The difficult, the dangerous, and the catastrophic: Managing the spectrum of climate risks

Abstract

The notion of a threshold of dangerous climate change has been central to national and international efforts to address climate risks. However, the focus on a single target has now become an obstacle because it reinforces three key problems: it frames climate change as a distant abstract threat, it impedes integration of mitigation and adaptation, and it fails to recognize the diversity of values and risk perceptions of people around the globe. We present an alternative framework that considers both biophysical science and social values in characterizing the broad spectrum of climate risks. The framework also presents the options for managing these risks within four quadrants defined by the inherent limits to mitigation and adaptation. This quadrant‐based approach to managing the spectrum of climate risks restructures the climate change problem from avoiding a distant catastrophe to minimizing collective suffering.

(Still) Disagreeing About Climate Change: Which Way Forward?

“…It is for this reason that Luers and Sklar (, 114) declare that “the focus on a single target [two degrees of warming] has become an obstacle [to effective policy‐making] because it … frames climate change as a distant abstract threat and fails to recognize the diversity of values and risk perceptions of people around the world.” This, too, is the position taken by Victor and Kennel () in their argument for moving away from a singular climate policy target in favor of a basket of goals, a strategy of multiple goal‐seeking. Climate risks have to be contextualized alongside other risk and welfare issues, for example as articulated in the multiple objectives of the newly negotiated Sustainable Development Goals.…”

Metaphor as a mechanism of global climate change governance: A study of international policies, 1992–2012

“…There is a growing sense that attempts at building an effective international governance regime for climate change are running out of steam (Conca, 2012;Gedden, 2013;Jordan et al, 2013;Luers and Sklar, 2013). A lack of public support for emission reduction policies is one of the reasons given for this policy failure (Pidgeon and Fischhoff, 2011;Whitmarsh et al, 2013).…”