Transcript Slide 1 - climateknowledge.org

Climate Change: An Inter-disciplinary
Approach to Problem Solving
(CLIMATE 480 // NRE 480)
Richard B. Rood
Cell: 301-526-8572
2525 Space Research Building (North Campus)
[email protected]
http://clasp.engin.umich.edu/people/rbrood
Winter 2016
February 18, 2016
Class Information and News
• Ctools site: CLIMATE_480_001_W16
– Record of course
• Rood’s Class MediaWiki Site
–
http://climateknowledge.org/classes/index.php/Climate_Change:_The_Move_to_Action
• A tumbler site to help me remember
– http://openclimate.tumblr.com/
• Assignment:
– For Thursday: Antarctic Sea Ice
– For March 8: Will be added to Ctools Site
Resources and Recommended Reading
• O’Brien et al., Winners and losers in the context
of global change, Annals of the Association of
American Geographers, 93, 89-102, 2003
• Barnett et al.Potential impacts of a warming
climate on water availability in snow-dominated
regions, Nature, 438, 303-309, 2005
• Sandvik: Wealth and Climate Change
Reference
• The Nature of Environmental Stewardship:
Understanding Creation Care Solutions to
Environmental Problems, Johnny Lin
• Environmental ethics book by a climate
scientist.
Outline: Class 12, Winter 2016
• Discussion of Ethics and Social Justice
Managing Climate Complexity
WEALTH
LOCAL
TEMPORAL
NEAR-TERM
GLOBAL
SPATIAL
LONG-TERM
Where do Ethics Fit In?
What Are Ethical Issues?
Short-term versus long-term
• We return to the short-term versus longterm tension.
• This is a classic short-term versus longterm problem.
– Ethics
– Economics
– React versus anticipation
• Knowledge base versus business base?
Fundamental Ethical Questions
• Contrast between rich and poor, haves and have
nots.
• Those who use energy are not those most
affected by climate change.
• Those with wealth are more resilient, more
adaptable.
• Winners and losers in climate change?
• Climate change versus the other challenges we
face.
• Our use of knowledge
November 15, 2006
Ethics in Public Life
Environmental Ethics
• “A goal of ethics is to provide us with a
language, a set of concepts, effective
arguments, and a comprehensive vision
whereby we can claim that some kinds of
actions are right or wrong, or some forms
of living are better or worse, perhaps
independently of one’s cultural or legal
context.” Karl Clifton-Soderstrom, North
Park University, Chicago
Climate Injustice
“Those who use too much of the carbon dioxide
absorption capacity of the world’s oceans,
vegetation and soil owe a debt to all living
creatures whose habitat is threatened. They owe a
particular debt to the carbon creditors, the poor of
the South who use less than their fair share of the
CO2 absorption capacity. The poor and Indigenous
peoples, are among those who are likely to suffer
the most severe effects of … climate change.
These consequences of global warming are
another manifestation of environmental
racism.”
(Ecumenical Coalition for Economic Justice 2001)
Thanks to Maria Carmen Lemos
Oil Consumption - Production
CONSUMPTION
PRODUCTION
Energy Information Administration
ENERGY VERSUS HUNGER
RICH VERSUS POOR
HUNGER
ENERGY
Thanks to Maria Carmen Lemos
Amigos de la Tierra Int. y
Acción Ecológica 2002.
Development versus climate change
What is the value of “nature?”
The Islands are Sinking
• My village is washing away.
ExxonMobil
• ExxonMobil position on climate change
and their internal research on climate
change.
ExxonMobil and
AGU
• Should
American
Geophysical
Union accept
ExxonMobil’s
sponsorship?
What do you think of hydraulic fracturing?
(fracking)
Should University of Michigan Endowment
Invest in Fossil Fuel Companies?
Responses to the Climate Change Problem
Autonomous/
Individual
Policy/
Societal
Reactive
Anticipatory
Adaptation
Mitigation
Some definitions
• Mitigation: The notion of limiting or controlling
emissions of greenhouse gases so that the total
accumulation is limited.
• Adaptation: The notion of making changes in the
way we do things to adapt to changes in climate.
• Resilience: The ability to adapt.
• Geo-engineering: The notion that we can
manage the balance of total energy of the
atmosphere, ocean, ice, and land to yield a
stable climate in the presence of changing
greenhouse gases.
Thinking about MITIGATION
• Mitigation: Things we do to reduce greenhouse
gases
– Reduce emissions
– Increase sinks
• Mitigation is for the global good
• Mitigation has slow time constants
• Mitigation is anticipatory policy
About the Global Good
• from the world of business ...
– Corporate Strategies for Climate Change
Andrew Hoffman, Pew, 2006
• Global good without benefit to the bottom
line profit is a poor motivator.
– Coupled with benefit to the bottom line great
motivator
About the Global Good
• from the world of faith ...
– Faith Community
• Global good from a perspective that might
be independent of the bottom line profit
Thinking about ADAPTATION
• Adaptation: What people might do to reduce harm of climate
change, or make themselves best able to take advantage of climate
change.
– Autonomous that people do by themselves
– Can be encouraged by public policy
• Command and control tell you to do it
• Incentives
• Subsidies
– Can be anticipatory or reactive
• Adaptation is local; it is self help.
• Adaptation has short time constants - at least compared to
mitigation  Hence people see the need to pay for it.
• Some amount of autonomous-reactive adaptation will take place.
– Moving villages in Alaska
Some Mitigation-Adaptation considerations
• Those who are rich and technologically advanced generally favor
adaptation; they feel they can handle it
– Plus, technology will continue to make fossil fuel cheap, but with
great(er) release of CO2
• Those who are poor and less technologically advanced generally
advocate mitigation and sharing of adaptation technology
• Perception that emission scenarios “don’t matter” for the next 50
years
• There are a lot of arguments, based on economics, that lead
towards adaptation
– Mitigation always looks expensive, perhaps economically risky, on the
time scale of 50 years.
• Adaptation looks easier because we will know more
• This will remain true as long as the consequences seem incremental and
modest
– The Innovators Dilemma, evolution vs revolution?
Scale
• What is the best scale to measure vulnerability
and adaptive capacity?
– National:
• inform states on needed policy response; allow for better
decision making; allows for comparison of differential
vulnerability
– Regional
• Impacts are likely not to be defined by national borders
– Local
• Ground truth
• Allows for the understanding of the local factors that mediate
sensitivity and resilience
Thanks to Maria Carmen Lemos
Return to Mitigation-Adaptation
• Mitigation: The notion of limiting or controlling
emissions of greenhouse gases so that the total
accumulation is limited.
• Adaptation: The notion of making changes in the
way we do things to adapt to changes in climate.
• Resilience: The ability to adapt.
• Think about the impacts on people:
– Formalize or quantify?
Vulnerability
• the interface between exposure to
physical threats and the capacity of
systems to resist, cope or adapt to such
threats.
• Reducing vulnerability: identifying points
of intervention in the causal change
between hazard and human
consequences.
Impacts (Hazards)
 extreme events move to the top
 variation in climate patterns
 Cause: storms, dry climate
 Outcome: floods, mudslides, drought, fire etc.
 External or intrinsic sources of vulnerability
 for example, “place”
Social Vulnerability
(vulnerability/sensitivity)
 is a state that exists within a system
before it encounters a hazard event
An inherent property of a system arising
from its internal characteristics (e.g.
poverty, inequality, entitlements,
institutional landscape, etc)
Generic and specific
Determinates of Adaptive Capacity
Determinant:
Encompasses:
Human capital
Knowledge (scientific, “local”, technical, political), education levels,
health, individual risk perception, labor
Information & Technology
Communication networks, freedom of expression, technology transfer
and data exchange, innovation capacity, early warning systems,
technological relevance
Material resources and infrastructure
Transport, water infrastructure, buildings, sanitation, energy supply and
management, environmental quality
Organization and social capital
State-civil society relations, local coping networks, social mobilization,
density of institutional relationships
Political capital
Modes of governance, leadership legitimacy, participation,
decentralization, decision and management capacity, sovereignty
Wealth & financial capital
Income and wealth distribution, economic marginalization, accessibility
and availability of financial instruments (insurance, credit), fiscal
incentives for risk management
Institutions and entitlements
Informal and formal rules for resource conservation, risk management,
regional planning, participation, information dissemination, technological
innovation, property rights and risk sharing mechanisms
Eakin and Lemos 2006
Thanks to Maria Carmen Lemos
Significant variables
(1) population with access to sanitation,
(2) literacy rate, 15–24-year olds,
(3) maternal mortality,
(4) literacy rate, over 15 years,
(5) calorific intake,
(6) voice and accountability,
(7) civil liberties,
(8) political rights,
(9) government effectiveness,
(10) literacy ratio (female to male),
(11) life expectancy at birth.
Thanks to Maria Carmen Lemos
Summary: Class 12, Winter 2016
• When we start to consider the impact of
climate change and how to respond we
– Faced with the existing situation, without
regard to climate change
– Are immediately brought to the capabilities
and practices of societies and cultures
– Response is, largely, non-scientific
– There are important issues of social justice
and liability
Outline: Class 12, Winter 2016
• Discussion of Ethics and Social Justice
Appendix
• Some Issues of Adaptation, Resilience,
Ethics
Sensitivity
• Sensitivity: different geographical scales,
time scales, degrees of exposure and
levels of predictability
Thanks to Maria Carmen Lemos
Resilience
• Ability of people and societies to mitigate, cope
and adapt to hazard
• Highly variable among countries, groups, gender,
etc.
• Coping capacity: “combination of all the natural
and social characteristics and resources available
in a particular location that are used to reduce the
impacts of hazards” (UNDP Report).
• “internal” processes, entitlements, income access
to resources, institutional and market structures
Thanks to Maria Carmen Lemos
What is the connection between human induced
environmental change and vulnerability?
• Human induced changes have reduced the
environment’s capacity to absorb the impacts of
change and to deliver the goods and services to
satisfy human needs.
• Global climate change is likely to exacerbate the
severity and frequency of impacts
• Examples: mudslides, land-use change, coastal
degradation, etc
Thanks to Maria Carmen Lemos
Some evaluation
• Adaptive capacity, resilience, etc., vary
widely from country to country. Depends
on exposure, but largely dependent on
wealth.
• Wealth is largely related to energy use.
• Brings up issues of social justice
Kuwait
Un it ed St at es
Aust r alia
Saudi Ar abia
Sin gapor e
Can ada
I r elan d
Nor way
Libya
I sr ael
Fin lan d
Russia
The Result of Global Inequality
is Gross Carbon Inequality
T aiw an
Ger man y
Un it ed Kin gdom
Japan
Rep Kor ea
POLAND
Sout h Af r ica
VENEZ UELA
M ALAYSI A
World Average
CO2 Emissions
Per Capita, 2000:
1.56 Tons
FRANCE
Wor ld Avg
SWI T Z ERLAN
SWEDEN
M EXI CO
ARGENT I NA
I RAQ
CUBA
BOT SWANA
EGYPT
CHI NA
ECUADOR
BRAZ I L
I NDONESI A
Z I M BABWE
I NDI A
PHI LI PPI NES
PAKI ST AN
Viet Nam
Rich countries emit around 2.5-6 metric tons carbon annually per person,
while the middle income nations are around 0.6 mT
and the poorest around 0.02 mT
HONDURAS
Cot e D'I voir e
CONGO
Sr i Lan ka
SWAZ I LAND
NI GERI A
KENYA
BANGLADESH
SUDAN
Z AM BI A
T ANZ ANI A
Source: Boden, 2003
NI GER
M OZ AM BI QUE
LAO
Z AI RE
AFGHANI ST AN
Et hiopia
Thanks to Maria Carmen Lemos
CHAD
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
If we want to measure ability to adapt
• We must
– Measuring social and cultural processes
– Data availability and reproduction
– Trade-off between model that better depict
reality and usable policy tools
– Consideration of equity and ethical issues
Thanks to Maria Carmen Lemos
Brooks, Adger and Kelly (2005)
Global Environmental Change
• risk = hazard x vulnerability
• Risk: numbers of people killed by
climate-related disaster per decade per
national population.
Thanks to Maria Carmen Lemos
Physical/Biophysical Vulnerability (risk)
Exposure: amount of (potential) damage
caused to a system by a particular
climate-related event or hazard
Vulnerability = I( impacts) – R
(resilience)
Thanks to Maria Carmen Lemos
Physical/Biophysical Vulnerability (risk)
IPCC: Vulnerability is a function of
ƒ( hazard, sensitivity, adaptive capacity)
Thanks to Maria Carmen Lemos