The Challenge of Human Induced Climate Change

This chapter discusses the challenge of human-induced climate change. The general problem is of living in a crowded and productive world. There are 7.2 billion people on the globe and the average output per person is about 12 thousand dollars US. We are pressing against the physical boundaries of the planet that sustain life, or the ‘Planetary Boundaries,’ that include ocean acidification, ozone depletion, and biodiversity loss, among others. Climate change, as exemplified by temperature warming, is perhaps the most pervasive of the threats to the planetary boundaries, but is accompanied by changes to rainfall and extreme weather events like droughts and hurricanes. In order to make choices about what policies decisions to come to, we must understand the science so that we can head towards successful global agreements. This video is part of the module Towards a New Climate Change Agreement.

This video is licensed under the CC BY-NC-SA license.