Law Commons^™

4°C, Robin Kundis Craig

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Conventional climate change wisdom tells governments to plan for a 2°C increase in global average temperature. However, increasingly robust science indicates that the planet is well on its way to at least 4°C of warming, possibly by the end of the 21st century or shortly thereafter. That much warming is a governance game changer, taking the multiple and interconnected complex systems that define U.S. society across thresholds and tipping points into cascades of transformational change. Critically, these systems potentially include the United States’ system of government—the key system that must successfully adapt to the coming changes in order for the …