The changing climate of the planet and the remarkable growth in human numbers and riches both stem from the combustion of billions of tonnes of fossil fuel to produce industrial power, electricity, transport, heating and, more recently, computation.<\/p>\n
Three-quarters of current emissions come from 12 economies.<\/p>\n
Almost half the atmosphere\u2019s extra, human-made carbon dioxide was put there after the turn of the 1990s, when scientists sounded the alarm and governments said they would act.<\/p>\n
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Climate change is not just an environmental problem alongside all the others.<\/p>\n
It is a dire threat to countless people\u2014one that is planetary in scope.<\/p>\n
It will displace tens of millions, at the very least; it will disrupt farms on which billions rely; it will dry up wells and water mains; it will flood low-lying places\u2014and, as time goes by, higher-standing ones, too.<\/p>\n
It is not a problem that can be put off for a few decades. \u00a0It is here and now.<\/p>\n
The damage that climate change will end up doing depends on the human response over the next few decades.<\/p>\n
Delay means that humankind will suffer more harm and face a vastly more costly scramble to make up for lost time.<\/p>\n
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By no means all the effects of climate change can be adapted away. \u00a0The further climate change goes, the less adaptation will be able to offset it.<\/p>\n
The longer humanity takes to curb emissions, the greater the dangers and sparser the benefits\u2014and the larger the risk of some truly catastrophic surprises.<\/p>\n
The climate responds to the overall level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not to a single country\u2019s contribution to it. \u00a0If one government drastically reduces its own emissions but others do not, the gallant reducer will in general see no reduced harm. This is a huge obstacle.<\/p>\n
International agreements stress the need to support the poorest countries in their efforts to adapt to climate change and to grow wealthy enough to need less help. \u00a0Here the rich world is shirking its duties.<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s efforts, which are too lax to keep the world from two or even three degrees of warming, can be vastly improved.<\/p>\n
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Because the processes that force climate change are built into the foundations of the world economy and of geopolitics, measures to check climate change have to be similarly wide-ranging and all-encompassing.<\/p>\n
To decarbonise an economy is not a simple subtraction; it requires a near-complete overhaul.<\/p>\n
It is foolish to think all this can be done in ten years or so.<\/p>\n
Competitive markets properly incentivised, and politicians serving a genuine popular thirst for action, can do more than any other system to limit the warming that can be forestalled and cope with that which cannot. \u00a0But so far,\u00a0the market economy has done very little to help.<\/p>\n
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However, climate change is not the end of the world.<\/p>\n
Humankind is not poised teetering on the edge of extinction.<\/p>\n
The planet itself is not in peril;\u00a0though much may be lost, most of the wondrous life that makes Earth unique will endure.<\/p>\n
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