Complex Climate Risk: A Historical View (with a Little Catastrophism)

Abstract: Understanding the risks posed by anthropogenic climate change represents one of the greatest intellectual challenges facing humanity. While there is a broad and growing awareness of the likely importance of tipping points in the physical climate system, the study of how climate interacts with feedbacks in human social systems is far less developed. The integrated study of paleoclimatology and human history can enrich the way we understand and seek to manage the complex risks of climate change by broadening the empirical record and allowing us to consider the possible role of climate perturbations in rare catastrophic episodes of the human past. The example of Roman history underscores why we need to account for the ways that climate change interacts with both stabilizing and destabilizing feedbacks inherent in human societies.