One word in climate discourse that we really need to clarify is "solutions."

Does it mean technologies?
Does it mean policies?
Does it mean new social norms?

1/2

And how do "solutions" intersect w politics—with current distributions of power and other resources and all the institutional and collective efforts to direct those distributions?

Politics, in that sense, is what will enable or prevent "solutions" from coming into being.

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There have been efforts to triangulate "solutions," loosely defined, & "values," but IMHO

1) the discourse of solutions needs to be MUCH more concrete &

2) "values" need to be intersected with politics (for climate is not a dispositional, but a systemic problem).

2/2

PS, yes obviously in this context the word "solutions" means technology, policy, behavior—and more—all at once. I'm suggesting that the term is too capacious, vague, and apolitical to effectively motivate people to act for decarbonization.

I'm also not crazy about the word's connection to corporate-speak, in which companies offer "design solutions" or "education solutions" or "financial solutions."

Real climate solutions are not commodities, people!