This textbook introduces and explains the issues around climate change and its mitigation. It includes topics across disciplines and can be used as a single-volume text by students studying a range of subjects. Among the topics included are:
·How to adopt significant mitigation measures now to avoid the most catastrophic long-term consequences of climate change.
·Reducing the rates of highly potent, short-lived emissions of methane gas and black carbon particulates—reductions that are necessary to meet the temperature targets of the Paris Agreements.
·Implementing wide-ranging adaptation measures to reduce the deaths and economic costs of extreme heat waves, droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, and floods.
·Recognizing the unusually rapid warming in the Arctic, which is disrupting weather patterns in the northern hemisphere and currents in the Atlantic Ocean, causing world-wide sea-level rise, and also causing methane leaks in the Arctic region—leaksthat could eventually lead to irreversible global warming consequences.
Meeting these challenges effectively requires action by both governments and businesses. The book examines the national and local governmental policies—and business practices—that are needed in sector-specific chapters.
An objective of the book is to inform readers about specific problems resulting from climate change—and the wide range of potential government policies and business practices, changes in technologies, and changes in public attitudes and actions that can reduce the emissions and otherwise lessen their impacts. Indeed, a central message is that understanding the issues posed by climate change requires no less than an understanding of climate science, micro- and macro-economics, technologies for mitigation and adaptation measures, as well as politics and law at many governmental levels from local to global. The author has included short case studies that illustrate and integrate multiple analytic perspectives. The book is therefore appropriate for students, professionals, and general audiences with wide-ranging interests and backgrounds.