Search

Avoiding catastrophic climate change requires rapid decarbonization and improved ecosystem stewardship at a planetary scale. The carbon released through the burning of fossil fuels would take millennia to regenerate on Earth. Though the timeframe of carbon recovery for ecosystems such as peatlands, mangroves and old-growth forests is shorter (centuries), this timeframe still exceeds the time we have remaining to avoid the worst impacts of global warming. There are some natural places that we cannot afford to lose due to their irreplaceable carbon reserves. Here we map ‘irrecoverable carbon’ globally to identify ecosystem carbon that remains within human purview to manage and, if lost, could not be recovered by mid-century, by when we need to reach net-zero emissions to avoid the worst climate impacts. Since 2010, agriculture, logging and wildfire have caused emissions of at least 4.0 Gt of irrecoverable carbon. The world’s remaining 139.1 ± 443.6 Gt of irrecoverable carbon faces risks from land-use conversion and climate change. These risks can be reduced through proactive protection and adaptive management. Currently, 23.0% of irrecoverable carbon is within protected areas and 33.6% is managed by Indigenous peoples and local communities. Half of Earth’s irrecoverable carbon is concentrated on just 3.3% of its land, highlighting opportunities for targeted efforts to increase global climate security. Avoiding catastrophic climate change requires that we avoid losing key natural carbon reserves. This study maps such irrecoverable carbon globally and finds a third of the remaining managed by Indigenous peoples and local communities and nearly a quarter in protected areas.

Highlights • Emphasizes the role played by fossil capital in the development of neoliberalism. • Explores how the climate emergency manifests as ‘unquantifiable’ stranded asset risk in the financing of hydrocarbon extraction. • Advances the concept of neoliberal nationalization. • Provides an in-depth case study of the nationalization of the Trans Mountain Pipeline in Canada. Abstract Nationalization was once anathema to neoliberals and the hydrocarbon-based corporations long closely integrated with the neoliberal project. Indeed, the origins of neoliberal advocacy for global economic liberalisation can be traced, at least in part, to the resistance of oil multinationals to nationalist governments attempting to assert ownership and control over natural resources. It is therefore striking that calls are now mounting from this quarter for the nationalization of fossil fuel infrastructures, to keep them operating as climate policy, loss of public legitimacy and changing market conditions increasingly make investments in them unprofitable, uninsurable, or uncompetitive. The Canadian government’s purchase of the Trans Mountain Pipeline exemplifies what we term a ‘neoliberal nationalization’. Neoliberal pundits and oil industry figures created the perception of both an immediate economic crisis and a longer-term crisis of investor confidence in Canada; these ‘crises’ were used to justify the nationalization. Critically, the government acquisition of the pipeline was framed as a temporary measure of last resort. The intention of a neoliberal nationalization is to protect corporate actors from the effects of their own irresponsible business practises, maintaining ‘business as usual’ by pre-emptively socializing the foreseeable risks of rapid capital asset devaluation. In the case of hydrocarbon infrastructures like Trans Mountain, state authority is called upon to ensure the continued profitability of private fossil energy extraction, even as global financial markets accelerate disinvestment from the sector in response to evidence that most fossil fuels must remain in the ground to prevent catastrophic climate change.

Confronted with the possibility of severe environmental harms, such as catastrophic climate change, some researchers have suggested that we should abandon the principle at the heart of standard decision theory—the injunction to maximize expected utility—and embrace a different one: the Precautionary Principle. Arguably, the most sophisticated philosophical treatment of the Precautionary Principle (PP) is due to Steel (2015). Steel interprets PP as a qualitative decision rule and appears to conclude that a quantitative decision-theoretic statement of PP is both impossible and unnecessary. In this article, we propose a decision-theoretic formulation of PP in terms of lexical (or lexicographic) utilities. We show that this lexical model is largely faithful to Steel’s approach, but also that it corrects three problems with Steel’s account and clarifies the relationship between PP and standard decision theory. Using a range of examples, we illustrate how the lexical model can be used to explore a variety of issues related to precautionary reasoning.

Negative emission strategies are central to avoiding catastrophic climate change. Engineered solutions such as direct air capture are far from cost-competitive. As past low-carbon technology transitions suggest, this calls for policy and political strategies beyond carbon pricing. We adopt a policy sequencing perspective that identifies policies that could create niche markets, building political support for later widespread deployment of direct air capture. Climate leaders could pursue an “incentives + mandates” policy strategy targeted at the oil and gas industry. These early moves could create global spillovers for follower countries by reducing technology cost and facilitating knowledge transfer through global firms., Negative emission technologies are central to avoiding catastrophic climate change. Deploying engineered solutions such as direct air capture requires a policy sequencing strategy that focuses on “incentives + mandates” in early adopters, while creating positive spillovers that incentivize follower countries to take policy action.

Restoration thinking provides a new paradigm for charting a bold future that prevents further loss of biodiversity and habitat destruction, avoids catastrophic climate change, and promotes the well-being and safety of all people. Ten paths guide actions to restore and care for Earth and all its living creatures.

URL des Documents de travail : https://centredeconomiesorbonne.univ-paris1.fr/documents-de-travail-du-ces/; International audience; Climate change threatens irreversible and dangerous impacts, possibly leading to extinction. The most relevant trade-off then may not be between present and future consumption but between present consumption and the mere existence of future generations. To investigate this trade-off, we build an integrated assessment model that explicitly accounts for the risk of extinction of future generations. Using the class of number-dampened utilitarian social welfare functions, we compare different climate policies that change the probability of catastrophic outcomes yielding an early extinction. We analyse the role of inequality aversion and population ethics. Low inequality aversion and a preference for large populations favour the most ambitious climate policy, although there are cases where the effect of inequality aversion on the preferred policy is reversed. This is due to the fact that a higher inequality aversion both decreases the welfare loss of reducing consumption of the current generation and also decreases the welfare gain of reducing the future risk of extinction.

Covid-19 has highlighted our fragile relationship with the planet. But it represents a minor challenge compared to the permanent havoc that runaway climate change threatens. Politicians and governments—some at least—are beginning to recognise the scale of the danger. In this article we assess the evolution of policy thinking on how to make climate transitions happen; the potential of the European Green Deal; and how progressives need to shape it and any UK counterpart to meet the challenges of modern society. The European initiative arises from a broad coalition spanning the political spectrum. Yet, its central thrust of active government offers the prospect of reviving a battered social democracy. We indicate the openings here for a pluralist, ecological left. The run-up to the next global climate conference—COP26—will be a vital period which will show whether parties and governments across the world are prepared to meet the climate change challenge.

Financial markets can and should become key drivers in achieving a rapid transition to a low-carbon economy. If they fail to do so, the risk of catastrophic climate change appears ever more likely....

There is a general perception that limiting emissions of carbon dioxide will be sufficient to avoid catastrophic climate change. The reality could well be that the many of the world’s wealthy coastal cities which historically developed as ports will be inundated repeatedly to disappear eventually below the sea, with large swathes of the earth being flooded. Other major conurbations may cease to be liveable without air conditioning, while large numbers of people could well starve as a result of disruption of ecosystems. To the extent that this possibility is recognized, it is nevertheless perceived as a gradual process with the worst results in a distance future with any sea-level rise a gradual process. Limiting emissions is unlikely to be sufficient, because the level of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere is now much higher than ever before since humans started to exploit fossil fuels. We know this from the study of ancient air bubbles in Antarctic ice cores. There is a lack of balance between the energy transmitted by the incoming sunlight and the earth’s outgoing infrared heat radiation. So far this imbalance is absorbed by the enormous thermal mass of the oceans. As to the speed of sea-level rise, a period of extremely rapid sea-level rise of about 1.4 cm per year has occurred in the prehistoric past and disintegration of ice sheets as is happening currently may well be a plausible explanation of this fact. In fact, it is straightforward to create substantial amounts of negative emissions of carbon dioxide. Nevertheless, making it happen will require an unprecedented degree of global cooperation, a high level of taxation on the extraction of coal and crude oil, and the use of pressurized liquid petrol gas as aviation fuel. Graphic abstract

This article urges a jolt in journalism theory commensurate with the urgent state of planetary affairs—including catastrophic climate change and spreading authoritarianism—that journalism’s weaknesses have helped to precipitate and that its strengths might help to contain. The article explores three conceptual frameworks offering alternative approaches to conceiving news that might disrupt the stasis of our polarized societies: “existential journalism,” or a call to radical independence; Buddhist news values, based on ontological and ethical commitments favoring interdependence and compassion; and nonrepresentational news, inspired by an epistemologically expansive style of social research privileging affect, immanence, and wide-eyed attention. Attending to journalisms of engagement, compassion, and everyday joys might disrupt the heuristic partisanship and protective avoidance that characterize citizens’ contemporary relations with news, opening possibilities for more generative politics.

Avoiding catastrophic climate change requires rapid decarbonization and improved ecosystem stewardship. To achieve the latter, ecosystems should be prioritized by responsiveness to direct, localized action and the magnitude and recoverability of their carbon stores. Here, we show that a range of ecosystems contain ‘irrecoverable carbon’ that is vulnerable to release upon land use conversion and, once lost, is not recoverable on timescales relevant to avoiding dangerous climate impacts. Globally, ecosystems highly affected by human land-use decisions contain at least 260 Gt of irrecoverable carbon, with particularly high densities in peatlands, mangroves, old-growth forests and marshes. To achieve climate goals, we must safeguard these irrecoverable carbon pools through an expanded set of policy and finance strategies. In order to limit warming and the most severe consequences of climate change, net global carbon emissions must reach zero by 2050. Many ecosystems contain carbon that would be irrecoverable on this timescale if lost and must be protected to meet climate goals.

This paper studies an overlapping generations (OLG) differential game on optimal emissions with continuous age structure and different types of individuals. At the (stochastic) arrival of a catastrophic climate change, the utility and the damage to the stock of pollution change for the rest of the time horizon. We derive the open-loop (OL) Nash equilibrium and show that it is subgame perfect and moreover equal to the feedback Stackelberg one. We compare the solution to the cooperative one (using the social welfare as objective function) and show the different dynamic evolutions of optimal emissions over time. Finally, we derive a time-consistent tax scheme that reaches the cooperative optimal solution in the OL Nash equilibrium. The tax scheme turns out to be heterogeneous with respect to age and type (anticipating and nonanticipating the catastrophic climate change). Setting taxes that are homogeneous across the individual type leads to an OL Nash solution that produces socially optimal total emissions, but lower individual utilities.

Meeting human needs at sustainable levels of energy use is fundamental for avoiding catastrophic climate change and securing the well-being of all people. In the current political-economic regime, no country does so. Here, we assess which socio-economic conditions might enable societies to satisfy human needs at low energy use, to reconcile human well-being with climate mitigation. Using a novel analytical framework alongside a novel multivariate regression-based moderation approach and data for 106 countries, we analyse how the relationship between energy use and six dimensions of human need satisfaction varies with a wide range of socio-economic factors relevant to the provisioning of goods and services ('provisioning factors'). We find that factors such as public service quality, income equality, democracy, and electricity access are associated with higher need satisfaction and lower energy requirements (‘beneficial provisioning factors’). Conversely, extractivism and economic growth beyond moderate levels of affluence are associated with lower need satisfaction and greater energy requirements (‘detrimental provisioning factors’). Our results suggest that improving beneficial provisioning factors and abandoning detrimental ones could enable countries to provide sufficient need satisfaction at much lower, ecologically sustainable levels of energy use. However, as key pillars of the required changes in provisioning run contrary to the dominant political-economic regime, a broader transformation of the economic system may be required to prioritise, and organise provisioning for, the satisfaction of human needs at low energy use.

Recent debate (Clack v. Jacobson, 2017) argues the feasibility of 100% terrestrial renewables (wind, water, solar) by 2050, on the premise of restricting world consumption to 2012 levels (∼12 TW-years). Given the expected population rise by 3 billion over the same time frame, and the correlation between prosperity and energy availability – are we to impose energy equality, requiring some to reduce consumption by 87%, or are we to condemn the majority to relentless poverty? Choosing neither implies ever-increasing carbon emissions and the risk of catastrophic climate change. Nuclear fission is one energy technology which could be expanded to provide sufficient carbon-free power, but faces widespread opposition from public fear and distrust. Future terrestrial fusion is another, but first pilot operations are not expected until 2050 – which may be too late. We could make much better use of one existing fusion power source, our Sun. The fundamentals of Space Solar Power (SSP) are well understood and could lead to a world of energy abundance; the deliverable energy from just a 10 km geostationary (GEO) band exceeds 570 TW-years – enough to supply ten billion people at six-times current US per-capita levels. Despite this, SSP has languished for fifty years. GEO is one of few candidates for baseload power, but physics dictates a kilometre-scale microwave transmitter irrespective of the power delivered – hence economics favours the multi-gigawatt (per-satellite) engineering limit. Given the complexity of the differentially rotating solar collector, sub-gigawatt SSP suffers both economically and technically, with different solutions required at different scales – which has led to exorbitant (hence prohibitive) start-up costs. CASSIOPeiA breaks this non-scaling paradigm by eliminating the rotating interfaces; all SPS subsystems are able to share one lightweight modular structure, with near-invariant areal power density from sub-megawatt to gigawatt systems. With additional fixed mirror concentrators, CASSIOPeiA can also be expanded into the multi-gigawatt regime. CASSIOPeiA's unique beam-steering capability facilitates baseload delivery from alternative, closer orbits, with the possibility of single payload deployment requiring no on-orbit assembly. By starting with sub-megawatt, near-term stratospheric station-keeping platforms – with retrieval, servicing and transfer of gained knowledge – the era of SSP may commence at much lower risk and expense.

(Authors: José A.Tapia Granados and Clive L. Spash) Since the 1990s, advocates of policy to prevent catastrophic climate change have been divided over the appropriate economic instruments to curb CO2 emissions—carbon taxes or schemes of emission trading. Barack Obama claimed that policies implemented during his presidency set in motion irreversible trends toward a clean-energy economy, with the years 2008–2015 given as evidence of decoupling between CO2 emissions and economic growth. This is despite California being the only state in the USA that has implemented a specific policy to curb emissions, a cap-and-trade scheme in place since 2013. To assess Obama’s claims and the effectiveness of policies to reduce CO2 emissions, we analyze national and state-level data from the USA over the period 1990–2015. We find: (a) annual changes in emissions strongly correlated with the growth conditions of the economy; (b) no evidence for decoupling; and (c) a trajectory of CO2 emissions in California which does not at all support the claim that the cap-and-trade system implemented there has reduced CO2 emissions.

Decarbonization has been identified as necessary to preventing catastrophic climate change, creating a dilemma for the global oil industry. This article examines the industry's reaction to this dilemma and focuses on its historical response to market and governmental regulatory pressure. The article argues that differing national climate policies provoked some oil companies to develop proactive decarbonization strategies. However, the continued growth of fossil fuel demand, the industry's vested interests, and the voluntary nature of climate governance have resulted in the industry taking very little meaningful action to achieve decarbonization.

This article discusses recent developments in international climate change law, in respect of which Pacific island countries and territories (PICs) have made a particularly significant contribution. PICs have been instrumental in shaping the international climate change treaty regime since its inception in the early 1990s. Since the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015, however, progress has stalled – and even more so since the global pandemic. With a focus on the Suva Declaration on Climate Change released prior to negotiations in Paris, this article assesses progress in two areas that have received considerable attention from PIC representatives due to their importance to the region: the long-term temperature goal and the Talanoa Dialogue; and the issue of loss and damage. While PICs have managed to make gains in both areas, climate change science indicates that current global efforts are insufficient to avoid catastrophic climate change impacts for the Pacific region. In light of this, certain PIC leaders are looking outside of the international treaty system for other ways to protect their communities and ecosystems.

Following the release of a 2018 IPCC report, numerous news media announced we have only “12 years” to avoid abrupt, catastrophic climate change. This experiment tested the influence of this climate change “deadline-ism” message in a news article on participant perceptions of and engagement with climate change. A news article presenting the “deadline-ism” message increased perceptions of the threat of climate change and support for government prioritizing climate change, compared to a control condition. It also increased a sense of collective and individual response efficacy in addressing climate change. We also tested the influence of an article refuting the idea of a deadline for action to avoid abrupt climate catastrophe, which increased perceptions of individual and collective response efficacy.

There are few global challenges as widespread, as complex, as significant to our future, and politically as controversial as that of global warming. The goal of this chapter is, in essence, to motivate this textbook; to convince you, the reader, that very nearly all of the topics in this text need to be understood in order to grasp the subtleties of a subject such as global warming.

Summary The “Wet Tropics” of Australia host a unique variety of plant lineages that trace their origins to the super-continent of Gondwanaland. While these “ancient” evolutionary records are rightly emphasized in current management of the region, multidisciplinary research and lobbying by Rainforest Aboriginal Peoples have also demonstrated the significance of the cultural heritage of the “Wet Tropics.” Here, we evaluate the existing archeological, paleoenvironmental, and historical evidence to demonstrate the diverse ways in which these forests are globally significant, not only for their ecological heritage but also for their preservation of traces of millennia of anthropogenic activities, including active burning and food tree manipulation. We argue that detailed paleoecological, ethnobotanical, and archeological studies, working within the framework of growing national and world heritage initiatives and active application of traditional knowledge, offer the best opportunities for sustainable management of these unique environments in the face of increasingly catastrophic climate change and bushfires., Graphical abstract, Environmental Science; Environmental Monitoring; Nature Conservation; Environmental Resource; Biological Sciences; Plant Biology; Botany; Plant Ecology; Ethnobotany; Agricultural Science

This article explores instinctive frames of human decision-making in environmental and resource economics. Higher-moment asset pricing combines rational, mathematically informed economic reasoning with psychological and biological insights. Leptokurtic blindness and skewness preference combine in particularly challenging ways for carbon mitigation. At their worst, human heuristics may generate perverse decisions. Information uncertainty and the innate preference for bonds-and-bullets portfolios may impair responses to catastrophic climate change.

What kind of law is climate change law (CCL)? This chapter clarifies its nature by contrasting it with environmental law. The aim of CCL, properly understood, is to sustain economic growth and human well-being in a simulacrum of the present world through a comprehensive reordering of energy and forestry resource-use to arrest climatic change. CCL is a growth-oriented anthropocentric law directed at climatic control. It follows that principles of environmental law will not necessarily be shared by CCL. To see the true face of CCL, imagine Earth’s habitable zone around 2060 under a scenario of avoided runaway climate change. It is a planet-sized contraption powered by arrays of solar-radiation and wind-energy collectors extending to the horizon, blanketed with carbon sinks (ersatz forests), GMO-enhanced biofuel croplands, and installations that capture carbon dioxide or scrub the atmosphere of it and pump it into underground reservoirs. Everywhere there are nuclear-power plants and the shuttered relics of the fossil-fuel age. Most of today’s environmental law has been dismantled.

Climate change is affecting the health of millions of people through altering the geographic distribution and incidence of climate-sensitive health outcomes, including through injuries, illnesses, and deaths due to extreme weather events, food-, water-, and vectorborne diseases, air pollution, aeroallergens, and malnutrition (1). The magnitude of impacts is projected to increase as the climate continues to change. The scope and scale of projected impacts mean that climate change will touch the professional and personal lives of many public health and health care professionals. Avoiding, preparing for, and effectively responding to the health risks of climate change will require broad engagement of scientists, decision-makers, and the public. Achieving this engagement means that increased scientific literacy is needed of the causes and implications of climate change for human health. There are growing numbers of assessments of the potential health impacts of climate change (1–4) and summaries for various audiences (5). Instead of summarizing current knowledge of the causes and consequences for human health of anthropogenic climate change, this paper will highlight a few issues that may help with understanding the human health impacts of climate change. Energy drives climate change as well as its consequences Energy refers to both the energy derived from burning fossil fuels, which, along with deforestation, is the primary cause of anthropogenic climate change, and to the resulting increased energy within the climate system that is manifest in the form of increased temperatures, alterations of the hydrologic cycle, and more frequent and intense extreme weather events. The principal driving force for weather and climate is the uneven warming of the Earth’s surface (due to the angle of rotation). Complex and changing atmospheric and oceanic patterns redistribute the absorbed solar energy from the equator to the poles. In addition, some absorbed energy is reradiated as long-wave (infrared) radiation. Some of this infrared radiation is then absorbed by the atmospheric greenhouse gases (including water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, halocarbons, and ozone) and reradiated back to the Earth, thereby adding additional energy to the atmosphere and oceans. This greenhouse effect warms the surface by more than would be achieved by incoming solar radiation alone and raises the global average surface temperature to its current 15°C (6). Without this warming, the Earth’s diurnal temperature range would increase dramatically, and the global average surface temperature would be about 33°C colder. Increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases are increasing the energy in the atmosphere, further warming the planet. Current concentrations of atmospheric CO2 and ethane far exceed pre-industrial values found in polar ice core records dating back 650,000 years; the concentration of atmospheric CO2 has increased from a pre-industrial value of about 280 ppm to 379 ppm in 2005 (7). Since 1750, it is estimated that about 2/3rd of anthropogenic CO2 emissions have come from fossil fuel burning and about 1/3rd from land use change. Ambient temperatures increased 0.74°C worldwide over the period 1906–2005. The rate of warming averaged over the past 50 years (0.13°C + 0.03°C per decade) is nearly twice that for the last 100 years (Figure 1), and at least six times faster than at any time during the 2,000 years. Figure 1: Figure 1: Global mean temperature increase (°C) from 1850 to 2005 (7). Annual global mean temperatures (black dots) with linear fits to the data. The left axis shows temperature anomalies relative to 1961–1990 and the right hand axis shows ... The Earth is committed to decades of climate change Figure 2, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), shows projected temperature changes over this century based on different scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions (7). These scenarios are based on differing assumptions of future demographic, economic, and technology changes that determine the amount of fossil fuels that will be burned. The IPCC projected that the global mean temperature of the Earth would increase by the end of the 21st century by between 1.1 and 6.4°C (7). This projected rate of warming is much larger than the observed changes during the 20th century and is very likely to be without precedent during at least the last 10,000 years. Figure 2: Observed and Projected Global Mean Surface Temperatures (°C), 1900 to 2100. Solid lines are multi-model global averages of surface warming (relative to 1980–1999) for the scenarios A2, A1B and B1, shown as continuations of the 20th century ... The orange line on the figure is the climate change commitment or the amount of warming that will occur no matter the degree to which greenhouse gas emissions are reduced over the next few decades. This commitment is due to the inherent inertia in the climate system. Natural processes currently remove about half the incremental anthropogenic CO2 added to the atmosphere annually; the balance is removed over one to two hundred years (7). The Earth is committed to nearly as much warming as has already occurred.

[ ]many US environmental policies face legal challenges and Trump has established a highly conservative judiciary According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the window for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to avoid catastrophic climate change is rapidly closing 22 Similarly, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services warns that there is only a short time to act on threats to biodiversity 23 Continued reliance on fossil fuels, destruction of ecosystems, dissemination of persistent toxic chemicals, and other environmental depredations—many of them permitted, if not promoted, during the Trump presidency—are inconsistent with a healthy future for humanity Supplementary Material Supplementary appendix Trump record Biden platform Energy Weakened power plant greenhouse gas emission rules;permitted controversial new oil pipelines;lowered barriers to fossil fuel development;weakened methane and volatile organic compound emission rules at drill sites;weakened energy conservation standards for household and commercial appliances “Ensure the US achieves a 100% clean energy economy and reaches net-zero emissions no later than 2050”;would strengthen vehicle fuel economy standards;nationwide programme of energy efficiency in buildings;supports “a worldwide ban on fossil fuel subsidies” Water Rolled back offshore drilling safety rules;removed protection on marine national monuments;rolled back Clean Water Act provisions that protected rivers and streams Would ban new oil and gas permitting in public waters;would make water infrastructure a top priority including monitoring contaminant levels, and holding polluters accountable Land Weakened wetlands protection;opened more federal land for oil and gas exploitation, mining, and logging;reduced enforcement of illegal grazing on public lands Would ban new oil and gas permitting on public lands;permanently protect Arctic National Wildlife Refuge;advocates reforestation of public lands Biodiversity Reduced wildlife protections;weakened Endangered Species Act “Protecting biodiversity, slowing extinction rates and helping leverage natural climate solutions by conserving 30% of America's lands and waters by 2030” Food and agriculture Withdrew organic livestock animal welfare rule;exempted combined animal feed operations from hazardous substance release reporting requirements “Invest in climate-friendly farming such as conservation programs for cover crops and other practices aimed at restoring the soil and building soil carbon, and in the process, preventing run-off and helping family farmers deploy the latest technologies to maximize productivity” Chemical pollution Blocked or weakened regulations of power plant mercury and other toxic emissions, chlorpyrifos, and other chemicals;weakened rules on coal ash waste Pledges to strengthen enforcement of pollution rules, especially in disproportionately impacted communities Transport Cut funding for rail, urban transit, and pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, while heavily funding highways;weakened vehicle fuel efficiency standards;revoked California's right to set strict vehicle emission standards;exempted oil refiners from biofuel blending requirements Supports local solutions for transit and pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure;pledges a “second great railroad revolution” with substantial expansion of rail infrastructure;would accelerate deployment of electric vehicles through charging infrastructure and tax credits Role of science Weakened and/or disbanded science advisory groups;defunded NASA monitoring of carbon emissions;proposed EPA transparency rule precludes use of much health evidence in policy making Declared commitment to “science, not fiction” International cooperation Withdrew from Paris Agreement;ended US funding for WHO;reinstated Mexico City Policy (“global gag rule”), blocking US funding of NGOs that provide abortion services or advocate for abortion Pledges to lead global efforts to ramp up climate targets;would rejoin Paris Agreement;would promote low-carbon international development aid;would withdraw Mexico City Policy Table Illustrative environmental policies of Trump (2017–20) and Biden (projected) administrations

Should economic growth continue in a world threatened by the prospect of catastrophic climate change? The scientific and public debate has brought forth a broad spectrum of views and narratives on this question, ranging from neoclassical economics to degrowth. We argue that different positions can be attributed to underlying differences in views on (a) factors that determine human well‐being, (b) the feasibility and desirability of economic growth, (c) appropriate intervention points, and (d) preferences about governance and policy options. For each of these dimensions, we propose points of agreement on which a consensus between conflicting positions might be achieved. From this basis, we distill a sustainability transition perspective that could act as a basis for a renewed debate on how to align human well‐being with environmental sustainability. This article is categorized under: Climate Economics>Economics and Climate Change

Significance Collective risks trigger social dilemmas that require balancing selfish interests and common good. One important example is mitigating climate change, wherein without sufficient investments, worldwide negative consequences become increasingly likely. To study the social aspects of this problem, we organized a game experiment that reveals how group size, communication, and behavioral type drive prosocial action. We find that communicating sentiment and outlook leads to more positive outcomes, even among culturally heterogeneous groups. Although genuine free riders remain unfazed by communication, prosocial players better endure accumulated investment deficits, and thus fight off inaction as the failure looms. This suggests that climate negotiations may achieve more by leveraging existing goodwill than persuading skeptics to act., Collective risks permeate society, triggering social dilemmas in which working toward a common goal is impeded by selfish interests. One such dilemma is mitigating runaway climate change. To study the social aspects of climate-change mitigation, we organized an experimental game and asked volunteer groups of three different sizes to invest toward a common mitigation goal. If investments reached a preset target, volunteers would avoid all consequences and convert their remaining capital into monetary payouts. In the opposite case, however, volunteers would lose all their capital with 50% probability. The dilemma was, therefore, whether to invest one’s own capital or wait for others to step in. We find that communicating sentiment and outlook helps to resolve the dilemma by a fundamental shift in investment patterns. Groups in which communication is allowed invest persistently and hardly ever give up, even when their current investment deficits are substantial. The improved investment patterns are robust to group size, although larger groups are harder to coordinate, as evidenced by their overall lower success frequencies. A clustering algorithm reveals three behavioral types and shows that communication reduces the abundance of the free-riding type. Climate-change mitigation, however, is achieved mainly by cooperator and altruist types stepping up and increasing contributions as the failure looms. Meanwhile, contributions from free riders remain flat throughout the game. This reveals that the mechanisms behind avoiding collective risks depend on an interaction between behavioral type, communication, and timing.

This empirical paper addresses the need for more in depth understanding of signs and characteristics of transgressive learning in a context of runaway climate change. In a world characterized by systemic global dysfunction, there is an urgency to foster rapid systemic change which can steer our paths towards meeting the SDG goals. The contention of this paper is that, although there is a need for rapid change, it is fundamental to understand how such change can come about, so as to co-create and investigate learning environments and forms of learning that can lead to a systemic change towards sustainability. Anchored in the emerging concept of transgressive learning, this article employs the innovative Living Spiral model to track critical learning moments by facilitators and participants in multi-stakeholder Transformation Labs (T-Labs), which took place in 2017/2018 in various grassroots sustainability initiatives in Colombia and The Netherlands. The results of the analysis highlight the importance of the values of &ldquo, acknowledging uncertainty&rdquo, &ldquo, community&rdquo, and &ldquo, relationality&rdquo, in disrupting world-views through promoting reflexivity in participants and facilitators. This paper concludes that more research on the power dynamics of &ldquo, absences&rdquo, in transformative research is needed to better capture the challenges of overcoming sustainability challenges.

We will need collective action to avoid catastrophic climate change, and this will require valuing the long term as well as the short term. Shortsightedness and uncertainty have hindered progress in resolving this collective action problem and have been recognized as important barriers to cooperation among humans. Here, we propose a coupled social–ecological dilemma to investigate the interdependence of three well-identified components of this cooperation problem: 1) timescales of collapse and recovery in relation to time preferences regarding future outcomes, 2) the magnitude of the impact of collapse, and 3) the number of actors in the collective. We find that, under a sufficiently severe and time-distant collapse, how much the actors care for the future can transform the game from a tragedy of the commons into one of coordination, and even into a comedy of the commons in which cooperation dominates. Conversely, we also find conditions under which even strong concern for the future still does not transform the problem from tragedy to comedy. For a large number of participating actors, we find that the critical collapse impact, at which these game regime changes happen, converges to a fixed value of collapse impact per actor that is independent of the enhancement factor of the public good, which is usually regarded as the driver of the dilemma. Our results not only call for experimental testing but also help explain why polarization in beliefs about human-caused climate change can threaten global cooperation agreements.

This review critiques Yifei Li and Judith Shapiro’s China Goes Green: Coercive Environmentalism for a Troubled Planet (2020). The authors explore what it means for the world’s longest-lasting authoritarian state to pursue “ecological civilization.” This is an important work that recasts the trade-offs of tackling catastrophic climate change.

Intact Forest Landscapes (IFLs) are critical strongholds for the environmental services that they provide, not least for their role in climate protection. On the basis of information about the distributions of IFLs and Indigenous Peoples’ lands, we examined the importance of these areas for conserving the world's remaining intact forests. We determined that at least 36% of IFLs are within Indigenous Peoples’ lands, making these areas crucial to the mitigation action needed to avoid catastrophic climate change. We also provide evidence that IFL loss rates have been considerably lower on Indigenous Peoples’ lands than on other lands, although these forests are still vulnerable to clearing and other threats. World governments must recognize Indigenous Peoples’ rights, including land tenure rights, to ensure that Indigenous Peoples play active roles in decision‐making processes that affect IFLs on their lands. Such recognition is critical given the urgent need to reduce deforestation rates in the face of escalating climate change and global biodiversity loss. Intact Forest Landscapes (IFLs) are critical strongholds for the environmental services that they provide, not least for their role in climate protection. On the basis of information about the distributions of IFLs and Indigenous Peoples' lands, we examined the importance of these areas for conserving the world's remaining intact forests. We determined that at least 36% of IFLs are within Indigenous Peoples' lands, making these areas crucial to the mitigation action needed to avoid catastrophic climate change. We also provide evidence that IFL loss rates have been considerably lower on Indigenous Peoples' lands than on other lands, although these forests are still vulnerable to clearing and other threats. World governments must recognize Indigenous Peoples' rights, including land tenure rights, to ensure that Indigenous Peoples play active roles in decision-making processes that affect IFLs on their lands. Such recognition is critical given the urgent need to reduce deforestation rates in the face of escalating climate change and global biodiversity loss.

Studies of bias in science have conventionally sought their origins in such factors as ideological dispositions, careerism, groupthink, and parochial intellectual mindsets. In contract, the history of public health science points to the role of capital markets in the distortion of the growth of knowledge by key extra-scientific stakeholders including manufacturers, legal institutions, the media, and public relations firms in the management of scientific evidence of harm from legal, but potentially toxic, products. We examine evidence of the juxtaposition of public versus private interests, the cultivation of doubt, and the role of legal forces in the case of tobacco and its disastrous health consequences. We also examine the question of extending the analysis to CO2 emissions and fears of catastrophic climate change.

The rate of adoption of some cryptocurrencies is triggering alarm from energy researchers and social scientists concerned about the industry’s growing environmental and social impacts. In this paper we argue that the unsustainable trajectory of some cryptocurrencies disproportionately impacts poor and vulnerable communities where cryptocurrency producers and other actors take advantage of economic instabilities, weak regulations, and access to cheap energy and other resources. Globally, over 100 million people hold cryptocurrency, mostly as a speculative asset. The digital infrastructure behind the most popular cryptocurrency, bitcoin, currently requires as much energy as the whole of Thailand, with a carbon footprint exceeding the gold mining industry. Should bitcoin’s mass adoption continue, an escalating climate crisis is inevitable, disproportionately exacerbating social and environmental challenges for communities already experiencing multiple dimensions of deprivation. In mitigating these impacts, the paper considers 4 potential regulatory pathways, including: 1) promoting voluntary private-sector commitments to using only renewable energy, 2) encouraging a system of voluntary carbon offsetting, 3) using existing financial regulations and tax frameworks, and 4) imposing national and/or international bans on cryptocurrency ‘mining’. The paper argues that effective environmental regulation of cryptocurrencies is urgently required, both to reduce the threat of catastrophic climate change, and to help the world’s poorest towards sustainable development. However, regulating cryptocurrency mining in any context is likely to require a combination of efforts and is unlikely to result in win-win outcomes for all.

De 2000 a 2010, las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero a nivel mundial no solo han disminuido, sino que han crecido a niveles sin precedentes, aumentando con ello la posibilidad de cambios climáticos catastróficos. En el año 2012 la actividad productiva y social de la humanidad produjo 52.76 millones de giga toneladas de bióxido de carbono equivalente ( ; México emitió 663 425 giga toneladas, 1.3% del total. La agricultura y la ganadería mexicanas contribuyeron con 12.3% al total nacional. No obstante, la relevancia de este problema, se ha descuidado la investigación de los costos ambientales que implican esas emisiones. Los objetivos de esta investigación fueron: 1) estimar los costos económicos de las emisiones de óxido nitroso producidas por la fertilización nitrogenada en la agricultura mexicana; y 2) proponer, con base en ellos, una política fiscal para el control eficiente de esas emisiones. El método aplicado fue el del equilibrio general de la economía mundial con emisiones. Se concluyó que tanto el uso de fertilizantes químicos en la agricultura mexicana como la política agrícola son ineficientes, por lo que se proponen dos políticas alternativas y eficientes para el control de esas emisiones. El gobierno mexicano debe suspender los subsidios a los fertilizantes. Esto tendría un impacto negativo en la producción, por lo que las políticas eficientes de control de las emisiones deben estar acompañadas de políticas visionarias de ciencia y tecnología que desarrollen la producción, manteniendo las emisiones dentro de los niveles no-catastróficos del cambio climático.

In this paper we present a simple model for assessing the willingness to pay for reductions in the risk associated with catastrophic climate change. The model is extremely tractable and applies to a multiregion world but with global externalities and has five key features: ( i ) Neither the occurrence nor the costs of a catastrophic event in any one year are precisely predictable; ( ii ) the probability of a catastrophe occurring in any one year increases as the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increase; ( iii ) greenhouse gases are a worldwide public bad with emissions from any one country or region increasing the risks for all; ( iv ) there is two-sided irreversibility; if nothing is done and the problem proves serious, the climate, economic activity, and human life will suffer permanent damage, but if we spend large sums on countermeasures and the problem turns out to be minor or even nonexistent, we will have wasted resources unnecessarily; and ( v ) technological progress may yield partial or even complete solutions. The framework that we propose can give a sense of the quantitative significance of mitigation strategies. We illustrate these for a core set of parameter values.

Scientists believe that humanity has already crossed the core planetary boundary for climate change, and is closer to crossing thresholds that trigger abrupt and irreversible environmental changes. Consequently, academia and the international political community should not disregard the prospect of a catastrophic environmental event. However, discussions about climate change usually assume the resilience of potentially deteriorating terrestrial‐biosphere carbon sinks and rarely acknowledge catastrophic climate risk. Reviewing the latest scientific evidence on anthropogenic climate change, as well as the current and projected threats to the resilience of key large forest biomes, and combining them with the profound political frailties of the Paris Climate Agreement, this article argues that catastrophic climate risk is much more serious and likely than most of humanity is able to perceive and should thus be seriously considered. It emphasizes the massive gap between science and political action and how cognitive, cultural, institutional, and political limitations hinder our capacity to envisage, prevent, and ultimately manage catastrophic climate change. The article concludes by briefly raising awareness regarding the role that academia should play in catastrophic climate risk reduction.

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are currently at the crux of political, environmental, technological, and cultural discussions due to climate change. A drastic reduction of GHG emissions is needed in order to mitigate potentially catastrophic climate change impacts. Thus, thoroughly understanding emission sources is imperative. A disaggregated analysis of Canada’s future GHG emission projections has not yet been conducted. The objectives in this paper are to assess disaggregated GHG emissions in Canada for the years 2014, 2030, and 2050, and analyze the results through Sankey diagrams. Emissions are calculated using a bottom-up multi-regional accounting-based Long-range Energy Alternative Planning systems model. Each major economic sector in Canada is analyzed including the electricity generation, residential, commercial and institutional, industrial, transportation, and agriculture sectors. The emissions released in these sectors are traced to the resources and end-uses responsible. Results are presented for Canada and for provinces individually. GHG emissions contained in exported resources are evaluated. Results show that Canada’s business-as-usual GHG emissions will grow from 732 million tonnes in 2014 to 780 and 798 million tonnes in 2030 and 2050, respectively. Canada exports more emissions contained in resources than it emits. Per capita emissions intensity will fall by 14% between 2014 and 2050. Results are compared to climate targets and key areas of GHG mitigation potential are identified. Alberta’s oil and gas sector and Ontario’s transportation sector are the two single largest sectoral sources of emissions by 2050. This research can help policy makers, innovators, and the public better understand GHG emissions, which can lead to more effective GHG mitigation.

A series of global actions have been made to address climate change. As a recent developed climate policy, Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) have renewed attention to the importance of exploring temperature rise levels lower than 2 °C, in particular a long-term limit of 1.5 °C, compared to the preindustrial level. Nonetheless, achieving the 2 °C target under the current INDCs depends on dynamic socioeconomic development pathways. Therefore, this study conducts an integrated assessment of INDCs by taking into account different Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). To that end, the CEEP-BIT research community develops the China’s Climate Change Integrated Assessment Model (C3IAM) to assess the climate change under SSPs in the context of with and without INDCs. Three SSPs, including “a green growth strategy” (SSP1), “a more middle-of-the-road development pattern” (SSP2) and “further fragmentation between regions” (SSP3) form the focus of this study. Results show that after considering INDCs, mitigation costs become very low and they have no evident positive changes in three SSPs. In 2100, a temperature rise would occur in SSP1-3, which is 3.20, 3.48 and 3.59 °C, respectively. There are long-term difficulties to keep warming well below 2 °C and pursue efforts toward 1.5 °C target even under INDCs. A drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is needed in order to mitigate potentially catastrophic climate change impacts. This work contributes on realizing the hard link between the earth and socioeconomic systems, as well as extending the economic models by coupling the global CGE model with the economic optimum growth model. In C3IAM, China’s energy consumption and emissions pattern are investigated and refined. This study can provide policy makers and the public a better understanding about pathways through which different scenarios could unfold toward 2100, highlights the real mitigation and adaption challenges faced by climate change and can lead to formulating effective policies.

Recent economic research documents a range of adverse welfare consequences from extreme heat stress, including health, labor productivity, and direct consumption disutility impacts. Without rapid adaptation, climate change will increase the burden of heat stress experienced by much of the world’s population in the coming decades. What will the distributional consequences of this added heat stress be, and how might this affect optimal climate policy? Using detailed survey data of household wealth in 690,745 households across 52 countries, this paper finds evidence suggesting that the welfare impacts of added heat stress caused by climate change may be regressive. Specifically, the analysis finds that poorer households tend to be located in hotter locations across and within countries, and poorer individuals are more likely to work in occupations with greater exposure to the elements not only across but also within countries. These findings—combined with the fact that current social cost of carbon estimates do not include climate damages arising from the productivity impacts of heat stress—suggest that optimal climate policy, especially when allowing for declining marginal utility of consumption, involves more stringent abatement than currently suggested, and that redistributive adaptation policies may be required to reduce the mechanical inequities in welfare impacts arising from climate change.

The world runs a serious risk of sliding into catastrophic climate change. It is to all practical purposes impossible to bring the emissions of greenhouse gases to a halt straight away. This article discusses a number of sources of uncertainty and the possibility of bias in climate forecasting. It identifies a specific approach towards rapid decarbonization combined with a systematic reduction in fossil fuel extraction: the manufacture of synthetic hydrocarbon compounds for use as fuel as well as plastics, using carbon dioxide from power stations and cement factories as feedstock during a transitional phase. Policymakers and even researchers working on renewable energy seem to be insufficiently aware of the potential of this mature chemical technology to reduce emissions. The paper also surveys several economic and managerial issues regarding the implementation of the transition to a world using only renewable energy, and provides some information concerning the latest state of the technology of renewable electricity generation.

The world economy must rapidly decarbonize to reduce the likelihood of catastrophic climate change. Multiple decarbonization options are available to policymakers today, comprising both mature technologies that are fully commercialized and immature technologies that are not yet fully commercialized but offer potentially higher annual greenhouse gas emission reductions. Using static carbon intensity values, this analysis quantifies the comparative impact that different investment timing scenarios have on the financial value of decarbonization scenarios for Class 8 heavy-duty trucks (HDTs). We model both weight-limited and volume-limited cargo transport scenarios for a mature biomass-based diesel scenario (BBD) and an immature battery-electric (BE) scenario. We calculate the 20-year net present value (NPV) in which the social cost of carbon (SCC) benefit of low-carbon fuels is internalized. Under the weight-limited scenario, the results of this analysis illustrate that immediate investment in a mature, currently-commercialized BBD scenario yields the highest NPV and accounts for the second-lowest total quantity of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions among the four scenarios analyzed. Under the volume-limited scenario, the BBD-BE scenario yields the highest NPV and accounts for the lowest total GHG emissions. In addition to the standard petroleum diesel (PD) scenario which offers no SCC benefit, the PD to BE scenario incurs the lowest cumulative SCC benefits despite the high potential annual SCC benefit offered by the BE option, under both the weight-limited and volume-limited scenarios.

This paper presents a short history of the studies regarding climate and climate change, from the late 18th century, beginning with Fourier, to the present day, when international conferences are taking place to determine how climate change can be managed.

The aim of this paper is to begin to respond to the question of how to engage the presence of catastrophic climate change as a locus of philosophical thought. What has to be thought is the ...

Limiting warming to 1.5 °C is expected to lessen the risk of extreme events, relative to 2 °C. Considering Australia, this work shows a decrease of about 25% in the likelihood of record heat, both air and sea surface, if warming is limited to 1.5 °C. To avoid more severe impacts from climate change, there is international agreement to strive to limit warming to below 1.5 °C. However, there is a lack of literature assessing climate change at 1.5 °C and the potential benefits in terms of reduced frequency of extreme events1,2,3. Here, we demonstrate that existing model simulations provide a basis for rapid and rigorous analysis of the effects of different levels of warming on large-scale climate extremes, using Australia as a case study. We show that limiting warming to 1.5 °C, relative to 2 °C, would perceptibly reduce the frequency of extreme heat events in Australia. The Australian continent experiences a variety of high-impact climate extremes that result in loss of life, and economic and environmental damage. Events similar to the record-hot summer of 2012–2013 and warm seas associated with bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef in 2016 would be substantially less likely, by about 25% in both cases, if warming is kept to lower levels. The benefits of limiting warming on hydrometeorological extremes are less clear. This study provides a framework for analysing climate extremes at 1.5 °C global warming.

Whether a cloud is predominantly water or ice strongly influences interactions between clouds and radiation coming down from the Sun or up from the Earth. Being able to simulate cloud phase transitions accurately in climate models based on observational data sets is critical in order to improve confidence in climate projections, because this uncertainty contributes greatly to the overall uncertainty associated with cloud-climate feedbacks. Ultimately, it translates into uncertainties in Earth's sensitivity to higher CO2 levels. While a lot of effort has recently been made toward constraining cloud phase in climate models, more remains to be done to document the radiative properties of clouds according to their phase. Here we discuss the added value of a new satellite data set that advances the field by providing estimates of the cloud radiative effect as a function of cloud phase and the implications for climate projections.

Summary The election of a ‘post-truth' US president raises important issues for scientists. If rational arguments and proven facts cannot compete against demagoguery and scapegoating, how can we establish evidence-based policies to avert catastrophic climate change and other environmental disasters? Michael Gross reports.

Global climate change is a key challenge to the global economy in the twenty-first century. To address it properly, a combination of mitigation and adaptation strategies is required. Although the responsibility for adaptation lies primarily with national governments (though, even here, poorer countries need international support), mitigation is one of the key fields of international cooperation. There is little chance that the fundamental objective of stopping global temperatures from rising more than 2 °С can be reached without a stable and comprehensive global governance system. The current international climate change regime based on the Paris Agreement is insufficient to prevent catastrophic climate change. Deeper cooperation between leading economies is especially necessary, including among those that are now reluctant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

This paper addresses the call for more action-based narratives of grassroot resistance to runaway climate change. At a time when deep changes in society are needed in order to respond to climate change and related sustainability issues, there are calls for greater connectivity between science and society, and for more inclusive and disruptive forms of knowledge creation and engagement. The contention of this paper is that the forces and structures that create a disconnect between science and society must be ‘transgressed’. This paper introduces a concept of Transgressive Action Research as a methodological innovation that enables the co-creation of counter hegemonic pathways towards sustainability. Through the method of the Living Spiral Framework, fieldwork reflexions from the Colombian case study of the international T-Learning project were elicited, uncovering and explicating the transgressive learning qualities needed to respond to climate change. As part of a larger action–research project, this paper combines the arts with the social sciences, demonstrating how the concept of ‘Transgressive Action Research’ can enable co-researchers to engage in disruptive and transformative processes, meeting the need for more radical approaches to addressing the urgent challenges of climate change.

This study discusses the role that States should play to limit dangerous effects of climate change which leads to human rights violations as it’s a problem that crosses the borders and it’s already a reality that many countries and islands are threatened to disappear. The State bears the responsibility to protect human rights, a responsibility that lies on international organizations as well. In part one, we discuss the insufficient measures taken by States at the international level, as many factors constitute obstacles: (1) The lack of internationally recognized human right to the environment linked to the absence of a legal status for climate refugees make the responsibility approach untenable. (2) The difficulty to establish legal responsibility based on a causal contribution to harm makes the responsibility approach insupportable. In fact, the 2001 International Law Commission draft articles on state responsibility for internationally wrongful acts are not binding. But the great difficulty concerns the distribution of the repair burden between States responsible for the emission of greenhouse gases. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to measure the share of each State in climate change. (3) The limits of United Nations Frame Convention on Climate Change of which the great bargain is to avert catastrophic climate change consequences by reducing the average global temperature increase to about 2* above pre-industrial levels. Part two, suggests solutions through an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice, and analyzes the successful regulation of climate change effects by domestic courts, by focusing on the Urgenda case in Netherlands.