Transcript Climatic Change - Earth Portal Community

Human Dimensions of Climate Change
Paul C. Stern,
National Research Council, USA
Keynote Talk
Cooling the Liberal Arts:
Workshop for Teaching Climate Change
Dickinson College
Carlisle, PA
January 10, 2014
1
What are the human dimensions?
Figure from National Research Council (1992),
Global Environmental Change: Understanding the Human Dimensions, (elaborating
on a figure from Clark, 1988)
2
Implications of this perspective
• The physical and social sciences are connected, and
all are needed to understand and deal with climate
change
• The quintessential issues are at the intersection of
the physical, biological, technological, and social
• I will focus on the bottom half of the diagram, but
both halves are essential
a) The human causes of climate change, and what drives
them
b) The human effects of climate change
c) Human understanding of climate change
d) Options for action to address a, b, and c
3
A few foci to stimulate conversation
1. Improving fundamental ability to
understand climate change and think about
its implications
2. “Attribution” of climate change to human
causes as a focus for education
3. Policy analysis of realistic options for limiting
and adapting to climate change
4
1. Improving the fundamental ability to
understand the challenges of climate change
• Teaching climate change includes teaching the
current state of relevant knowledge in the natural
and social sciences and other relevant fields
• It is also offers an excellent opportunity for more
fundamental kinds of education, about:
– Climate change as intrinsically hard to understand
(Weber and Stern, 2011); intersection of statistics and
psychology
– Thinking and managing under risk and uncertainty
•
•
how to make informed choices about an uncertain future
how to evaluate knowledge claims, especially contested ones
5
Climate change as a hard-to-understand
phenomenon: physical aspects
• Causes are invisible
• Impacts are geographically and temporally distant
• Signals are hard to detect
– Slow changes in averages of highly variable phenomena
(temperature, rainfall, etc.)
– Climate change affects multiple phenomena, but people
tend to focus on one at a time
• Climate history is an increasingly poor guide to the
future (non-linear change)
6
Climate change as a hard-to-understand
phenomenon: psychological/social aspects
• Challenge of recognizing and understanding change
in highly variable phenomena, and its implications
• Personal experience is powerful but misleading
• Hard to see changes in averages of variable phenomena
• Recent extreme events carry extra weight
• Emotional reactions to uncertainty
• Limits of simple mental models
• Conflating climate change with other environmental problems
• Cognition driven by affect, values, worldviews
• Climate change: an emerging attitude object (Stern et al., 1995)
• Dimensions of risk perception: familiarity and dread
• The climate change denial campaign
7
Climate change as a case example for thinking
about risk and acting under uncertainty
• Popular presentations of climate change offer “facts” and
disputes about the “facts”
– This can lead some to accept one view as “established”
– …and others to conclude that nothing is really known and that
this justifies postponing action
– Both positions are too unsophisticated
– Standards of evidence for risk management decisions
• We actually have data, projections, and risk estimates
• Knowledge is better about the past than about the
future, but in both cases, there are:
– Ways to assess knowledge claims
– Ways to systematically consider options under risk
8
A liberal arts approach to decisions under risk,
uncertainty, and evolving knowledge (1)
1. Science provides a set of social institutions for
validating knowledge claims
a. Characteristics of institutions that foster strong and
improving science
--(e.g., openness, independent peer review, protections against
conflicts of interest, etc.)
b. Characteristics of institutions that develop and
improve decision-relevant (practical) environmental
knowledge
--(e.g., broad-based deliberation, explicit attention to value
issues, transparent deliberative processes, acceptable rules
for closure and reconsideration; NRC, 1996; Stern, 2005)
9
A liberal arts approach to decisions under risk,
uncertainty, and evolving knowledge (2)
2. Society offers institutions for governing risks and
managing uncertainty (regulation, insurance, etc.)
Characteristics of effective governance institutions (Stern,
2013):
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
invest in science
ensure broad participation
integrate scientific analysis with deliberation
higher-level actors facilitate actions at lower levels
connect a variety of institutional forms (polyarchy)
independent monitoring, accountable to interested and affected
parties
plan for institutional adaptation and change
10
2. Attribution of Climate Change to Human Causes
• Driving forces  human activities  physical
changes  planetary radiative balance
– Radiative balance (physical changes “forced” by GHG
emissions, changes in albedo, etc.); must be understood
but not a focus of “human dimensions” studies
– Human activities that directly cause (“drive”) physical
changes (e.g., fossil energy use, deforestation and other
land cover changes, cement production)
– Driving forces of the human activities: the I=PAT equation
and “unpacking” it: which populations and technologies,;
which uses of money; which governance systems, etc.
(York et al., 2003)
– Drivers operate at different scales
– Different disciplines needed for different drivers and scales11
“Attributing” GHG emissions to human
activities: Some issues for the liberal arts
• Implications of a focus on activities (driving cars) vs. driving forces
(income levels, automotive technology, CAFE standards and other
government actions): different questions; different disciplines
• Implications of choosing scale of analysis (global, national,
organizational, individual/household): different disciplines
• Accounting by consumers vs. by producers
– IPCC examines CO2-eq emissions by country where emissions occur
– Consumer-based accounting can also be done happen at smaller levels
(cities, firms, households)
– New estimates attribute emissions to producers of fossil fuels, cement,
etc. (Heede, 2014)
• Attribution as accounting (subdivide emissions by activities,
emitters, etc.) vs. attributing ethical/moral responsibility
12
A producer-based accounting of emissions:
Heede (2014)
• Paper estimates CO2eq for producers of fossil fuels and
cement, 1854-2010
• Finds that the top 90 producers account for 63% of cumulative
worldwide emissions; top 10 account for 38%
• Top 10 cumulative emitters:
– Former Soviet Union (8.9%); China (8.6%), Chevron/Texaco (3.5%),
ExxonMobil (3.2%), Aramco (3.2%), BP (2.5%), Gazprom (2.2%), Shell
(2.1%), National Iranian Oil Company (2.0%), Poland (coal; 1.9%)
• Top 10 emitters for 2010 are different:
– Aramco, Gazprom, National Iranian Oil Company, Coal India,
Exxon/Mobil, PetroChina, Pemex, BP, Peabody Energy, Petroleos de
Venezuela
13
Issues raised by producer-based accounting
• What different policy options for mitigation are suggested by
allocating responsibility to producers vs. to consumers?
– IPCC approach suggests international treaties
– Consumer-based analyses suggest policies to reduce consumption at
all levels
– Heede's approach opens possibilities for intervention by stockholders
or focused on corporate managers
– State-owned entities may be the worst emitters now
• Which policy strategies have the greatest practical potential?
• What analyses would be needed to inform policy choices focused
on changing behavior of major private-sector and state-run
corporate emitters?
• How could emitters’ investments in CCS, renewable energy
technologies, etc., be credited against current and past emissions in
order to recalculate net emissions levels?
14
Attribution as accounting vs. as ethics
• Each accounting system implicitly assigns (moral?)
responsibility to whatever is counted, e.g.,
– To producers or to consumers
– To countries, regions, organizations, households
• The problem is multiplied when impacts are also
considered
– Responsibility for impacts could be allocated to producers
or consumers of fossil fuels etc., to those who get in
harm’s way, and/or to those who allow or encourage them
to be or build there
• A topic for philosophy and for policy analysis
15
3. Policy Analysis of Realistic Options
Mitigation:
Analysis of options to limit climate change
Adaptation:
Analysis of options to increase the resilience of
communities and other human systems to the
effects of un-avoided climate change
Possibilities to focus on concrete policy issues
16
Mitigation:
Enhancing our legacy for the long-term future
• My 50th Reunion at Amherst College as a case
– Concern with our generation’s legacy
– “The world we inherited and the world we will leave
behind”: Three conversations (education, environment,
and government)
• Climate change as the preeminent environmental
legacy issue
– What are the most promising ways to improve our legacy?
– Focus on mitigation over adaptation because of greater
legacy implications
– Looking for a “sweet spot”
• I x p: Multiplying the impact of an action and the probability that
17
we can make it happen
A possible sweet spot for colleges: Divestment
• Divestment has been proposed at many colleges, usually
by students, sometimes by faculty (sometimes focused
on coal, sometimes all fossil fuel companies)
• Trustees usually have questions
– Would it have any effect (e.g., is it similar to/different from past
divestment campaigns, such as in South Africa)?
– What would it cost the college’s endowment?
– How would we decide which firms to divest?
– Could a historically fossil fuel company get credit for doing better, e.g.,
by investing in renewable energy? If so, how?
– How could a company get off a divestment list?
• Students could seek answers to these questions
– My alumni group will seek to collaborate with faculty, students
– Need to look for other possible sweet spots
18
Adaptation:
Reducing impacts of climate change on what people value
• Potential impacts are a major motivator for action on
climate change (on mitigation and adaptation)
• They are also a major subject for analysis and for policy
(e.g., what can be done to reduce damage from
expectable future events)
• Resilience also a major subject for analysis
– Can be examined by locations, social systems, and in relation to
economic/social stratification
– Issues of definition (e.g., resilience when; time discounting)
• Much room for impact and resilience analysis in liberal
arts curricula
19
Selected references
Heede, R. 2014. Tracing anthropogenic carbon dioxide and methane emissions to fossil
fuel and cement producers, 1854–2010. Climatic Change 122:229-241.
National Research Council, 1992. Global Environmental Change: Understanding the
Human Dimensions. Washington: National Academy Press.
National Research Council, 1996. Understanding Risk: Informing Decisions in a
Democratic Society. Washington: National Academy Press.
Stern, P.C. 2005. Deliberative methods for understanding environmental systems.
BioScience, 55:976-982.
Stern, P.C. 2013. Design principles for governing risks of emerging technologies. Pp.
65-87 in Structural Human Ecology: Risk, Energy and Sustainability, Dietz, T. and
Jorgenson, A.K. eds. Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press.
Stern, P.C., Dietz, T., Kalof, L., and Guagnano, G.A. 1995. Values, beliefs, and
proenvironmental action: attitude formation toward emergent attitude objects.
Journal of Applied Social Psychology 25:1611-1636.
Stern, P.C., and Kalof, L. 1996. Evaluating Social Science Research (2nd ed.). New York:
Oxford University Press.
Weber, E.U., and Stern, P.C. 2011. Public understanding of climate change in the
United States. American Psychologist 66:315-328.
York, R., Rosa, E.A., and Dietz, T. 2003. Footprints on the Earth: The environmental
consequences of modernity. American Sociological Review 68:279-300.