Climate & securityClimate change risk assessment: Policy brief
The international group of experts which yesterday released the report Climate Change: A Risk Assessment (University of Cambridge, July 2015), summarized their recommendations in a policy brief. “An honest assessment of risk is no reason for fatalism. Just as small changes in climate can have very large effects, the same can be true for changes in government policy, technological capability, and financial regulation,” the experts write. “Leadership can make this virtuous circle turn faster, more fully mobilizing our ingenuity, resources, and commitment. In this way, the goal of preserving a safe climate for the future need not be beyond our reach.”
The international group of experts which yesterday released the report Climate Change: A Risk Assessment (University of Cambridge, July 2015), summarized their recommendations in a policy brief.
Here is the brief:
The most important political decision to be made about climate change is how much effort to expend on countering it. That decision should be informed by a full assessment of the risks. At the minimum, we have to think about three things:
1. What we are doing to the climate is emitting greenhouse gases that trap heat and warm it up. Whether those emissions go up or down in future will depend mainly on the policy choices we make, and the technological progress that expands our options. Our best guess at the moment, based on current policies and trends, is that emissions will keep going up for another few decades, and then either level off, or come down slowly. This is for two reasons: governments are not making maximum use of the technologies to reduce emissions that we already have; and technology is not yet progressing fast enough to give governments the policy options they will need in the future. In the worst case, emissions could keep on rising throughout the century.
