Eco-efficiency — a term originally coined by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, a consortium of more than 100 major businesses such as Ford Motor Co. and BP — is hailed as the industrial approach to combating global warming. The philosophy was adopted by the WBCSD’s member companies, the National Resources Defense Council, the European Environment Agency and numerous other groups. Eco-efficiency is certainly an appealing idea: Companies that reduce their waste products and increase output from limited inputs will profit more and save the environment at the same time. However, producing less pollution does not equate to stopping pollution. To stop climate change we need to find alternatives to the processes that are damaging our planet’s health instead of slowing them down.

I recognize there are many people who do not believe in climate change. However, I see headlines every day about the harmful impact of climate change on the environment. This year, the Greenland ice sheet melting season decreased approximately 10 percent on April 11. Previously, the earliest it had melted more than 10 percent was almost a month later on May 5, 2010. What will happen during the peak of melt season this year, considering the world sea level rose in 2012 by a millimeter solely from the thawing of 562 billion tons of ice in Greenland’s ice sheet? Turning to the Southern Hemisphere, unusually warm ocean temperatures have bleached 93 percent of reefs in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the largest reef system on Earth. Bleaching occurs when slight variations in water temperature cause the algae that coral life relies on to leave the coral. Despite this alarming event, the Australian government approved a massive coal mining operation this month that will result in larger sea traffic near the Great Barrier Reef, further threatening its health. These are just recent occurrences among countless others that make me fear for the quality of life on this planet.

Contemplating these events, it is difficult to be content with current efforts to curb our impact on the environment. Last week on Earth Day, 171 countries signed the Paris Agreement on climate. The agreement is an international effort to limit the global temperature rise to below two degrees Celsius. Yet, even if all parties stick to their pledges to reduce carbon emissions in the non-binding agreement, it is estimated that the effect would fail to limit temperature rise by an entire degree. Why? Because limited emissions are not effective when the world’s population is still growing and expected to reach more than nine billion people by 2050.

Being more efficient with resources will not matter when we continue to need more of them to sustain the global population, especially when regulations on emissions are costly and cumbersome for businesses. That is why we need to develop completely clean technologies and industrial activities that will need no environmental regulation. As the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal or the three million gallons of mining waste released into Colorado’s Animas River last year will attest, the production of emissions and waste cannot always be controlled. Just last week, more than 30 workers were killed in the explosion of a Mexican petrochemical plant; making industries cleaner is not enough when there is potential for disaster and human error.

So what do we do? Hybrid cars and efficient Energy Star-rated appliances are great ideas to mitigate our carbon footprint, but electric cars and completely clean sources of energy are needed as soon as possible to stop global warming. We need to stop building new coal power plants, drilling new oil wells and allowing carbon-producing industries to exist in our economy and redirect our resources to developing and implementing completely clean technologies and industries in the world economy. I will be the first to admit that such an effort seems unrealistic, but it is more logical than the premise that climate change can be stopped simply by lowering the rate at which carbon emissions are produced.

Arturas Malinauskas is a McCormick freshman. He can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this column, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected].

The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.