Quantifying the climate crisis: a data-driven framework using response indicators for evidence-based adaptation policies

The state and local governments are implementing emissions trading systems and carbon neutral policies to reduce greenhouse gases. Nevertheless, the Earth is facing a climate crisis due to the increase in greenhouse gases generated from energy generation, steel and chemical industries, energy in the home and transportation, industrial processes such as cement, agriculture, and waste. The number of cases of youth and future generations filing climate lawsuits in the Constitutional Court and courts regarding the climate crisis is increasing, and the issue of guaranteeing basic climate rights under the Constitution is becoming a social issue.
 Therefore, a public legal response is urgently needed so that the state and local governments can protect the lives, bodies, and property of citizens in order to respond to the climate crisis and achieve sustainable development, and guarantee the right of current and future generations to live in a pleasant environment.
 In this paper, after examining the concept of climate crisis and Korea's climate crisis response legislation, we review legislative precedents and precedents in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and France to find implications for Korea. In addition, the provisions on climate crisis response are stipulated in the Constitution, guaranteeing basic climate rights to protect against damage caused by climate change, the role of the Climate Crisis Response Act, climate crisis response and cooperation through cooperative climate governance, and the freedom of the current generation to respond to the climate crisis. We review the role of public law by discussing emergency declarations and public law issues in response to the crisis of climate change, guaranteeing future generations' temporal climate crisis protection rights, and protecting future generations.
 For climate protection and response to the climate crisis, the Constitution should specify climate change reduction goals, basic climate rights, and cooperative measures to respond to the climate crisis, and legislatively consider the “urgent need” of the climate crisis beyond the concept of climate protection. In addition, in order to ensure equity and fairness due to infringement of basic rights related to the climate crisis, basic climate rights should be guaranteed under the constitution as well as legislative, scientific, and judicial responsibilities. In addition, the Climate Crisis Response Act should be enacted on necessary measures to make the climate crisis effective by public law. The Climate Crisis Response Act shall be guided and complementary in relation to the Building Act, the National Territory Planning Act, the Economic Act, the Disaster Safety Act, etc., and shall prescribe clear legal responsibility and due process for the climate crisis. In addition, climate crisis response requires cooperation by establishing climate governance between the state and local governments, between local governments, and between countries, so climate change reduction technologies and climate crisis response strategies should be shared, and legal countermeasures should be prepared in cooperation with each other. In addition, in order to reasonably allocate the cost burden of the climate crisis, the right to protect the temporal climate crisis should be clearly established legally and systematically to lead a life in a comfortable environment in accordance with the principle of equity and proportionality for current and future generations. The state or local government's climate emergency declaration and emergency plans on climate change crises and risks, administrative measures under executive orders, scientific predictions of climate crises and improve the vulnerability of disasters, and the role and legal responsibility of responding to climate crises should be considered in public law.

Perceptions of climate and climate change by Amazonian communities

Climate change is increasingly being framed as a “climate crisis.” Such a crisis could be viewed both to unfold in the climate system, as well as to be induced by it in diverse areas of society. Following from current understandings of modern crises, it is clear that climate change indeed can be defined as a “crisis.” As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 1.5oC special report elaborates, the repercussions of a warming planet include increased food insecurity, increased frequency and intensity of severe droughts, extreme heat waves, the loss of coral reef ecosystems and associated marine species, and more. It is also important to note that a range of possible climate-induced crises (through, e.g., possible increased food insecurity and weather extremes) will not be distributed evenly, but will instead disproportionally affect already vulnerable social groups, communities, and countries in detrimental ways. The multifaceted dimensions of climate change allow for multiple interpretations and framings of “climate crisis,” thereby forcing us to acknowledge the deeply contextual nature of what is understood as a “crisis.” Climate change and its associated crises display a number of challenging properties that stem from its connections to basically all sectors in society, its propensity to induce and in itself embed nonlinear changes such as “tipping points” and cascading shocks, and its unique and challenging long-term temporal dimensions. The latter pose particularly difficult decision-making and institutional challenges because initial conditions (in this case, carbon dioxide emissions) do not result in immediate or proportional responses (say, global temperature anomalies), but instead play out through feedbacks among the climate system, oceans, the cryosphere, and changes in forest biomes, with some considerable delays in time. Additional challenges emerge from the fact that early warnings of pending so-called “catastrophic shifts” face numerous obstacles, and that early responses are undermined by a lack of knowledge, complex causality, and severe coordination challenges.

Pennsylvania State University, USADespite overwhelming consensus among scientists about thereality of anthropogenic climate change (Bray, 2010; Oreskes,2004), there remains significant reluctance on the part ofcitizens and politicians to take the action needed to addressit. This resistance has been repeatedly identified in socialresearch (Leiserowitz & Maibach, 2010; Leviston, Leitch,Greenhill, Leonard, & Walker, 2011; Lorenzoni & Pidgeon,2006; McCright & Dunlap, 2011; Reser, Bradley, Glendon,Ellul, & Callaghan, 2012) and is mirrored by the lack of prog-ress made by salient political summits (Rogelj et al., 2010).Perhaps as a response to this, scholarly journals and articlesthat are focused on climate change are growing. Naturalscientists tell us that we know what needs to be done to avertdangerous climate change (IPCC, 2014), and economists tellus that delaying action in the short term will lead to muchgreater costs in the long term (Stern, 2007). Understandingpublic responses to climate change and developing solutionsto catalyse action is a critical challenge for the social sciences,and we propose that the development and elaboration of asocial psychology of climate change would be a cornerstoneof such an approach.We do not make the claim that social psychology has all theanswers but rather that the theories, models and researchmethods of social psychology can provide a powerful arsenalto complement the approaches of other disciplines. Re-searchers have already begun to apply social psychologicaltheory and methods to the issue of climate change, and wehighlight in the following sections examples of the insightsthat have flowed from this. We cannot assume, though, thatour theories and findings will automatically generalise to theclimate change context. As Moser (2010) has noted, thereare unique dimensions to climate change that make it distinctfrom other environmental, risk and health issues: The causesof climate change are invisible to humans, the impacts are dis-tal and it is complex and riddled with uncertainties. Modernurban humans are to some extent insulated from their physicalenvironment, and the lags between the climate and social sys-tems make it difficult for people to understand their role ininfluencing climate.These factors suggest the importance of developing a socialpsychology of climate change, empirically testing, integratingand refining existing theories and models to develop newframeworks. The notion that psychology can play a role inunderstanding and addressing climate change is not a newone. The American Psychological Association’s Task Forceon the interface between psychology and global climatechange comprehensively detailed the ways in which psycho-logical research can help to understand people’s perceptionsof the risks of climate change, the contribution of human be-haviour to climate change, the psychosocial impacts of climatechange, the ways in which people can adapt and cope withclimate change and the psychological barriers that could limitclimate change action (Swim et al., 2009, 2011).It is also not a new idea that social psychology can play animportant role in understanding and addressing environmentalproblems and solutions (Clayton & Brook, 2005). Social psy-chology, specifically, has a long tradition oftheory andresearchthat is relevant to addressing key climate change questions.Attitudes, social cognition, persuasion and attitude change, so-cial influence, and intragroup and intergroup behaviour, forinstance, are fundamental foci for social psychology and havedirect relevance for understanding the human and social dimen-sionsofclimatechange.Thetimeisripetounderstandtherangeof research that has been developing in social psychology onattitudes, beliefs and actions, to build upon these insights, andintegrate them with knowledge from other sciences to developmodels and theories indigenous to the climate change context.In the following section, we provide a brief overview of re-cent social psychological research that addresses three broadthemes relevant to understanding and responding to climatechange. These themes are as follows: (i) social psychologicalinfluences on climate change attitudes and beliefs; (ii) facilita-tors and barriers to climate change action; and (iii) changingclimate change attitudes and behaviour. Although there issome overlap in these themes, as an organising principle theyintuitively map on to key questions that arise in relation to cli-mate change. Our aim is to highlight recent examples of socialpsychological research that provide interesting and importantinsights in relation to these themes. Swim, Markowitz, andBloodhart (2012) have noted that much of the social psycho-logical research on climate change has emerged since 2006;we focus in on the most recent of this research that has beenpublished since 2010. We also outline how the studies in thespecial issue relate to these themes. We recognise that theseare not the only areas where social psychological researchand theory can make important contributions but they never-theless relate to key questions that need to be addressed. Weconclude the introduction by proposing considerations thatsocial psychologists could take into account in their futureresearch on climate change.European Journal of Social Psychology, Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 44, 413–420 (2014)

Mental health and climate change: tackling invisible injustice

Code OB: We need urgent action on climate change and toxic chemicals.

The Negative Bidirectional Interaction Between Climate Change and the Prevalence and Care of Liver Disease: A Joint BSG, BASL, EASL, and AASLD Commentary

Climate movements led by students and the youth worldwide (and in particular, those in richer economies) have been recognized as having a formidable voice and making important contributions towards a more radical societal transformation to face the climate crisis. However, little is said about the contribution of popular sectors, who have been mobilizing for decades and demanding broader structural transformations—with proposals that tackle environmental issues more broadly and the climate crisis in particular—but who are not directly involved in climate politics arenas, such as the United Nations Climate Change conferences. Usually portrayed as vulnerable, as those most affected by climate events, as victims and receivers of adaptation strategies, or, as resilient, rarely do popular sectors appear as agents of transformation. Critical scholars have advocated for understanding the climate crisis as part of multiple crises, including the biodiversity crisis, a crisis of care, and a crisis of democracy. Situating our article within this scholarship, we argue that the scholarly and societal debate on climate change will further benefit from broadening the scope of which social subjects are considered as part of the climate movement. Based on our research with rural popular feminist movements in Brazil, and in particular, the coalition Marcha das Margaridas, we address the following questions: how are their diagnostics of, and proposals to, overcome the climate crisis embedded in their broader project of transformation? Additionally, how does their political identity within class, gender, and rural categories of inequality inform their positions?

A “lifeline out of the <scp>COVID</scp>‐19 crisis”? An ecofeminist critique of the European Green Deal

Climate change affects both men and women which, in turn, shapes their varied and contrasting perceptions of climate variability and change. This paper examined the gendered perceptions of climate variability and change among local communities in Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda.The objectives are threefold: - identify climatic shocks faced by the local communities; examine the perceptions of men and women of climate variability and change; and to compare their perceptions with empirical meteorological data. This study employed both qualitative and quantitative methods, with data collected from 215 respondents using survey, interviews and focused group discussions. From the findings, indicators of climate variability and change included reduced flooding events, occurrence of human diseases, increasing crop pests and diseases, dry spells and intensity of rains. There was increasing significant temperatures while rainfall was declining. Both male and female significantly associated with increasing temperatures and reduced flooding events. While climatic shocks affected both males and females, the impact was more pronounced depending on distinct livelihood activities and roles and responsibilities undertaken. The study concluded that people’s perceptions of climate change should be taken on by the government and integrated in the national climate programs that support people’s livelihoods and survival mechanisms.

COP27 Climate Change Conference: urgent action needed for Africa and the world

As perception of climate change as a threat to humanity and to ecosystems grows, the rapidly growing literature increasingly refers to the notion of “climate change and security,” for which there is as yet no single agreed definition. Despite the extent of literature already published, there are at least three remaining gaps: (1) Added theoretical value: How does “climate change and security” differ from similar notions such as “climate crisis” and “climate emergency”? What theoretical gains can be made by securing against climate change? (2) Role of non-state actors: The traditional concept of security is tightly bound to the notion of national security, but the climate change and security discourse opens the door to the participation of non-state actors such as the business sector, local government, and citizens. How do they take part in ensuring security? (3) Regional imbalance: Most of the literature on climate change and security published so far comes from Europe and North America. As other regions, such as Asia, are just as affected, more voices should be heard from those regions. This issue aims to address some of these gaps. The nine articles in this issue address the notion of “climate change and security” through empirical work while theoretically contributing to several themes relating to the climate change and security discourse.

Chapter 3 examines how climate change and ecological stresses are starting to reshape politics. In some ways the climate and ecological crisis is acting to increase government powers and state control over societies, fueling an era of empowered states. In many countries, the green-empowered state is helping to make democracy more resilient to climate change. Yet in others it is intensifying authoritarian dynamics or powering a trend toward narrowed forms of elitist-trustee democracy. At the same time, climate change has also become a powerful driver of the micropolitics that run as a unifying thread through the book. The climate crisis is increasingly a prompt to popular mobilization, calls for deeper democracy, community organization, climate assemblies, and new political-party engagement. The chapter relates these trends to the book’s analytical framework’s categories of different kinds of statism and micropolitics.

BackgroundThe climate and ecological emergency is the single biggest health threat facing humanity, yet it is not clear to what extent the public health workforce have been involved in work...

A cross-sectional survey of climate and COVID-19 crises in young people in Indian slums: context, psychological responses, and agency