Special Journal Issue -- Introduction: The Opportunities and Roles of Experimentation in Addressing Climate Change

Abstract

On 9 July, 2017, the widely-read New York Magazine published an article depicting a pessimistic scenario of what might happen in the near-future due to global warming. This will be bad, the article said, including famines, lasting economic collapse, a sun that cooks us, climate refugees, spread of ancient diseases now buried in the permafrost, Arctic, and Antarctic, rolling smog that suffocates people, poisoned oceans, drowning coastal cities and infrastructure, and war. The story was immediately criticized; the piece is alarmist and pessimistic, many said (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uninhabitable_Earth). The point for this Special Issue is not if the New York Magazine got it right. In truth, there is surely a risk that it got it right, but we still do not know how big it is. The story shows that fears about climate change are now in the public and psychic domain—the magazine, of course, would not have chosen this topic had it not been on people's mind.