ABSTRACT
Debate continues to simmer globally about contribution that humans have made to the global warming phenomenon that is changing the planet’s climate. Global poverty is the third ‘wicked problem’ featured in this book because it was key barrier to sustainability identified in the 1987 Brundtland Report. The idea that humans are either causing or accelerating global climate change has only become a matter of broad public concern since around 2006. Climate change sceptics focus on the fact that average surface temperatures can fluctuate from one year to the next or from one decade to the next. Ecologists have long understood that incremental changes to a self-regulating ecosystem can eventually overwhelm its capacity to adapt to the changes; it reaches a ‘tipping point’ at which the functioning of system undergoes rapid change. Scientists contributing to IPCC Assessment Reports are not the only ones to feel frustrated about the slow and spasmodic policy responses to the growing risks associated with climate change.
