to society that it is time for an “all-nighter” — time to just get some coffee and start writing until the paper is done. It is time for everyone to have a bias towards action on climate. We need to take action everyday until we’ve permanently changed our habits and solved the problems. We should be motivated by the hope that someday our children might be able to dream again without the fear of the existential crisis that is climate change.