Climate Change

Emissions are near their peak while clean energy grows exponentially — the race between the two defines the century. Catastrophic worst cases have become less likely; serious damage is already locked in.

Every year adds tens of billions of tonnes of CO₂. Consequences — heat waves, floods, crop stress, sea-level rise — fall hardest on the poorest, who emitted least. Warming of ~2.5–3°C this century is the rough current trajectory; every tenth of a degree avoided matters.

Burning fossil fuels for electricity, transport, industry and heat (~75% of emissions), plus agriculture and deforestation. The deeper cause: clean alternatives were expensive — that has now changed.

Low-lying and tropical countries, subsistence farmers, outdoor workers, the very young and very old in heat waves — and future generations, who inherit whatever we choose now.

There's a concrete step for whatever you can offer. With your money, fund climate policy/advocacy org types and clean-tech-deployment nonprofits — analysis suggests dollars there beat offsets by a wide margin. With your time, join a local climate or clean-energy advocacy group; permitting fights for solar, wind and transmission are won by people showing up. With your skills, engineers, financiers, and communicators are the constraint in climate work — consider steering career time, the biggest lever most people have. With your voice, vote climate, every level, every time — and say why out loud.

The approaches with the strongest evidence: Clean energy deployment & innovation: Solar, wind, storage, grids, electrification — scaling what is now often the cheapest power in history. Cost declines (~90% for solar since 2010) did more for emissions than most policies; supporting deployment and R&D compounds it. Policy & advocacy: Carbon pricing, clean-energy standards, permitting reform — changing the rules that move whole economies. High leverage, uncertain attribution: a won policy fight can dwarf a lifetime of personal cuts.

Impact Compass doesn't name individual charities. The higher-leverage path is to back the interventions that work best here (Clean energy deployment & innovation, Policy & advocacy) and to choose organizations by how transparently they deliver them. Compare organization types for this cause with the free tools linked above, or give useful items directly through Givelink.