ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the Catastrophic Precautionary Principle may be incorporated into global climate policy to help ground aggressive climate policy on all fronts. The Catastrophic Precautionary Decision-Making Framework can serve as a guide to determine an appropriate precautionary strategy against climate catastrophe. A precautionary approach to adaptation that is driven by the Catastrophic Precautionary Principle should therefore take a wide viewpoint and consider climate change as posing threats of catastrophic impacts as soon as all climate impacts collectively threaten many millions of people. Aggressive mitigation is the most obvious part of a precautionary strategy against climate catastrophe. The Catastrophic Precautionary Principle, in its simplicity, is a powerful tool for global climate policy. The UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) is a meaningful and politically ambitious global climate policy framework, but the UNFCCC must make its precautionary goals more explicit if it is to guide us towards preventing climate catastrophe.
