Climate Change: The Ultimate Global Test

Other than the threat of nuclear holocaust, no other human-made phenomenon has ever threatened the well-being of life on earth in such a wholesale manner as climate change. Global average temperatures are clearly rising, and the effects of those rises are clear and well established. In spite of a near-consensus on the science of climate change, many continue to doubt its seriousness or its roots in human activity. States are divided on their levels of responsibility and their commitments to change, much of the focus being on the major industrial powers that generate the most greenhouse gas emissions. The most support for policy change has tended to come from states that are dependent on imported energy while the most opposition has tended to come from those states most well endowed in energy. The European Union has been a leader in addressing climate change, while the two major producers of greenhouse gases – China and the United States – have equivocated. Without question, the most serious environmental problem we face is human-induced climate change (otherwise known as global warming). At source, it is an air pollution problem because it stems from an enhanced greenhouse effect created by a growth in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. But the effects – which include changing weather patterns, more extreme weather events, melting ice caps and glaciers, rising sea levels, changing crop-growing patterns, and threats to biodiversity – mean that climate change is not just a pollution problem or even an environmental problem, but has become a broader political, economic, and social problem.