A Gloomy Forecast for Climate Change

When it comes to climate change, there is no disputing that the world is getting warmer. For those pondering how best to manage a sultry Earth, the issue is increasingly binary: what can be done to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming, and what can humans do to better adapt to a hotter environment? For those present at the 23rd Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn, Germany, the question might well have been "how do countries agree to agree?" The COP23 conference concluded Nov. 17 with none of the fanfare of COP21 in Paris, just two years earlier. The expectations, and the resultant goals, were modest, even though human-generated carbon emissions for 2017 have risen by 2 percent, something largely attributed to China. It was also the first U.N climate conference since the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump,...