Conclusion: Why Global Responses Take Time

Abstract

This book took far longer to complete than we initially anticipated, for many of the same reasons that have stymied rapid global responses to climate change. Life and other urgent concerns, the changing science, cycles of optimism and pessimism and continued scepticism all contributed. The simple question that gave rise to this project was: If addressing global climate change is a moral imperative, why are international responses so difficult to achieve? Our research confirms the assumption underpinning this question: international responses to global climate change are difficult to achieve, and the immensity of the problems create political obstacles that require political will and determination to resolve. Responding effectively to global climate change requires the international political community to collaboratively find solutions, and this is especially difficult given the magnitude of the problem and the diversity and number of necessary participants. Addressing climate change is so vexed because its consequences extend into a great many fundamental aspects of modern lifestyles — both lived and imagined. These same lifestyles are posited as potential or significant contributors to environmental problems. Accommodating so many uneven impacts and fundamental imperatives leads to responses marked by fits and starts, ambiguity, contested claims, conflicting interests and, ultimately, fatigue and malaise.