Search Results
Regional income and wave energy deployment in Ireland
2020, Farrell, Niall, O'Donoghue, Cathal, Morrissey, Karyn
Alongside environmental benefits, renewable energy deployment is often evaluated on grounds of regional development. Focusing on wave energy deployment in Ireland, this paper quantifies employment-related welfare change net of associated subsidy costs. Although the added employment reduces inter-regional inequality, certain subsidies increase total income inequality by a greater extent. Total inequality increases by 0.25% in the preferred scenario. This pattern of incidence persists under an optimistic scenario where all manufacturing activity is carried out locally. This finding highlights that policies of regional development should consider the spatial distribution of associated subsidy costs.
Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene
2018, Steffen, Will, Rockström, Johan, Richardson, Katherine, Lenton, Timothy M., Folke, Carl, Liverman, Diana, Summerhayes, Colin P., Barnosky, Anthony D., Cornell, Sarah E., Crucifix, Michel, Donges, Jonathan F., Fetzer, Ingo, Lade, Steven J., Scheffer, Marten, Winkelmann, Ricarda, Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim
We explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabilization of the climate at intermediate temperature rises and cause continued warming on a “Hothouse Earth” pathway even as human emissions are reduced. Crossing the threshold would lead to a much higher global average temperature than any interglacial in the past 1.2 million years and to sea levels significantly higher than at any time in the Holocene. We examine the evidence that such a threshold might exist and where it might be. If the threshold is crossed, the resulting trajectory would likely cause serious disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies. Collective human action is required to steer the Earth System away from a potential threshold and stabilize it in a habitable interglacial-like state. Such action entails stewardship of the entire Earth System—biosphere, climate, and societies—and could include decarbonization of the global economy, enhancement of biosphere carbon sinks, behavioral changes, technological innovations, new governance arrangements, and transformed social values.
Emergent inequality and business cycles in a simple behavioral macroeconomic model
2021, Asano, Yuki M., Kolb, Jakob J., Heitzig, Jobst, Farmer, J. Doyne
Standard macroeconomic models assume that households are rational in the sense that they are perfect utility maximizers and explain economic dynamics in terms of shocks that drive the economy away from the steady state. Here we build on a standard macroeconomic model in which a single rational representative household makes a savings decision of how much to consume or invest. In our model, households are myopic boundedly rational heterogeneous agents embedded in a social network. From time to time each household updates its savings rate by copying the savings rate of its neighbor with the highest consumption. If the updating time is short, the economy is stuck in a poverty trap, but for longer updating times economic output approaches its optimal value, and we observe a critical transition to an economy with irregular endogenous oscillations in economic output, resembling a business cycle. In this regime households divide into two groups: poor households with low savings rates and rich households with high savings rates. Thus, inequality and economic dynamics both occur spontaneously as a consequence of imperfect household decision-making. Adding a few “rational” agents with a fixed savings rate equal to the long-term optimum allows us to match business cycle timescales. Our work here supports an alternative program of research that substitutes utility maximization for behaviorally grounded decision-making.
The Planetary Health Academy—a virtual lecture series for transformative education in Germany
2023, Gepp, Sophie, Jung, Laura, Wabnitz, Katharina, Schneider, Frederick, v Gierke, Friederike, Otto, Hannah, Hartmann, Sylvia, Gemke, Theresa, Schulz, Christian, Gabrysch, Sabine, Fast, Marischa, Schwienhorst-Stich, Eva-Maria
The planetary crises require health professionals to understand the interlinkages between health and environmental changes, and how to reduce ecological harm (ie, ecological footprint) and promote positive change (ie, ecological handprint). However, health professions’ education and training are mostly lacking these aspects. In this Viewpoint, we report findings from the evaluation of the Planetary Health Academy, the first open online lecture series for transformative planetary health education in Germany. In a retrospective online survey, 458 of 3656 Planetary Health Academy participants reported on their emotions towards climate change, attitudes towards health professionals’ responsibilities, self-efficacy, and the contribution of the Planetary Health Academy to their knowledge and actions. Additionally, motivators and barriers to acting were assessed. Our findings provide insights that can inform future efforts for transformative education. Combined with network and movement building, education could act as a social tipping element toward actions to mitigate global environmental changes.
Reply to Ruhl and Craig: Assessing and governing extreme climate risks needs to be legitimate and democratic
2022, Kemp, Luke, Xu, Chi, Depledge, Joanna, Ebi, Kristie L., Gibbins, Goodwin, Kohler, Timothy A., Rockström, Johan, Scheffer, Marten, Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim, Steffen, Will, Lenton, Timothy M.
[No abstract available]
Stewardship of global collective behavior
2021, Bak-Coleman, Joseph B., Alfano, Mark, Barfuss, Wolfram, Bergstrom, Carl T., Centeno, Miguel A., Couzin, Iain D., Donges, Jonathan F., Galesic, Mirta, Gersick, Andrew S., Jacquet, Jennifer, Kao, Albert B., Moran, Rachel E., Romanczuk, Pawel, Rubenstein, Daniel I., Tombak, Kaia J., Van Bavel, Jay J., Weber, Elke U.
Collective behavior provides a framework for understanding how the actions and properties of groups emerge from the way individuals generate and share information. In humans, information flows were initially shaped by natural selection yet are increasingly structured by emerging communication technologies. Our larger, more complex social networks now transfer high-fidelity information over vast distances at low cost. The digital age and the rise of social media have accelerated changes to our social systems, with poorly understood functional consequences. This gap in our knowledge represents a principal challenge to scientific progress, democracy, and actions to address global crises. We argue that the study of collective behavior must rise to a “crisis discipline” just as medicine, conservation, and climate science have, with a focus on providing actionable insight to policymakers and regulators for the stewardship of social systems.
Reply to Kelman: The foundations for studying catastrophic climate risks
2022, Kemp, Luke, Xu, Chi, Depledge, Joanna, Ebi, Kristie L., Gibbins, Goodwin, Kohler, Timothy A., Rockström, Johan, Scheffer, Marten, Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim, Steffen, Will, Lenton, Timothy M.
Reply to Burgess et al: Catastrophic climate risks are neglected, plausible, and safe to study
2022, Kemp, Luke, Xu, Chi, Depledge, Joanna, Ebi, Kristie L., Gibbins, Goodwin, Kohler, Timothy A., Rockström, Johan, Scheffer, Marten, Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim, Steffen, Will, Lenton, Timothy M.
Reply to Bhowmik et al.: Democratic climate action and studying extreme climate risks are not in tension
2022, Kemp, Luke, Xu, Chi, Depledge, Joanna, Ebi, Kristie L., Gibbins, Goodwin, Kohler, Timothy A., Rockström, Johan, Scheffer, Marten, Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim, Steffen, Will, Lenton, Timothy M.
[no abstract available]
Drought losses in China might double between the 1.5 °C and 2.0 °C warming
2018, Su, Buda, Huang, Jinlong, Fischer, Thomas, Wang, Yanjun, Kundzewicz, Zbigniew W., Zhai, Jianqing, Sun, Hemin, Wang, Anqian, Zeng, Xiaofan, Wang, Guojie, Tao, Hui, Gemmer, Marco, Li, Xiucang, Jiang, Tong
We project drought losses in China under global temperature increase of 1.5 °C and 2.0 °C, based on the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) and the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), a cluster analysis method, and “intensity-loss rate” function. In contrast to earlier studies, to project the drought losses, we predict the regional gross domestic product under shared socioeconomic pathways instead of using a static socioeconomic scenario. We identify increasing precipitation and evapotranspiration pattern for the 1.5 °C and 2.0 °C global warming above the preindustrial at 2020–2039 and 2040–2059, respectively. With increasing drought intensity and areal coverage across China, drought losses will soar. The estimated loss in a sustainable development pathway at the 1.5 °C warming level increases 10-fold in comparison with the reference period 1986–2005 and nearly threefold relative to the interval 2006–2015. However, limiting the temperature increase to 1.5 °C can reduce the annual drought losses in China by several tens of billions of US dollars, compared with the 2.0 °C warming.