Global concerns on climate change
Is it possible that the cascading effects of climate change left a fingerprint on the recent U.S. elections? That possibility was floated at a gathering of climate change experts convened to consider a warming world’s potential impact on developing nations, a discussion that reached back to the developed world. The session, held at Harvard Law School on Wednesday, brought together experts from the scientific, policy, legal, health, business, and other academic communities and was by turns urgently pessimistic and optimistic. Participants in the session emphasized that some climate change is both unavoidable and irreversible because the carbon dioxide already released into the atmosphere will be there for thousands of years. It is imperative, they said, that the players involved lower emissions as rapidly as possible to minimize effects that will intensify as excess heat works its way through the global climate system. “We’re building a problem today from which we can’t extract ourselves,”...