Why Climate Change is Urgent

Energy & Environment, 2009

Climate change, some claim, is this century's most important environmental challenge. Mortality estimates for the year 2000 from the World Health Organization (WHO) indicate, however, that a dozen other risk factors contribute more to global mortality and global burden of disease. Moreover, the state-of-theart British-sponsored fast track assessments (FTAs) of the global impacts of climate change show that through 2085-2100, climate change would contribute less to human health and environmental threats than other risk factors. Climate change is, therefore, unlikely to be the 21 st century's most important environmental problem. Combining the FTA results with WHO's mortality estimates indicates that halting climate change would reduce cumulative mortality from hunger, malaria, and coastal flooding, by 4-10 percent in 2085 while the Kyoto Protocol would lower it by 0.4-1 percent. FTA results also show that reducing climate change will increase populations-at-risk from water stress and, possibly, threats to biodiversity. But adaptive measures focused specifically on reducing vulnerability to climate sensitive threats would reduce cumulative mortality by 50-75 percent at a fraction of the Kyoto Protocol's cost without adding to risks from water stress or to biodiversity. Such "focused adaptation" would, moreover, reduce major hurdles to the developing world's sustainable economic development, lack of which is the major reason for its vulnerability to climate change (and any other form of adversity). Thus, focused adaptation can combat climate change and advance global well-being, particularly of the world's most vulnerable populations, more effectively than aggressive GHG reductions. Alternatively, these benefits and more -reductions in poverty, and infant and maternal mortality by 50-75%; increased access to safe water and sanitation; and universal literacy -can be obtained by broadly advancing sustainable economic development through policies, institutions and measures (such as those that would meet the UN Millennium Development Goals) at a cost approximating that of the Kyoto Protocol. However, in order to deal with climate change beyond the 2085-2100 timeframe, the paper also recommends expanding research and development of mitigation options, reducing barriers to implementing such options, and active science and monitoring programs to provide early warning of any "dangerous" climate change impacts.

2019

Recent discussions of climate change in multiple domains-the academic literature, the popular press, political movements, and international climate policy regime-have increasingly framed the phenomenon as a "crisis," an "emergency," or an "urgent" situation. In this paper, we contextualize the time pressure of climate change in the broader social science literature, perform bibliometric and discourse analyses of this framing, and explore potential implications of this trend for climate decision making. While the increased prevalence of time pressure terms is arguably part and parcel of modernity, these terms are in general not synonymous. In the context of climate decision making, we find that "urgency" functions as a boundary object relaying the internalization of time pressure between (1) the academic literature and the international climate change policy regime and (2) political movements and the popular press; especially as construed in these latter domains, "crisis" and "emergency" connote time pressure but so too generate a constellation of other affective and cognitive states. A review of a set of related literatures suggests that the time pressure framing of climate change affects the quantity and quality of information and the range of options (e.g., geoengineering) considered in choice processes for mitigation and adaptation actions, as well as the sequencing and timing of chosen plan elements; furthermore, these effects likely vary in both direction and magnitude with characteristics of the individuals or organizations in which they manifest. Taken as a whole, the crisis framing of climate change is likely to polarize beliefs and actions, especially in the absence of accompanying information about self-efficacy and hope.

The most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (2014) has reiterated the relationship between human-induced carbon emissions and warming average global temperatures accompanied by unprecedented climate change impacts. Despite this, in New Zealand and Australia, climate change ranks relatively low on the public concern radar , and in the last 4 years the number of people regarding climate change as an urgent problem has declined. Both countries recently voted for political leaders who position climate change and the environment relatively low on the policy agenda . By way of contrast, a 2013 Pew Research Center report has international public opinion ranking global climate change as the topmost concern . What is driving the asymmetry between the scientific consensus of the urgency and scale of climate change and importance of rapidly changing carbon-intensive practices, and the fluctuating and relatively ineffective response to climate change mitigation?

Ambiente & Sociedade, 2016

Booth/Solutions to Climate Change Challenges in the Built Environment, 2012

Strategic Planning for Energy and the Environment, 2009

Combustion of coal, oil, and natural gas and, to a lesser extent, deforestation, land-cover change, and emissions of halocarbons and other greenhouse gases, are rapidly increasing the atmospheric concentrations of climate-warming gases. The resulting warming of about 0.1 to 0.2°C per decade that has taken place over the last several decades is very likely the primary cause of the loss of snow cover and Arctic sea ice, the more frequent occurrence of very heavy precipitation, rising sea level, and shifts in the natural ranges of plants and animals. Global average temperature is already ~0.8ºC above its preindustrial level. As expected, warming has been greater in mid and high latitudes compared to low latitudes, over land compared to oceans, and at night compared to day. The present atmospheric levels of long-lived greenhouse gases are pushing toward further warming of ~1.0-1.5ºC. This further warming is being held back by the time it takes for the oceans to warm and by the cooling influence of short-lived sulfate aerosols. As a result, at least as much further warming as has occurred to date would be expected even if global greenhouse gas emissions could be immediately cut to zero. At their present rate, ongoing emissions and the past commitment to warming are projected to lead to further warming at a rate of ~0.2-0.3ºC per decade over the next several decades, especially if emission controls are not put in place. Such warming and the associated changes are likely to cause severe impacts to key societal and environmental support systems. Present estimates are that reducing emissions sharply by 2050 and to near zero by 2100 will be required to limit the increase in global average surface temperature to no more than 2 to 2.5°C above its 1750 value of about 15ºC, and that this will be necessary to avoid the most catastrophic, but certainly not all, consequences of climate change.

Global climate change, driven largely by the combustion of fossil fuels and by deforestation, is a growing threat to human well-being in developing and industrialized nations alike. Significant harm from climate change is already occurring, and further damages are a certainty. The challenge now is to keep climate change from becoming a catastrophe. There is still a good chance of succeeding in this, and of doing so by means that create economic opportunities that are greater than the costs and that advance rather than impede other societal goals. But seizing this chance requires an immediate and major acceleration of efforts on two fronts: mitigation measures (such as reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases and black soot) to prevent the degree of climate change from becoming unmanageable; and adaptation measures (such as building dikes and adjusting agricultural practices) to reduce the harm from climate change that proves unavoidable. Avoiding the Unmanageable Human activities have changed the climate of the Earth, with significant impacts on ecosystems and human society, and the pace of change is increasing. The global-average surface temperature is now about 0.8°C above its level in 750, with most of the increase having occurred in the 20th century and the most rapid rise occurring since 970. Temperature changes over the continents have been greater than the global average and the changes over the continents at high latitudes have been greater still. The pattern of the observed changes matches closely what climate science predicts from the buildup in the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO 2), methane (CH 4), and other greenhouse gases (GHGs), taking into account other known influences on the temperature. The largest of all of the human and natural influences on climate over the past 250 years has been the increase in the atmospheric CO 2 concentration resulting from deforestation and fossil-fuel burning. The CO 2 emissions in recent decades (Figure ES.), which have been responsible for the largest part of this buildup, have come 75% to 85% from fossil fuels (largely in the industrialized countries) and 5% to 25% from deforestation and other land-cover change (largely from developing countries in the tropics). A given temperature change in degrees Celsius (ºC) can be converted into a change in degrees Fahrenheit (ºF) by multiplying by .8. Thus, a change of 0.8ºC corresponds to a change of 0.8 x .8 = .44ºF.

2003

A coordinated global effort is urgently needed to address climate change, safeguard vulnerable communities, and ensure a livable planet for future generations. The time to act is now, i.e. as soon as possible (March 2025). Required -and most effective actions are given in the article.

Climate Change. Evidence and Causes, 2023

Climate change is one of the defining issues of our times. It is now more certain than ever, based on many lines of evidence, that humans are changing Earth's climate. The atmosphere and oceans have warmed, which has been accompanied by sea level rise, a strong decline in Arctic sea ice, and other climate-related changes. The impacts of climate change on people and nature are increasingly apparent. Unprecedented flooding, heat waves, and wildfires have cost billions in damages. Habitats are undergoing rapid shifts in response to changing temperatures and precipitation patterns. The Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences, with their similar missions to promote the use of science to benefit society and to inform critical policy debates, produced the original Climate Change: Evidence and Causes in 2014. It was written and reviewed by a UK-US team of leading climate scientists. This new edition, prepared by the same author team, has been updated with the most recent climate data and scientific analyses, all of which reinforce our understanding of human-caused climate change. The evidence is clear. However, due to the nature of science, not every detail is ever totally settled or certain. Nor has every pertinent question yet been answered. Scientific evidence continues to be gathered around the world. Some things have become clearer and new insights have emerged. For example, the period of slower warming during the 2000s and early 2010s has ended with a dramatic jump to warmer temperatures between 2014 and 2015. Antarctic sea ice extent, which had been increasing, began to decline in 2014, reaching a record low in 2017 that has persisted. These and other recent observations have been woven into the discussions of the questions addressed in this booklet. Calls for action are getting louder. The 2020 Global Risks Perception Survey from the World Economic Forum ranked climate change and related environmental issues as the top five global risks likely to occur within the next ten years. Yet, the international community still has far to go in showing increased ambition on mitigation, adaptation, and other ways to tackle climate change. Scientific information is a vital component for society to make informed decisions about how to reduce the magnitude of climate change and how to adapt to its impacts. This booklet serves as a key reference document for decision makers, policy makers, educators, and others seeking authoritative answers about the current state of climate-change science. We are grateful that six years ago, under the leadership of Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone, former President of the National Academy of Sciences, and Sir Paul Nurse, former President of the Royal Society, these two organizations partnered to produce a highlevel overview of climate change science. As current Presidents of these organizations, we are pleased to offer an update to this key reference, supported by the generosity of the Cicerone family.