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1.
The academic debate on economic growth, the environment and prosperity has continued for many decades now. In 2015, we conducted an online survey of researchers’ views on various aspects of this debate, such as the compatibility of global GDP growth with the 2 °C climate policy target, and the timing and factors of (never-)ending growth. The 814 respondents have a wide range of backgrounds, including growth theory, general economics, environmental economics, ecological economics, environmental social sciences, and natural sciences. The two main aims are: (1) to provide an overview of agreements and disagreements across research fields, and (2) to understand why opinions differ. The survey results indicate substantial disagreement across research fields on almost every posed question. Environmental problems are most frequently mentioned as a very important factor contributing to an end of economic growth. Furthermore, we find that researchers are more skeptical about growth in the context of a concrete problem like the compatibility with the 2 °C climate target than when considering environmental problems more generally. Many respondents suggest ideology, values and worldviews as important reasons for disagreement. This is supported by the statistical analysis, showing that researchers’ political orientation is consistently correlated with views on growth. 相似文献
2.
Effective communication of uncertainty in the IPCC reports 总被引：1，自引：1，他引：0
3.
The feasibility of green growth is studied in the context of climate change. As carbon emissions are easier to quantify than many other types of environmental pressure, it will be possible to reach a more definite conclusion about the likelihood of green growth than has been possible in the long-standing historical debate on growth versus the environment. We calculate the rate of decoupling between gross domestic product (GDP) and GHG emissions needed to achieve internationally agreed climate targets. Next, eight arguments are considered that together suggest that fast decoupling will be very difficult. Subsequently, we examine the main lines of research used by proponents of green growth to support their viewpoint, including theoretical arguments, exercises with integrated assessment models, and studies of the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis. It will be concluded that decoupling as a main or single strategy to combine economic and environmental aims should be judged as taking a very large risk with our common future. To minimize this risk we need to seriously consider reducing our dependence on growth. This requires a fundamental change of focus in both economic research and policy.
Policy relevance
Currently, green growth is the only strategy of mainstream economists and policy makers to address climate change. This article demonstrates that such an exclusive focus is very risky due to the scale of the challenge and the existence of various barriers to the fast decoupling of GHG emissions from economic output. It seems that the only option to combine environmental and economic objectives is reducing the dependence of our economies on growth. Finding strategies in line with this requires a fundamental change of focus in both economic research and policy. 相似文献
4.
Taking a global perspective this paper sets out to theoretically and empirically identify prosperity patterns for four groups of countries at different levels of economic development. It conceptualizes ‘prosperity’ in terms of ecological sustainability, social inclusion, and the quality of life and contextualizes this definition in global perspective. Subsequently, it operationalizes and measures these dimensions on the basis of data from sources such as the World Bank, the Global Footprint Network and the OECD for 138 countries and by applying dual multiple factor analysis. Building on earlier research that suggested that higher development levels in terms of GDP per capita are capable of providing social and individual prosperity but at the expense of environmental sustainability, we ask whether other interrelations between prosperity indicators exist on other levels of economic development. Empirically distinguishing between ‘rich’, ‘emerging’, ‘developing’ and ‘poor countries’ the paper finds that social and individual prosperity indicators largely increase with economic development while ecological sustainability indicators worsen. Our analyses further reveal that ‘social cohesion’ can be established under different economic and institutional conditions, that subjective wellbeing increases with income rises at all levels of economic development and that a decoupling of carbon emissions from the provision of prosperity is, in principle, achievable, while a reduction of the global matter and energy throughput poses a much greater challenge. The paper concludes by highlighting the repercussions of these findings for the trajectories that countries at different levels of economic development would need to undertake. 相似文献
5.
The film The Age of Stupid depicts the world in 2055 devastated by climate change, combining this with documentary footage which illustrates many facets of the problems of climate change and fossil-fuel dependency. This study investigates the effects of the film on UK viewers’ attitudes and behaviour through a three-stage survey. Analysis of changes in attitudes focussed particularly on respondents’ concern about climate change, motivation to act, fear about the potential for catastrophe, beliefs about responsibility for action, and sense of agency. The film increased concern about climate change, motivation to act, and viewers’ sense of agency, although these effects had not persisted 10-14 weeks after seeing it. It was also successful in promoting some mitigation actions and behavioural change, although respondents reported barriers to further action, such as limited options for improving home energy efficiency among those in rented accommodation. However, filmgoers were atypical of the general public in that they exhibited very high levels of concern about climate change, knowledge about how to reduce their carbon emissions, and contact with organisations campaigning about climate change, before they saw the film. The paper considers how these factors may have enabled viewers to respond to the film as they did, as well as policy implications for those seeking to develop effective climate change communications. 相似文献
6.
Politicians who proclaim both their skepticism about global warming and their conservative religious credentials leave the impression that conservative Protestants may be more skeptical about scientists’ claims regarding global warming than others. The history of the relationship between conservative Protestantism and science on issues such as evolution also suggests that there may be increased skepticism. Analyzing the 2006 and 2010 General Social Survey, we find no evidence that conservative Protestantism leads respondents to have less belief in the conclusiveness of climate scientists’ claims. However, a second type of skepticism of climate scientists is an unwillingness to follow scientists’ public policy recommendations. We find that conservative Protestantism does lead to being less likely to want environmental scientists to influence the public policy debate about what to do about climate change. Existing sociological research on the relationship between religion and science suggests that this stance is due to a long-standing social/moral competition between conservative Protestantism and science. 相似文献
7.
This paper examines whether experience of extreme weather events—such as excessive heat, droughts, flooding, and hurricanes—increases an individual’s level concern about climate change. We bring together micro-level geospatial data on extreme weather events from NOAA’s Storm Events Database with public opinion data from multiple years of the Cooperative Congressional Election Study to study this question. We find evidence of a modest, but discernible positive relationship between experiencing extreme weather activity and expressions of concern about climate change. However, the effect only materializes for recent extreme weather activity; activity that occurred over longer periods of time does not affect public opinion. These results are generally robust to various measurement strategies and model specifications. Our findings contribute to the public opinion literature on the importance of local environmental conditions on attitude formation. 相似文献
8.
Transdisciplinary research is a promising approach to address sustainability challenges arising from global environmental change, as it is characterized by an iterative process that brings together actors from multiple academic fields and diverse sectors of society to engage in mutual learning with the intent to co-produce new knowledge. We present a conceptual model to guide the implementation of environmental transdisciplinary work, which we consider a “science with society” (SWS) approach, providing suggested activities to conduct throughout a seven-step process. We used a survey with 168 respondents involved in environmental transdisciplinary work worldwide to evaluate the relative importance of these activities and the skills and characteristics required to implement them successfully, with attention to how responses differed according to the gender, geographic location, and positionality of the respondents. Flexibility and collaborative spirit were the most frequently valued skills in SWS, though non-researchers tended to prioritize attributes like humility, trust, and patience over flexibility. We also explored the relative significance of barriers to successful SWS, finding insufficient time and unequal power dynamics were the two most significant barriers to successful SWS. Together with case studies of respondents’ most successful SWS projects, we create a toolbox of 20 best practices that can be used to overcome barriers and increase the societal and scientific impacts of SWS projects. Project success was perceived to be significantly higher where there was medium to high policy impact, and projects initiated by practitioners/other stakeholders had a larger proportion of high policy impact compared to projects initiated by researchers only. Communicating project results to academic audiences occurred more frequently than communicating results to practitioners or the public, despite this being ranked less important overall. We discuss how these results point to three recommendations for future SWS: 1) balancing diverse perspectives through careful partnership formation and design; 2) promoting communication, learning, and reflexivity (i.e., questioning assumptions, beliefs, and practices) to overcome conflict and power asymmetries; and 3) increasing policy impact for joint science and society benefits. Our study highlights the benefits of diversity in SWS - both in the types of people and knowledge included as well as the methods used - and the potential benefits of this approach for addressing the increasingly complex challenges arising from global environmental change. 相似文献
9.
In the U.S., public support for federal, state and local efforts to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs) continues to be a crucial element of the political viability of these proposals. We present a detailed analysis of the reasons given by the general public of Michigan and Virginia for supporting or rejecting a number of policies that could be implemented to meet GHG reductions. The data allow us to analyze the relationships between reasons provided by respondents, social psychological and demographic characteristics, and policy support. This analysis can provide policymakers pragmatic guidance in (1) developing tactics to engage the public that build on current concerns about climate change policies and (2) crafting and communicating policies that garner support from various segments of the public. This analysis also raises theoretical questions regarding the relationship between public discourse on environmental issues and the formation of public policy support. We suggest that future efforts to understand the U.S. dynamics of public support for climate change policies could benefit from understanding the public discursive and the reasoning processes that underlie public opinion formation. 相似文献
10.
Global GDP projections for the 21st century are needed for the exploration of long-term global environmental problems, in particular climate change. Greenhouse gas emissions as well as climate change mitigation and adaption capacities strongly depend on growth of per capita income. However, long-term economic projections are highly uncertain. This paper provides five new long-term economic scenarios as part of the newly developed shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs) which represent a set of widely diverging narratives. A method of GDP scenario building is presented that is based on assumptions about technological progress, and human and physical capital formation as major drivers of long-term GDP per capita growth. The impact of these drivers differs significantly between different shared socio-economic pathways and is traced back to the underlying narratives and the associated population and education scenarios. In a highly fragmented world, technological and knowledge spillovers are low. Hence, the growth impact of technological progress and human capital is comparatively low, and per capita income diverges between world regions. These factors play a much larger role in globalization scenarios, leading to higher economic growth and stronger convergence between world regions. At the global average, per capita GDP is projected to grow annually in a range between 1.0% (SSP3) and 2.8% (SSP5) from 2010 to 2100. While this covers a large portion of variety in future global economic growth projections, plausible lower and higher growth projections may still be conceivable. The GDP projections are put into the context of historic patterns of economic growth (stylized facts), and their sensitivity to key assumptions is explored. 相似文献
11.
A growing body of research indicates that opinions about long-term climate change and other natural resource issues can be significantly affected by current weather conditions (e.g., outside air temperature) and other highly contingent environmental cues. Although increased severity and frequency of droughts is regarded as a likely consequence of anthropogenic climate change, little previous research has attempted to relate the experience of drought with public attitudes about water supply or water-related climate change issues. For this study, a large set (n?=?3,163) of public survey data collected across nine states of the southern United States was spatio-temporally linked with records of short-term (~12 weeks) and long-term (~5 years) drought condition at the level of each respondent’s zip code. Multivariate ordinal logistic regression models that included numerous other independent variables (environmental ideology, age, gender, education, community size, residency duration, and local annual precipitation) indicated highly significant interactions with long-term drought condition, but showed no significant effect from short-term drought condition. Conversely, attitudes about water-related climate change showed highly significant interactions with short-term drought, with weaker to no effects from long-term drought. While the finding of significant effects from short-term drought condition on opinions about future drought is broadly consistent with previous public opinion research on climate change, the finding of water supply attitudes being more responsive to longer term drought condition is, to our knowledge, a novel result. This study more generally demonstrates the methodological feasibility and applied importance of accounting for local drought condition when public opinion information is used to evaluate outreach programs for water conservation and climate change. 相似文献
12.
Global pet ownership, especially of cats and dogs, is rising with income growth, and so too are the environmental impacts associated with their food. The global extent of these impacts has not been quantified, and existing national assessments are potentially biased due to the way in which they account for the relative impacts of constituent animal by-products (ABPs). ABPs typically have lower value than other animal products (i.e. meat, milk and eggs), but are nevertheless associated with non-negligible environmental impacts. Here we present the first global environmental impact assessment of pet food. The approach is novel in applying an economic value allocation approach to the impact of ABPs and other animal products to represent better the environmental burden. We find annual global dry pet food production is associated with 56–151 Mt CO2 equivalent emissions (1.1%−2.9% of global agricultural emissions), 41–58 Mha agricultural land-use (0.8–1.2% of global agricultural land use) and 5–11 km3 freshwater use (0.2–0.4% of water extraction of agriculture). These impacts are equivalent to an environmental footprint of around twicethe UK land area, and would make greenhouse gas emission from pet food around the 60th highest emitting country, or equivalent to total emissions from countries such as Mozambique or the Philippines. These results indicate that rising pet food demand should be included in the broader global debate about food system sustainability. 相似文献
13.
Stacy Rosenberg Arnold Vedlitz Deborah F. Cowman Sammy Zahran 《Climatic change》2010,101(3-4):311-329
Climate scientists have played a significant role in investigating global climate change. In the USA, a debate has swirled about whether a consensus on climate change exists among reputable scientists and this has entered the policy process. In order to better understand the views of US climate scientists, we conducted an empirical survey of US climate scientists (N?=?468) in 2005, and compared the results with the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) physical science report and policy summaries. Our results reveal that survey respondents generally agree about the nature, causes, and consequences of climate change, and are in agreement with IPCC findings. We also found that there is strong support for a variety of policy initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 相似文献
14.
Co-production, the collaborative weaving of research and practice by diverse societal actors, is argued to play an important role in sustainability transformations. Yet, there is still poor understanding of how to navigate the tensions that emerge in these processes. Through analyzing 32 initiatives worldwide that co-produced knowledge and action to foster sustainable social-ecological relations, we conceptualize ‘co-productive agility’ as an emergent feature vital for turning tensions into transformations. Co-productive agility refers to the willingness and ability of diverse actors to iteratively engage in reflexive dialogues to grow shared ideas and actions that would not have been possible from the outset. It relies on embedding knowledge production within processes of change to constantly recognize, reposition, and navigate tensions and opportunities. Co-productive agility opens up multiple pathways to transformation through: (1) elevating marginalized agendas in ways that maintain their integrity and broaden struggles for justice; (2) questioning dominant agendas by engaging with power in ways that challenge assumptions, (3) navigating conflicting agendas to actively transform interlinked paradigms, practices, and structures; (4) exploring diverse agendas to foster learning and mutual respect for a plurality of perspectives. We explore six process considerations that vary by these four pathways and provide a framework to enable agility in sustainability transformations. We argue that research and practice spend too much time closing down debate over different agendas for change – thereby avoiding, suppressing, or polarizing tensions, and call for more efforts to facilitate better interactions among different agendas. 相似文献
15.
Social surveys suggest that the American public's concern about climate change has declined dramatically since 2008. This has led to a search for explanations for this decline, and great deal of speculation that there has been a fundamental shift in public trust in climate science. We evaluate over thirty years of public opinion data about global warming and the environment, and suggest that the decline in belief about climate change is most likely driven by the economic insecurity caused by the Great Recession. Evidence from European nations further supports an economic explanation for changing public opinion. The pattern is consistent with more than forty years of public opinion about environmental policy. Popular alternative explanations for declining support – partisan politicization, biased media coverage, fluctuations in short-term weather conditions – are unable to explain the suddenness and timing of opinion trends. The implication of these findings is that the “crisis of confidence” in climate change will likely rebound after labor market conditions improve, but not until then. 相似文献
16.
Policymakers must understand public opinion to craft effective policies, particularly in highly polarized areas such as environmental policy. However, the literature investigating the factors that drive public opinion on environmental spending largely ignores the role of exogenous events. This article investigates the role that natural disasters, as a form of exogenous shock, play in shaping public opinion. We construct a dataset using the General Social Survey (GSS) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) natural disaster data from 1980 to 2018 and use generalized ordered logistic models to analyze the relationship between disasters and environmental opinions in the US. Our findings reveal that the number of disasters that occur significantly drives public support for environmental spending and that different types of disaster have heterogeneous impacts with wildfires and severe winter weather events being the most impactful. These results shed light on the impact of environmental events on public opinion on the environment, helping both researchers and policymakers make sense of dynamic public opinions. 相似文献
17.
Tatyana Deryugina 《Climatic change》2013,118(2):397-416
Global warming has become a controversial public policy issue in spite of broad scientific consensus that it is real and that human activity is a contributing factor. It is likely that public consensus is also needed to support policies that might counteract it. It is therefore important to understand how people form and update their beliefs about climate change. Using unique survey data on beliefs about the occurrence of the effects of global warming, I estimate how local temperature fluctuations influence what individuals believe about these effects. I find that some features of the updating process are consistent with rational updating. I also test explicitly for the presence of several heuristics known to affect belief formation and find strong evidence for representativeness, some evidence for availability, and no evidence for spreading activation. I find that very short-run temperature fluctuations (1 day–2 weeks) have no effect on beliefs about the occurrence of global warming, but that longer-run fluctuations (1 month–1 year) are significant predictors of beliefs. Only respondents with a conservative political ideology are affected by temperature abnormalities. 相似文献
18.
This study builds on an earlier analysis of resilience of India and Indian states to climate change. The previous study (Brenkert and Malone, Clim Change 72:57–102, 2005) assessed current resilience; this research uses the Vulnerability–Resilience Indicators Model (VRIM) to project resilience to 2095 and to perform an uncertainty analysis on the deterministic results. Projections utilized two SRES-based scenarios, one with fast-and-high growth, one with delayed growth. A detailed comparison of two states, the Punjab and Orissa, points to the kinds of insights that can be obtained using the VRIM. The scenarios differ most significantly in the timing of the uncertainty in economic prosperity (represented by GDP per capita) as a major factor in explaining the uncertainty in the resilience index. In the fast-and-high growth scenario the states differ most markedly regarding the role of ecosystem sensitivity, land use and water availability. The uncertainty analysis shows, for example, that resilience in the Punjab might be enhanced, especially in the delayed growth scenario, if early attention is paid to the impact of ecosystems sensitivity on environmental well-being of the state. By the same token, later in the century land-use pressures might be avoided if land is managed through intensification rather than extensification of agricultural land. Thus, this methodology illustrates how a policy maker can be informed about where to focus attention on specific issues, by understanding the potential changes at a specific location and time—and, thus, what might yield desired outcomes. Model results can point to further analyses of the potential for resilience-building. 相似文献
19.
Scepticism and uncertainty about climate change: Dimensions, determinants and change over time 总被引：3，自引：0，他引：3
Lorraine Whitmarsh 《Global Environmental Change》2011,21(2):690-700
While scientific consensus and political and media messages appear to be increasingly certain, public attitudes and action towards the issue do not appear to be following suit. Popular and academic debate often assumes this is due to ignorance or misunderstanding on the part of the public, but some studies have suggested political beliefs and values may play a more important role in determining belief versus scepticism about climate change. The current research used two representative postal surveys of the UK public to: measure scepticism and uncertainty about climate change; determine how scepticism varies according to individual characteristics, knowledge and values; and examine how scepticism has changed over time. Findings show denial of climate change is less common than the perception that the issue has been exaggerated. Scepticism was found to be strongly determined by individuals’ environmental and political values (and indirectly by age, gender, location and lifestyle) rather than by education or knowledge. Between 2003 and 2008, public uncertainty about climate change has remained remarkably constant, although belief that claims about the issue are exaggerated has doubled over that period. These results are interpreted with reference to psychological concepts of motivated reasoning, confirmation bias and ‘finite pool of worry’. Implications for communication and policy are discussed. 相似文献
20.
Abstract A series of meetings of two ‘Citizen Panels’ were held to explore public perceptions of off-shore carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and storage (CCS). In addition, a face-to-face survey of 212 randomly selected individuals was conducted. We found that, on first hearing about CCS in the absence of any information on its purpose, the majority of people either do not have an opinion at all or have a somewhat negative perspective. However, when (even limited) information is provided on the role of CO2 storage in reducing CO2 emissions to the atmosphere, opinion shifts towards expressing slight support for the concept. Support depends, however, upon concern about human-caused climate change, plus recognition of the need for major reductions in CO2 emissions. It also depends upon CCS being seen as just one part of a wider strategy for achieving significant cuts in CO2 emissions. A portfolio including renewable energy technologies, energy efficiency, and lifestyle change to reduce demand was generally favoured. CCS can be part of such a portfolio, but wind, wave, tidal, solar and energy efficiency were preferred. It was felt that uncertainties concerning the potential risks of CCS had to be better addressed and reduced; in particular the risks of accidents and leakage (including the potential environmental, ecosystem and human health impacts which might result from leakage). 相似文献