Actions taken to combat or adapt to climate change must take the big picture into account. The challenges we face are not only environmental, but increasingly social and economic. For example, we cannot rely on high-tech solutions such as carbon capture and storage, which simply sidestep the problem and encourage society to continue with its resource-intensive business as usual. Even leaving aside safety concerns, we cannot look to nuclear power as a solution when we do not have a sustainable solution for the waste it generates.