There is one convenient thing about climate change: The problem of global warming poses so many threats, and emerges from so many causes, that there’s not one single solution for it.

This is convenient because it means you can work on a lot of different angles and still help the underlying problem. If every American stopped eating meat tomorrow, the situation would immediately begin to improve but it wouldn’t be solved; ditto if every coal plant worldwide was shut down tomorrow. Even in that crazy-go-nuts mitigation scenario, we’d immediately be a lot better off, but there would still be work to do.

Climate change is vast, hopeless, horrifying, anxiety-inducing, and imagination-staggering. On the other, it’s a challenge without parallel in human history: a vast, fascinating, thrilling, inspiring, mind-bending opportunity.

So thinking about climate change requires a two-mindedness among those who want to pitch in to work against it—or who just want to be educated voters on their city, country, or planet. On the one hand, we have reached the point where climate change will arrive regardless of what we do. Climate change is vast, hopeless, horrifying, anxiety-inducing, and imagination-staggering. On the other, it’s a challenge without parallel in human history: a vast, fascinating, thrilling, inspiring, mind-bending opportunity.