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Offsetting is widely embraced as a market-based solution to global warming. Governments, universities, and businesses of all sorts have pledged to achieve "net zero" greenhouse gas emissions partly or entirely through offsetting projects, many of which rely on so-called nature-based solutions (NBSs). Offsets are meant to compensate for damage caused by emissions from one place by absorbing or preventing the release of an equivalent amount somewhere else. At best, offsetting results in no change in total emissions, but as theory predicts and experience shows, that best result is rarely attainable. Meanwhile, both land-based and industrial offsets legitimize continued emissions. There is active debate in Paris-pact talks and in climate politics more broadly over how much fossil-fuel industries and industrial countries will be allowed to delay real climate action by representing offsets as if they were emissions reductions. The American Association of Geographers should not contribute to this illusion by endorsing offsetting. Instead we should take steps to reduce our own emissions and speak out clearly when our work has bearing on policy decisions and public perceptions about the climate crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are facing a planetary ecological crisis due to global warming, despoliation of our natural resources, mass scale industrial pollution, desertification, deforestation, widespread collapse of ecosystems, and extreme climate change. World overpopulation is nearing a record tipping-point, where food and water scarcity will bring about more famine, drought, pestilence, and death. Global catastrophic hazards have escalated due to the environmental crisis, encroachment by man, destabilized markets, hegemonic politics, the ubiquitous dread of nuclear war, terrorism, infectious diseases, techno nihilism, and psychological selfinterest driving everything from vain desire to the local economy and international relations, not to mention the anathema of evil, abuse, trauma, greed, and the psychopathology of everyday life. Our recalcitrant dependency on fossil fuel is gradually suffocating the planet. Greenhouse warming, climate catastrophes, and aberrant weather phenomena occur every day throughout the globe and yet we do very little to mitigate it, let alone reverse its course. Moreover, we have caused the Anthropocene. Despite the fact that we see the ruin with our own eyes and do practically nothing to mitigate the ecological crisis, world masses have adopted a global bystander effect, where denial and abnegation of social responsibility lie at its very core. Regardless of the degree of gravity we assign to these calculated risks imperiling our existence, we cannot ignore the ominous threat of planetary extinction unless humanity unites in moral preventative action. After offering an adumbrated exposition of our ecological crisis, I examine these complexifications through a combined methodology relying on causal layered analysis, risk mitigation concerns, and foresight praxis as new directions in futures studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Glasgow Climate Summit, held in December 2021, concluded with the adoption of the "Glasgow Climate Pact" and complementary decisions to accelerate climate action. Clear plans and mandates were established with specific milestones to promote ambition and action in the coming years. The Paris goal was updated, focusing on limiting global warming to 1.5°C and reducing global emissions by 45% by 2030. Concrete sectoral actions were promoted, such as reducing the use of coal and eliminating subsidies for fossil fuels. Additionally, issues such as the importance of vulnerability and resilience of developing countries, financing for adaptation, and climate change-related losses and damages were addressed. The importance of climate justice and the participation of non-governmental actors in climate decision-making were also highlighted. [Extracted from the article]

Four associations filed l'affaire du siècle, a climate legal action against the French State before the Administrative Court of Paris in May 2019. This lawsuit questions the State's actions and inactions in matters of climate change mitigation and adaptation. Even though the complaint is mainly based on legal constructions and theories that are well-known to French Courts, this paper focuses on three ground-breaking legal innovations brought by the plaintiffs: a pre-existing general State obligation to combat climate change, a pre-existing right to live in a sustainable climate system, and, eventually, the remediation of the pure ecological damage (préjudice écologique) linked to climate change through a formal demand for monetary compensation of one symbolic euro and an injunctive relief to take all measures to limit global warming under the 1.5 °C threshold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Grand Paris' is a study carried out by ten teams of researchers and city planners in the aim of putting forward general guidelines for Paris urban area's evolution by 2030. All the teams suggest making the area 'greener' in some way, to combat climate warming by CO sequestration. Our team also shows that extending the nearby forests by 30 %, favouring short farm-to-consumer circuits and using lighter coloured building materials will decrease the urban heat island, reducing the mortality during heat waves as well as the need for air-conditioning. These results lead us to reverse the way of thinking urban planning: the geographic and natural aspects should replace the urban infrastructure as a driver for planning urban development. This new strategy allows city changes on quite a large scale, that will have a favourable impact in terms of economics, leisure activities, greenhouse gas emissions and the local microclimate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]