This knowledge derives not only from heroic human expeditions to tropics, oceans, icecaps and deserts, but also from exquisite orbiting satellites that constantly scrutinize natural systems and human impacts on those systems. We know how much we have to fix on this planet, because we’ve figured out how to measure just about everything.

In the past few years, some commentators have warned that modern society’s faith in technology has led to a mistaken belief that it will save the world. They embrace solutions that encourage widespread behavioral changes, like consuming less, traveling infrequently and adopting a plant-based diet. We’re likely to need both technological and personal transformations. But in the end, it’s technology that will save us, not only because it can but also because it will have to.

In many respects, technology is saving us already: by identifying the magnitude of the threat, providing the extraordinary computing power required to run climate models to predict the future, and enabling architects and engineers to design for resilience against tempestuous storms and encroaching seas.

Technology has made possible clean and efficient energy systems that wouldn’t have been achievable a few decades ago, including cheap solar panels, LED lighting and batteries for electric cars. We now have green buildings that reduce energy usage and an emerging class of solar cells known as perovskites that may greatly lower the costs of renewable energy, and we are developing techniques to produce concrete that absorbs carbon dioxide rather than emitting it .

There is even room for techno-skeptics. A movement for “natural climate solutions,” like planting vast forests and using agricultural methods that sequester carbon in the soil , will become increasingly important as technology in the form of “integrated assessment” computer models tells us how much this approach can mitigate warming trends.

In the coming years, moreover, our ability to improve technology will determine the viability of carbon capture techniques to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide and the value (or danger) of injecting aerosols into the atmosphere to shade the sun, cool the earth and provide more time for a clean-energy transition.