Green tech can’t solve climate—it’s too late. And focusing on tech allows more pollution.

Green technology is at the forefront of many climate conversations, from electric cars, to solar energy batteries, to the burgeoning interest in carbon capture. Though sometimes well-meaning and useful, green technology is only one piece of the greater climate solutions pie. A narrow focus on green technology as a panacea for the climate crisis can obscure the importance of immediate political action and social change.

Before I joined the climate movement, I, like many Americans, saw the climate crisis as just a scientific problem. This made sense to me because it was scientists who, through decades of research, linked carbon emissions to global warming. So, if scientists identified the problem, then science and technology could get us out. If we had new energy sources, more efficient cars and could capture carbon, our problems would be solved, I mistakenly once thought. However, framing climate problems as a science issue is a strategic misplacement of responsibility that benefits the corporations that profit from the perpetuation of the status quo. This framing is a strategy meant to displace the burden of responsibility for action from fossil fuel companies, polluting industries and acquiescent politicians, all of which are to blame for the climate crisis’s root causes.

The focus on technology ignores many factors. For one, waiting on a perfect technology without a swift reduction in emissions and an urgent transition away from fossil fuels will doom us to the worst of the climate crisis. Nuclear fusion, for example, will not be ready for mass utilization by 2050; and neither carbon capture and storage or blue hydrogen alone will solve the climate crisis. To continue to rely on the hope of such technologies, while ignoring the immediate gravity of the climate crisis, is a mistake — a mistake that many fossil fuel companies hope we will make and buy them more time. We must be realistic and not let the promise of exciting new technology get in the way of the immediate action needed.

The ongoing focus on new technologies also helps keep everyday people complacent about the climate crisis. When I was under the impression that we just had to wait for scientists to perfect a miracle invention, I had no interest in climate action. It allowed me to separate myself from the problem, and not keep my elected officials and corporate leaders accountable. However, in the past few years, scientists have made it abundantly clear that this is not the case. We already have 95 percent of the technology we need. Technologies like renewable energies are ready for an energy transition away from fossil fuels and must be coupled with a scaling down of polluting industries and confronting over-production.