Switzerland genuinely pushes for stronger climate policies in international negotiations and during the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conferences of the Parties (UNFCCC). In contrast, when it comes to domestic regulation it tends to wait for, and align itself with, the positions of the European Union (EU). In fact, rather than a climate ‘pusher’, Switzerland is more accurately described as a ‘follower’ of the EU on climate matters. This chapter takes this observation as a starting point, aiming to unpack the advantages and disadvantages offered by the Swiss federal structure in both enabling and hindering effective and sustainable climate governance. We show that the fragmented nature of the Swiss polity, with its 26 constituent units (cantons) and some 2,000 municipal polities with each more or less autonomy in key policy areas, is not in itself an obstacle. However, tackling the complexity arising from such a multilevel structure is time consuming, at best. We find that the high degree of decentralisation has facilitated locally tailored solutions and policy innovation in particular regarding climate adaption, but inter-jurisdictional coordination and learning is limited and subnational policies do not compensate for an absence of ambitious climate mitigation policy at the national level.

Acceptance that states have obligations under human rights law to take adequate steps to address the climate crisis has grown. However, discussion of how claims in this area can be adjudicated in practice has been more limited. This article outlines possible approaches that judges and other adjudicators can take, even in jurisdictions with the strongest separation of powers doctrines and where there is not yet a developed body of law in this area. Accordingly, we focus on certain minimum or ‘core’ assessment criteria that are capable of near-universal application. In this context, the terms of the landmark Paris Agreement of 2015 are key, both in setting a global temperature goal and in requiring states to ensure that their emission reductions reflect their “highest possible ambition.” We argue that this framework, together with existing due diligence principles and international scientific consensus, can provide an objective basis for assessing a state or public body’s climate policy. To illustrate this, we refer to the arguments made by Indigenous inhabitants of the Torres Strait in a pending complaint before the UN Human Rights Committee against Australia, alleging violations of the ICCPR.

Drawing on a series of ethnographic cases, Isenhour suggests that contemporary links between status and consumption are rooted in a Western conceptualization of the economy as a separate realm, governed by rules independent of social priorities and normative structures. She argues that our efforts to “bend the curve” toward more sustainable forms depend on reimagining economic systems as a means toward the fulfillment of social priorities.

Chapter 11 examines the rapid increases in wildfire extent and the role played by increased temperature-induced evaporative demand. The story begins in early November 2018, with the author clearing bone-dry brush in the woods behind his house, and discussing these incredibly dry conditions on a local radio show with his local volunteer firefighter friends. In dry regions, warmer air's increased ability to hold water increases its capacity to draw moisture from soils and plants. On November 6, the Community Alert show discussed the exceptionally dry conditions across California, and how these dry-fuel conditions were expected to combine with high winds to set the stage for potential conflagration. At sunrise on November 8, the Camp Fire, California's deadliest and costliest conflagration, broke out. Since the early 1980s, annual US wildfire extents have increased by more than 300 percent. In California, 2017 and 2018 wildfire extent, deaths, and damages were staggering. Increases in western US wildfire extent are tightly coupled with increases in aridity, which are related to both increases in air temperatures and atmospheric water demand. The 2017 and 2018 US wildfires were associated with more than $40 billion in damages and more than a hundred fatalities. Chapter 11 concludes with a firsthand account from Laura Eilerts, a ninety-one-year-old woman who lost her house in the Paradise Fire and drove herself to safety.

To explore our collective future, scientists develop plausible emission, pollution, and land use scenarios. Some of these scenarios describe rapid economic and population growth, and concomitant increases in fossil fuel emissions. Other scenarios describe a rapid transition to clean energy and increased efficiency. Data from the 2019 Global Carbon Project carbon budget indicate that 2019 emissions were very close to scientists’ most dangerous emissions pathway. Like a marble careening across the top of an inverted paper Dixie cup, these rapid emissions could lead to runaway global warming, risking a planetary plummet if temperature increases shrink ice caps, reduce the ocean and land’s ability to sequester carbon dioxide, and/or increase fire emissions. Examining national emission statistics, we see that the United States is by far the greatest per capita emitter. There is some good news, however. Global energy use intensity, the amount of carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product, is increasing rapidly. We can make more goods and services using relatively less emissions. Solar energy is rapidly becoming more affordable. But emissions have already contributed to an exponential increase in disasters costing some $2.2 trillion over the past two decades.

In late 2019, half of Australia’s Kangaroo Island burned, killing more than 17,000 koalas and more than a third of the island’s kangaroos. Across the mainland, two years of very low rainfall and exceptionally warm air temperatures set the stage for a catastrophic “Black Summer.” A staggering and globally unprecedented 21 percent of Australia's forested area burned. Fires stretched over 186,000 square kilometers, destroying over 5,900 buildings and killing at least 34 people. A billion or more animals perished in these conflagrations. This chapter relates the exceptionally warm temperatures to increases in vapor pressure deficits and decrease in dead fuel moisture.High vapor pressure deficits help desiccate living and dead plants, producing conditions conducive to extensive mega-fires. The year 2019 was by far the warmest year on record, and climate change simulations suggest that about half of the observed warming was due to climate change. Temperatures as warm as those observed would have been impossible without climate change. Estimating vapor pressure deficits and dead fuel moisture loads without this human-induced warming suggests that climate change greatly enhanced the background aridity that allowed the Australian fires to spread to unprecedented extents.