Radical interventions for climate-impacted systems

Abstract

Standard solutions to the threat of >1.5 °C global average warming are not ambitious enough to prevent large-scale irreversible loss. Meaningful climate action requires interventions that are preventative, effective and systemic—interventions that are radical rather than conventional. New forms of radical intervention are already emerging, but they risk being waylaid by rhetorical or misleading claims. Here, to encourage a more informed debate, we present a typology of radical intervention based on recent studies of resilience, transition and transformation. The typology, which is intended to be provocative, questions the extent that different interventions can disrupt the status quo to address the root drivers of climate change.