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In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Third Assessment Report revealed an important increase in the level of consensus concerning the reality of human-caused climate warming. The scientific basis for global warming has thus been sufficiently established to enable meaningful planning of appropriate policy responses to address global warming. As a result, the world's policy makers, governments, industries, energy producers/planners, and individuals from many other walks of life have increased their attention toward finding acceptable solutions to the challenge of global warming. This laudable increase in worldwide attention to this global-scale challenge has not, however, led to a heightened optimism that the required substantial reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions deemed necessary to stabilize the global climate can be achieved anytime soon. This fact is due in large part to several fundamental aspects of the climate system that interact to ensure that climate change is a phenomenon that will emerge over extensive timescales.

Although most of the warming observed during the 20th century is attributed to increased greenhouse gas concentrations, because of the high heat capacity of the world's oceans, further warming will lag added greenhouse gas concentrations by decades to centuries. Thus, today's enhanced atmospheric CO2 concentrations have already “wired in” a certain amount of future warming in the climate system, independent of human actions. Furthermore, as atmospheric CO2 concentrations increase, the world's natural CO2 “sinks” will begin to saturate, diminishing their ability to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Future warming will also eventually cause melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which will contribute substantially to sea level rise, but only over hundreds to thousands of years. As a result, current generations have, in effect, decided to make future generations pay most of the direct and indirect costs of this major global problem. The longer the delay in reducing CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions, the greater the burden of climate change will be for future life on earth.

Collectively, these phenomena comprise a “global warming dilemma.” On the one hand, the current level of global warming to date appears to be comparatively benign, about 0.6°C. This seemingly small warming to date has thus hardly been sufficient to spur the world to pursue aggressive CO2 emissions reduction policies. On the other hand, the decision to delay global emissions reductions in the absence of a current crisis is essentially a commitment to accept large levels of climate warming and sea level rise for many centuries. This dilemma is a difficult obstacle for policy makers to overcome, although better education of policy makers regarding the long-term consequences of climate change may assist in policy development.

The policy challenge is further exacerbated by factors that lie outside the realm of science. There are a host of values conflicts that conspire to prevent meaningful preventative actions on the global scale. These values conflicts are deeply rooted in our very globally diverse lifestyles and our national, cultural, religious, political, economic, environmental, and personal belief systems. This vast diversity of values and priorities inevitably leads to equally diverse opinions on who or what should pay for preventing or experiencing climate change, how much they should pay, when, and in what form. Ultimately, the challenge to all is to determine the extent to which we will be able to contribute to limiting the magnitude of this problem so as to preserve the quality of life for many future generations of life on earth.

This study aims to investigate whether temperature affects the product quality of exporters and whether the effect is non-linear. More specifically, whether the impact of high temperatures differs from the impact of low temperatures, and whether different types of companies or industries are affected differently.

The paper uses detailed data covering all Chinese exporters from 2000 to 2016 to estimate the effects of temperature on the product quality of export firms. To clarify the relationship between them, the authors use a semi-parametric regression method, trying to test whether there is a non-linear relationship between temperature and the export quality of firms.

The increase in the number of high temperature days significantly reduces the quality of exported products, and this negative effect increases as the temperature rises. High temperature has the most significant negative impact on export quality for firms with low technical complexity, private firms and firms with no intermediate imports and located in historical hot cities. Product quality of both labor-intensive and capital-intensive firms will be affected by heat. High temperatures have the greatest negative impact on the export quality of newly entering products, followed by exiting products, with the least negative impact on persisting product.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to examine the impact of temperature on the quality of economic development. The findings of this paper again show that the potential economic impacts of global warming are huge. In addition to some potentially devastating impacts in the future, global warming is already causing imperceptible impacts in the present. Public and economic agents need to fully understand the possible adverse impacts of climate change and take corresponding adaptation measures to cope with global warming.

At the 2019 United Nations Climate Action Summit, the Club of Rome in collaboration with a network of global contributors issued a statement calling for nations to declare a planetary emergency. The statement calls for urgent action to prevent a global crisis due to the impact of human activity on the stability of the Earth’s life-support systems. Implications of the planetary emergency pose intriguing challenges for how managers address paradoxical sustainability challenges across spatial and temporal scales. In this chapter, the authors have two aims. First, the authors show that the planetary emergency is inherently paradoxical. To do this, the authors build an embedded view of the planetary emergency and argue that it is paradoxical due to key dynamics that emerge across organizational, economic, social, and environmental systems over time. Second, the authors advance paradox theory by exploring the paradoxical nature of the planetary emergency and propose a three-sequence framework for collective action including: (1) building a view of the planetary emergency across spatial and temporal scales, (2) collectively making sense of the planetary emergency, and (3) levering a paradoxical view of the planetary emergency to ensure effective action.

This paper problematizes TCFD (Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures) reporting in a way that demonstrates areas where academic research can contribute towards realizing the transformative potential of this unique form of sustainability accounting in its early stages of development.

The paper proposes a number of research agendas for impactful interdisciplinary research into new forms of corporate reporting of sustainability risks, opportunities and dependencies.

There are several major challenges that both reporting corporations and investors need to address in realizing the potential of TCFD style risks, opportunities and dependencies reporting. Key among these is developing new practices of climate-related scenario analysis and reporting.

There is potential for many different academic research studies to provide solid evidence in helping improve the practical impact of TCFD style sustainability reporting. These impacts may assist in moving corporate policies and actions towards zero carbon.

This is the first agenda-setting paper that addresses the need for, and opportunities of, academic research into TCFD reporting and its potential to transform corporate accounting and reporting of sustainability.

Evaluating the economic effects of climate change is a pivotal step for planning adaptation in developing countries. For Bangladesh, global warming has put it among the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change, with increasing temperatures and sea-level rise. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to examine how climate change impacts the economy in Bangladesh in the case of climate scenarios.

Using a dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model and three climate change scenarios, this paper assesses the economy-wide implications of climate change on Bangladesh’s economy and agriculture. It is clear from the examination of the CGE model that the impacts of climate change on agricultural sectors were felt more sharply, reducing output by −3.25% and −3.70%, respectively, and increasing imports by 1.22% and 1.53% in 2030 and 2050, compared to the baseline.

The findings reveal that, relative to baseline, agricultural output will decline by a range of −3.1% to −3.6% under the high climate scenario (higher temperatures and lower yields). A decrease in agricultural output results in declines in agricultural labor and household income. Household income falls in all categories, although it drops the most in urban less educated households with a range of −3.1% to −3.4%. On the other hand, consumption of commodities will fall by −0.11% to −0.13%, according to the findings. Although climate change impacts had a relatively small effect on gross domestic product, reducing it by −0.059% and −0.098% in 2030 and 2050, respectively.

As agricultural output, household consumption and income decline, it will impact the majority of the population’s health in Bangladesh by increasing malnutrition, hidden hunger, poverty, changing food environment, changing physical and mental health status and a changing health-care environment. Therefore, population health and food security will be a top socioeconomic and political concern for Bangladesh Government.

The examination of the dynamic CGE model is its originality. In conclusion, the evidence generated here can provide important information to policymakers and guide government policies that contribute to national development and the achievement of food security targets. It is also necessary to put more emphasis on climate change issues and address potential risks in the following years.

The authors target the interrelationships between non-fungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized finance (DeFi) and carbon allowances (CA) markets during 2021–2023. The recent shift of crypto and DeFi miners from China (the People's Republic of China, PRC) green hydro energy to dirty fuel energies elsewhere induces investments in carbon offsetting instruments; this is a backdrop to the authors’ investigation.

The quantile vector autoregression (VAR) approach is employed to examine extreme-quantile-connectedness and spillovers among the NFT Index (NFTI), DeFi Pulse Index (DPI), KraneShares Global Carbon Strategy ETF price (KRBN) and the Solactive Carbon Emission Allowances Rolling Futures Total Return Index (SOLCARBT).

At bull markets, DPI is the only consistent net shock transmitter as NFTI transmits innovations only at the most extreme quantile. At bear markets, KRBN and SOLCARBT are net shock transmitters, while NFTI is the only consistent net shock receiver. The receiver-transmitter roles change as a function of the market conditions. The increases in the relative tail dependence correspond to the stress events, which make systemic connectedness augment, turning market-specific idiosyncratic considerations less relevant.

The shift of digital asset miners from the PRC has resulted in excessive fuel energy consumption and aggravated environmental consequences regarding NFTs and DeFi mining. Although there exist numerous studies dedicated to CA trading and its role in carbon print reduction, the direct nexus between NFT, DeFi and CA has never been addressed in the literature. The originality of the authors’ research consists in bridging this void. Results are valuable for portfolio managers in bull and bear markets, as the authors show that connectedness is more intense under such conditions.

The concept of geoeconomic time, introduced here, is based on the interface among economic activity, technology, and geophysical processes. Geoeconomic time is what should frame economic analysis of global warming policy. Otherwise, the analysis will be flawed. Application of geoeconomic time to global warming has two parts. The first is the future time frame for projecting impacts on the earth. The second is the historic time frame for delineating our bounds of ignorance regarding the possible consequences of global warming. Many economic analyses conclude against policies to reduce emissions of warming gases, and instead conclude in favour of the “optimal” policy of adapting to global warming. The concept of geoeconomic time reveals that the magnitude of our ignorance is of such a scale that we can never reduce uncertainty sufficiently to design “optimal” policies. Concludes in favour of risk‐reducing policies for research, development and commercialization of energy efficiency technologies and renewable energy. Successful examples can be found at the state and local levels of government action.

The purpose of this paper is to present the idea of a global crisis plan that will be demanded when global society finally decides that the climate challenge is a real threat, requiring immediate and strong policy action at the super‐national level. The authors believe that this demand will arise before 2020, and the authors hope that this paper will encourage others to improve on the plan.

The paper seeks to achieve the purpose by presenting the first draft of such a plan – “The one degree war plan” – in rather concrete terms, and estimating (in quantitative terms) the expected reduction in climate gas emissions that would result from implementing the crisis plan.

The paper finds that it is surprisingly simple to develop a plan which will reduce global emissions by 50 per cent in five years. It also seems possible to lower global emissions to zero in the ensuing decade, and then run negative emissions of 6 GtCO2e/year for the rest of the century (through carbon capture in various forms). The result, using the C‐ROADS climate model, is to keep the temperature rise in 2100 below +1°C above the pre‐industrial level. Much work needs to assure these conclusions.

The authors argue that public awareness of the dangers associated with climate change will increase over the next decade, to the level where it is perceived to be a significant threat to global economic and geopolitical stability. The public will then demand emergency action to cut global climate gas emissions. The authors argue that such emergency action ought to be based on a well‐prepared crisis response plan that seeks to keep global warming below +1°C over pre‐industrial levels. The paper presents a draft of the crisis response plan and encourages further efforts to improve the plan.

The social value of having a well‐considered and well‐prepared climate crisis plan in place once the public demand immediate climate action from their politicians, can hardly be overestimated.

To the authors' knowledge, no similar crisis plan has been published.