Global Solutions & Outreach Programs: Humanity’s best chance to resolve global warming, Part 1: Global warming challenges

Abstract

In June 2024, the world’s largest standalone public opinion poll covering 77 countries, Peoples’ Climate Vote 2024, reported that “89% of people [want] to see more climate action from their governments”. That is all well and good. However, how are policymakers being informed on the viability of climate solutions? Policymakers are typically not engineers or scientists. They must rely on others for advice. Many who provide that advice are influenced by four types of bias: Corporate vested interests, career vested interests, public passions, and political agendas. In combination with business-as-usual, these biases are destroying humanity’s chances of resolving global warming. They are detrimentally affecting current global projects to resolve global warming. To mitigate these biases, the Global Solutions and Outreach Programs (GSOP) proposal will be undertaken by multiple teams of engineers, economists, social experts, and policy experts within each country, using a Wicked-Problem Approach. This work will be done outside of, yet informing, governments, the marketplace, and public opinion. Country action plans will be rolled up to regional and global levels. The GSOP work will be iterated until the global action plan provides a resolution of global warming at the scale of Earth. Part 1 describes the challenges we face and a problem-solving approach to resolving it. Part 2 will describe our GSOP proposal using that approach.