The rise of the global middle class is our best hope to stop climate change

Equal opportunity will massively expand the pool of innovators

Climate Change in Global South
(Image credit: (BEAWIHARTA/Reuters/Corbis))

A month ago, Ezra Klein explained why he's a pessimist about climate change. His explanation is compelling — our ineffectual national and international institutions really do handicap our ability to deal with this problem. But Klein is too quick to dismiss our technical ingenuity and its capacity for unexpected greatness.

The Week's John Aziz has already written about the accelerating progress of solar energy. Advances in the efficiency and versatility of solar may slow down carbon emissions more than we realize. And if we're lucky, it may buy us enough time to develop the ultimate source of clean energy: nuclear fusion.

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Nicholas Warino is a political science Ph.D. student at the University of California, Riverside. His research interests are public policy, political economy, and technology.