ABSTRACT
Climate change is truly global in multiple senses—the climate system is global and the energy and economic systems that are causing the problems are global. This chapter chronicles the global response to climate change, and the evolution of the global governance of this issue. It outlines the scope of the problem, in terms of both its causes and effects. The chapter discusses the first phases of the UN-based multilateral governance of climate change that emerged in the late 1980s and reached a nadir in the Copenhagen negotiations of 2009. Multilateral governance is not the sum total of the global response to climate change, however. The discussion of governance must also explore transnational governance efforts that emerged in the twenty-first century. With the signing of the 2015 Paris Agreement, the global response to climate change entered a new phase, and the penultimate section explores the possibilities and challenges in this new era.
