“There are no silver bullets, only silver buckshot.”

I don’t know whether author and environmental activist Bill McKibben was the first to coin the term, but “silver buckshot” is now the solution du jour to climate change. With Congress debating a Green New Deal, and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee running for president on a climate platform, the phrase is spreading faster than a wave of late-season flu.

Defeating climate change is certainly going to require more than one killer energy technology. Trouble is, even if the world deploys every single energy technology at its disposal—a shell crammed full of pellets—that still won’t be enough. Fixing the climate requires new policies as well as technologies; systemic changes to the economy; and perhaps most important of all, a…