History:
In Science:
In the late 80s and early 90s, part of the scientific community became convinced that the earth was getting warmer, hypothesized to be due to increased CO2 production by industrialized societies.
In Policy:
This spawns the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC, 1992), an international treaty that roughly defined how to negotiate future agreements to control greenhouse gas emissions but itself set no binding targets. It was agreed to and ratified by all UN member nations. This groundwork was built upon by the Kyoto protocol (1997), which did include a binding agreement and attempted to lock carbon emissions at 1990s levels.
In Politics:
The Kyoto agreement was, notably, signed by Clinton but not ratified by the Senate because it was Clinton's second term and they thought that the short-term negative economic impacts were too great and too asymmetric (China/India were mostly exempted). They had passed a resolution to this effect during negotiation for the Kyoto protocol, so it was Dead on Arrival (and pre-Arrival, really).
In Science:
In 1999, notable climate scientists put out the now-infamous "Hockey Stick" graph:
They were called before congress, had investigations launched into their personal lives, were slandered in the press, and ultimately were agreed to be almost entirely correct (barring a statistical mistake that didn't impact their results) by a large group of their peers who investigated their work. (That work has since been replicated more than 20 times.)
In Politics:
In the year 2000, Al Gore ran for president against George HW Bush and we elected Bush. Gore went on to become a notable climate change supporter, while Bush went on to give riveting lectures on the possibility of peaceful human/fish coexistence and how "it isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it." It is notable, however, that Bush was ostensibly our last prominent pro-Climate Change Republican. He acknowledged we have an energy problem, but failed to support the kind of large-scale change that would have been needed to have any impact on it.
In Science:
In 2007, a large review of available global warming research comes out and the scientific community reaches a strong consensus (or at least a quorum) that global warming is both real and man-made (IPCC 2007). The IPCC group has continued to release reports that are increasingly confident, but it's not really worth discussing whether scientists thought global warming was real / man made past this point because the vast majority have already figured it out.
Four primary models (defined in 2000) were used to predict the effects of climate change between 1990~2000 and 2090~2100, laid out in the IPCC 2007 report.
A1) No behavior change + Free trade : +7.2F; +16 inches sea level
A2) No behavior change + Trade barriers : +6.1F; +14 inches sea level
B1) Try to cut back emissions + Free trade : +3.2F; +11 inches sea level
B2) Try to cut back emissions + Trade barriers : +4.3F; +12 inches sea level
Scenario A2 is the "business as usual" model.
In Politics:
In 2008, Obama is elected with a Democratic House/Senate and wants to do something about Climate Change. Though he successfully focuses more research funding on it and manages to sneak through some tougher regulations, overall he fails to do anything on the international scale that would have been necessary to avoid global warming. It's interesting to note that at this point many Republicans have started switching to using a "well, it's happening but we don't know whether it's being caused by humans" stream of logic. In 2010, however, the Tea Party rises to prominence and many Senator/House members go back to straight denial.
In Science:
The 2014 IPCC report comes out, showing that their previous models were largely accurate.
You can see that they've changed the terminology, which is now based on the heat-trapping strength of the atmosphere. RCP8.5 is the new "Business as Usual." In doing so, they've divorced these measurements from the forces that create greenhouse gasses. Comparing 2080-2100 period to 1986-2005, they are predicting:
RCP2.6) +1.8F; +16 inches sea level
RCP4.5) +3.2F; +18 inches sea level
RCP6.0) +4.0F; +19 inches sea level
RCP8.5) +6.6F; +24 inches sea level
In this case, RCP8.5 is the new "business as usual" model. You can see its prediction is falling between the previous scenario A1 and A2, which corresponds to continued third world industrialization and less protectionism than was in scenario A2. You'll notice that all sea level scenarios have been bumped up about 10 inches from 2007. It turns out that our models of ice melt failed to account for the color of the revealed surface (mostly black on the northern volcanic islands) which absorbs sun, heats up, and leads to runaway melting. That's a foot of sea level rise is pretty much going to happen no matter what we do at this point. We missed our chance to stop it.
In Policy:
UN member nations gather in Paris to hash out the Paris Agreement, which is basically a second attempt at a working Kyoto Protocol (still using the UNFCCC). Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, we do manage to sign/ratify this one (along with another 110 nations to date). Unfortunately, the agreement is binding only in the loosest sense. Each individual country sets its own emission goals and they're basically unenforceable, but that is the nature of the greenhouse gas emitting beast. It relies on the goodwill of the participant countries and their pursuit of policies that will bring down their emissions. Also, dramatic though its targets are, they will only slow climate change. So it is a well-intentioned step in the right direction, but only works if it is supported and will mostly serve to buy us some time.
In Politics:
Republicans continue to deny the existence of Global Warming, with one presidential candidate claiming it is a Chinese hoax. Said candidate is elected President in November of 2016. His energy platform reads:
Originally Posted by https://www.greatagain.gov/policy/energy-independence.html
Present:
So Trump's proposal is more or less worse than the "Business as Usual" model (RCP8.5), which predicts that 2046-2065 will be 3.6F warmer than 1986-2005 and sea levels will rise a foot.
Spoiler: show
Future:
Instability. I would say that's the key thing to take away from all predictions of the "business as usual" future. Habitable land will become uninhabitable. Uninhabitable land will become habitable. People will have to move, and there will be more people born in the areas of the world least able to support them.
Examples:
* The Gulf Stream as we know it is likely going to die (trade winds are going to move or stagnate). Quebec City is at 46.5 degrees north. Paris is at 48 degrees north. London is at 51 degrees north. The Gulf Stream is the reason there are palm trees on the southern shores of Great Britain. The world on average will warm up, but Europe will substantially colder first. (Canada will likely warm up)
* The equator is going to warm up, and the arable land will move around. Some dry areas will get more dry. Some will get more wet. This is going to cross country borders and drive migration/conflicts between countries.
* Sea levels are going to rise. Some islands will end up practically uninhabitable. The low-lying areas of some cities will need to be abandoned. Property values will decrease near the sea but increase everywhere else due to increasing demand (population) and decreasing supply (less habitable property). If you are looking for a good, long-term investment right now, consider land.
* This will be an ecological disaster. We are entering a great extinction of our own making. Prepare to bid quite a few species goodbye in your lifetime, likely including polar bears and narwhals, along with tons of frogs, coral reefs, fish, etc. We are going to destroy oceanic species with this that we probably haven't even identified yet. This won't impact human life quite as directly, but shrinking biodiversity is not a good thing.
There is a reason that The Pentagon rates climate change the #1 threat to our national security. It's going to create a ton of unrest and migration all over the world. Not only that, but there will be plenty of justified animosity towards the United States. It will be easy to look at the history and blame the United States, a major emitter, for failing to sufficiently support (and thus destroying) measures that would have reigned in emissions and mitigated this catastrophe.
Very few people argue that fossil fuels aren't the cheapest way to generate energy (and thus the best short-term option for our economy.) The argument is that burning fossil fuels has consequences that can be measured on a geological time scale, and waiting until they present a short-term cost (which arguably they do now) that directly offsets their short-term benefit is just stupid thing to do. This problem should have been addressed and solved under Clinton. This problem could have been addressed and solved under HW Bush. This problem could have been addressed under Obama. This problem could be good-faith "it's almost too late anyway but lets give it a shot for good form" addressed under Trump, but it probably won't be. After 2020, we need to not only elect leaders committed to reducing emissions, but also to positioning us well for the coming global instability.
What you can do:
Look, the idealistic "don't drive/eat animals and live off the grid :D" hippy solutions are impractical for American society. Our country is huge and sparsely populated, which makes the creation of a useful public transit system a daunting problem. We're also not going to be able to churn out a generation of electricity-free vegetarians just like that. There are some things that you can try, though:
* Eat less meat, and specifically eat less beef - Cows are currently fed corn because it's a high-sugar, subsidized, waste-product of our political process, but their stomachs suck at digesting it and they fart a lot. Methane is 30x worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Chicken is terrible for ethical reasons at the moment (treatment of the farmers, not the chickens), but it is a less environmentally costly source of protein.
* Try to reduce the amount you drive or increase the efficiency of your driving - Carpool, move nearer to work, and/or work remotely when possible.
* Try to be more efficient and generate less waste in everything you do - Less food waste. Less container waste. Recycle aluminum containers. Don't buy shit you don't want.
* Communicate with your representatives - Do you know who drives our government at the moment? The people with money and the people who annoy their reps the most. Even if you don't have money, you can still be that annoying guy. Whether you are from your rep's party or not, your representatives in Washington are representing you.