By David Jaber May 12, 2019

As fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe know, in Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos wiped out half the life in the universe with a snap of his fingers, having amassed enough power to do so after gathering the six Infinity Stones. The task for our remaining heroes in #AvengersEndgame is to undo the snap (don’t worry, fans who have not yet seen the movie – no Endgame spoilers in this article).

The unleashing of the climate crisis is another challenge of heroic proportions. Some might liken it to the Apollo Project to get to the moon (I’d argue tackling existing widespread practices has a significantly different nature than inventing new technologies), but in any event, it demands a concerted effort to do two things in the quest to remove carbon from the air:

1) keep fossilized carbon in the ground

2) remediate/remove carbon from the air

We’re right to challenge the economic mindsets and incentives that have kept us locked in not doing the first.  But even within that economic system, we have levers to work with.

In working within the system to reverse the climate snap, two questions come up.

• What’s the most effective path to reduce GHG? 
• Where do we get the best GHG reduction bang for our buck?