In seeking and analyzing climate solutions, most legal scholarship assumes a 2°C warming as the upper bound of temperature change. Yet robust science increasingly tells us a different story: warming beyond 2°C is likely, and warming as high as 3°–4°C by the end of the 21st century is a real possibility. Warming of this magnitude would have significant impacts on people. How can governance systems and institutions adapt, today, to prepare us for these future shocks? And what will be the general and specific challenges to law and policy?

The contributors to this book, the fifth in a series by the Environmental Law Collaborative, have taken up the challenge of thinking about law, governance, equity, and justice in a future shaped by high levels of warming. It begins by identifying and offering solutions to address the mismatch between today's legal and regulatory systems and the conditions and demands of high-level warming. The next set of chapters imagine more broadly the challenges of effective governance—across a range of laws, through democratic processes—under high-level warming. The book's concluding chapters focus on equity and justice.

Many of the ideas proposed in this book may sound wildly ambitious today but will ultimately appear modest when weighed against the tolls of a superheated climate.