Introduction to symposium on climate change

Contemporary climate change, and the efforts to mitigate it and adapt to it, may pose the most formidable challenges the world has ever faced. The fundamentals are well known. Since the beginning of the 19th century, the atmosphere is increasingly being filled with greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane that are produced by human endeavors dependent on carbon-based energy. Human beings have also been cutting down forests, which has the effect of releasing carbon into the atmosphere. The accumulation of greenhouse gases occurs because these gases stay in the atmosphere for long periods of time, in the case of carbon for many centuries. The effect of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is that the atmosphere traps heat that normally leaves the earth’s system. As a consequence of the gradual accumulation of greenhouse gases, the average temperature of the earth has been slowly but surely increasing. The most obvious effects of this warming have been the warming of the oceans and the consequent slow melting of the polar ice caps with the predictable consequence that the sea levels are raising slowly. This is a fairly general effect of global warming. Many other consequences are more localized. Deserts become hotter and drier, extreme weather events become more frequent and more violent, and agriculturally productive lands become less productive. As these consequences become more pronounced, conflicts over resources are likely to become more pronounced. What seems clear is that if human beings are to mitigate climate change, they will need to transform fundamentally the energy basis of the world economy in a relatively short period of time. This change is likely to require significant sacrifices on the part of the current generation and our near descendants. While an overwhelming majority agrees that if the world continues with business as usual for a long time, we are very likely courting disaster, there is still significant uncertainty and disagreement about the exact effects of climate change. Will there be some

Atmosphere (unit · Atmospheric sciences · Biology · Carbon dioxide · Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere · Climate change · Climatology · Economics · Effects of global warming · Geography · Global warming · Greenhouse effect · Greenhouse gas · Greenhouse gas removal · Meteorology · Natural resource economics · Runaway climate change · Environmental Science · Global Energy and Sustainability Research · Ecology · Geology

• Political Theory on Climate Change

  Melissa Lane•Annual Review of Political Science•2016

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