Abstract

In an address delivered on September 30, 1847 to the Agricultural Society of Rutland County (Vermont), then US Congressman George Perkins Marsh warned that “though man cannot at his pleasure command the rain and the sunshine, the wind and frost and snow, yet it is certain that climate itself has in many instances been gradually changed and ameliorated or deteriorated by human action” (Marsh 2001: 10). Some 170 years later, we are witness to the growing impacts of human action on the earth’s climate, without any very clear idea of where it might lead. What is clear is that human efforts to address the climate change quandary have had a negligible impact on the state of the global climate system while the effects of human efforts to govern climate are, so far, more consequential for human societies than the climate. In addition to already being felt today, over the next 50 years or so, those efforts that do (or do not) transpire will have significant effects on later twenty-first century societies and ecosystems. A s yet, despite the decades-long trend of increasing concern regarding climate change in public opinion worldwide (WPO 2011), and more than 20 years of global climate conferences, the world is very far from even beginning to address some very serious matters.