How will humans respond to life in a hotter world?
President Obama announced proposed regulations on coal plants Monday that would drop their emissions by 30 percent.
But is it too little, too late? A recent Smithsonian Magazine article says "the reality of a hotter world is already here."
In addition to the changing weather and temperatures, climate change can also affect human behavior.
From Smithsonian:
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New research suggests that a hotter world may, for one thing, be more dangerous, and not just because of road rage. Craig A. Anderson, of Iowa State University, pioneered research on climate and aggression, and derived the formula that each additional degree of warming increases the rate of violent crime (homicides and assaults) by 4.19 cases per 100,000 people. Solomon Hsiang, a public policy specialist at UC Berkeley, has found that climate change historically leads to social disruption, up to and including war. Property crime, personal violence, domestic violence, police violence--everything you want less of, climate change seems to bring more of, either directly by making individuals more violence-prone, or indirectly by promoting conflict related to diminishing resources or deteriorating economic conditions.
On The Daily Circuit, we discuss what living in a hotter world really looks like and how these new regulations factor into world efforts to curb climate change.
What have you seen in your community and in the places you travel about what it's like to live in a hotter world? What have you observed about how humans react to it? Leave your observations in the comments below.