Commons, Cognition, and Climate Change

Abstract

Climate disruption has become big news. Throughout the world, human activities in all nations pour greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere, in spite of the potentially disastrous direct impact on climate and the indirect impacts on all kinds of resources, from fish and corals to birds to flowers to growing crops. Can we stop ourselves? Can our national governments and international agree-ments stop us? Perhaps, and the series of international conferences on climate change argue powerfully that many scientists, organiza-tions, and national leaders believe we should.

Nevertheless, we have seen conference after conference on climate change, raising hopes and then dashing them repeatedly. The Paris Climate Change Conference in December 2015 appeared to be more successful than most of its predecessors in achieving accord among the participants. But the agreement reached there is still not expected to achieve the goal of limiting global warming to the stated level—something less than two degrees centigrade above pre-industrial temperatures—even if the participants do what they say they will do.

The experience of climate change efforts to date, with results that are at best ambiguous and at worst disappointing, is the setting of this Essay. Commentators agree that the Paris Agreement, momentous though it is, leaves many actions to be taken by the participants—along with many doubts about their willingness or ability to take those actions.