Many ecosystems are rapidly deteriorating from record-breaking heat due to climate change, and urgent action is clearly needed. However balancing urgency with good decision-making remains challenging. Here we examine the recent paradigm shift toward bespoke technological interventions to save marine systems, for example coral reefs. Justified as a choice between either ‘doing nothing’ or upscaled novel coral-saving technologies, this shift highlights a desperate appetite for updated conservation strategies in the Anthropocene. But a misleading dichotomy of choices could obscure other new and promising ways to act. We explore an emerging alternative model for future social-ecological systems: Minimum-In Minimum-Out (MIMO). MIMO draws together climate mitigation, retreat from technological interventions, natural ecosystem dynamics, bioethics, and novel systems. We show how adapting a functional, systemic perspective on marine climate governance may enable better alignment between climate interventions and sustainable outcomes. Such an improved alignment is urgently required by both societies and oceans as we navigate the Anthropocene.