How can we manage global warming?

Limiting climate change is the biggest challenge of cooperation that humans have ever faced. This article looks at the options available for managing this ‘global commons’ — from mitigation now to geoengineering in the future — and considers the risks involved

Noel Castree and Rob Bellamy

Paris, June 2019. The high temperatures experienced in continental Europe this summer could become more extreme with climate warming

Anthropogenic climate change will lead to significant alterations to the world’s physical and human geography in the decades and centuries to come. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the world’s most authoritative climate-science organisation — reports that without very serious and swift actions, humans will have warmed the atmosphere by 2ºC (or more) above preindustrial levels by 2100. That may sound like a small rise in temperature. However, among other effects, it would:

■ start notable sea-level rise (as the ice caps melt)