In an article published in the summer 2012, in the face of a robust set of extreme weather events (e.g., droughts, floods, and heat) on different continents of the world and the latest findings in climate science, though not shared in detail by all scientists that deal with the questions of the causes and consequences of climate change, the economist Jeffrey D. Sachs (2012) calls for much-needed political consequences:

The dispute about climate change, its repercussions for the world, alternative conceptions of (historical and moral) responsibility and effective ways of responding is of course a profound and at times controversial sociopolitical issue. The political controversies linked to the nature of and the responses to climate change are deeply embedded in contradictory political world views; for example, the clash between conservative and liberal positions that advocate the withdrawal of the state from many of the affairs of society and those who see the solution to the thorny issues of climate change in a response in terms of more and deeper interventions of the state into the market and social behavior generally.