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Reaching the Sustainable Development Goals requires a fundamental socio-economic transformation accompanied by substantial investment in low-carbon infrastructure. Such a sustainability transition represents a non-marginal change, driven by behavioral factors and systemic interactions. However, typical economic models used to assess a sustainability transition focus on marginal changes around a local optimum, which--by construction--lead to negative effects. Thus, these models do not allow evaluating a sustainability transition that might have substantial positive effects. This paper examines which mechanisms need to be included in a standard computable general equilibrium model to overcome these limitations and to give a more comprehensive view of the effects of climate change mitigation. Simulation results show that, given an ambitious greenhouse gas emission constraint and a price of carbon, positive economic effects are possible if (1) technical progress results (partly) endogenously from the model and (2) a policy intervention triggering an increase of investment is introduced. Additionally, if (3) the investment behavior of firms is influenced by their sales expectations, the effects are amplified. The results provide suggestions for policy-makers, because the outcome indicates that investment-oriented climate policies can lead to more desirable outcomes in economic, social and environmental terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UN sustainable development goals contain environmental, economic, and social objectives. They may only be reached, or at least it would be easier to reach them, if instead of a trade-off between these objectives that implies a need for balancing them, there are synergies to be reaped. This paper discusses how the structures of economic models typically used in policy analysis influence whether win-win strategies for the environment and the economy can be conceptualised and analysed. With a focus on climate policy modelling, the paper points out how, by construction, commonly used model structures find mitigation costs rather than benefits. This paper describes mechanisms that, when added to these model structures, can bring win-win options into a model's solution horizon, and which provide a spectrum of alternative modelling approaches that allow for the identification of such options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various studies of public opinion regarding the causes and consequences of climate change reveal both a deep reservoir of concern, yet also a muddle over causes, consequences and appropriate policy measuresfor mitigation. The technique adopted here, namely integrated assessment (IA) focus groups, in which groups of randomly selected individuals in Switzerland looked at models of possible consequences of climate change and questioned specialists as to their accuracy and meaning, revealed a rich assembly of reactions. Respondents were alarmed about the consequences of high-energy futures, and mollified by images of low-energy futures. Yet they also erected a series of psychologicalbarriers to justify why they should not act either individually or through collective institutions to mitigate climate change. From the viewpoint of changing their lifestyles of material comfort and high-energy dependence, they regarded the consequences of possible behavioural shift arising from the need to meet mitigation measures as more daunting. To overcome the dissonance created in their minds they created a number of socio-psychological denial mechanisms. Such mechanisms heightened the costs of shifting away from comfortable lifestyles, set blame on the inaction of others, including governments, and emphasised doubts regarding the immediacy of personal action when the effects of climate change seemed uncertain and far away. These findings suggest that more attention needs to be given to the social and psychological motivations as to why individuals erect barriers to their personal commitment to climate change mitigation, even when professing anxiety over climate futures. Prolonged and progressive packages of information tailored to cultural models or organised belief patterns, coupled to greater community based policy incentives may help to widen the basis of personal and moral responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the beginnings of climate change policy, results from the naturalsciences were essential for motivating the establishment of global change diplomacy. At present it is increasingly being recognised that these results must be combined with findings from the social sciencesif effective climate policy is to emerge. In particular, participatory techniques for the involvement of stakeholders, ranging from ordinary citizens to business people, are needed. The paper presents the methodology of Integrated Assessment (IA)-Focus Groups, designed primarily for involving citizens in Integrated Assessments of complex issues like climate change. It focuses on collages produced by European IA-Focus Group participants faced with alternative possibilities of energy use. The results suggest that citizens across Europe see strong reductions of current levels of energy use as more desirable than a business-as-usual perspective. Moreover, they indicate that the opinion formation by citizens is by no means restricted to unambiguous stereotypes. We relate these findings to the concept of `reflexive modernisation', stressing the importance of uncertainty and ambiguity in environmental debates. Implications for representing uncertainty in IA models are discussed." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]