Tag Archives: climate change mitigation

The Future Will Not Take Care of Itself

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David P. Turner

January 20, 2025

Earth system scientists tend to think a lot about the future.  Their simulations of Earth’s near-term future  ̶  based on projections of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions  ̶  suggest dramatic changes in the climate that will stretch our human capacity to adapt.  For the purposes of climate change mitigation, their assessments indicate that the current trajectory of climate warming could be moderated significantly by collective action to reduce emissions.

Neoliberal economists on the other hand do not think much about the future.  According to neoliberal economic theory (and practice), the future will take care of itself.  Individual purchasing choices within a free market economic system will purportedly bring any negative aspects (externalities) of economic activities under control and correction.  Therefore, governmental interference in the economy is the road to ruin.

If Earth system scientists are right, and neoliberal economists are wrong, humanity is in big trouble.

A neoliberal economy is a free market economy  ̶  one in which supply and demand reign supreme (i.e. market fundamentalism).  Associated public policies include limited taxation, limited governmental regulation, antagonism to organized labor, private ownership of common resources, and cheap credit to promote investment.  The liberal part of the term refers to concern for individual freedom from governmental control, hence favoring little regulation and low taxes.  The neo- part refers to the widespread adoption of hyper-liberal economic policies around the world beginning in the 1980s (e.g. the Reagan and Thatcher administrations).  Besides insuring individual freedom, the theoretical upside of neoliberal economics is strong growth in gross domestic product (GDP) and this “rising tide lifts all boats”.

However, with respect to the future global environment, neoliberal economics has two long-term pernicious effects.  The first is that the neoliberal stance against regulations and taxation allows capitalist entrepreneurs to avoid paying the environmental (and social) costs of production.  CO2 emissions into the atmosphere – a global commons – from the combustion of fossil fuels for energy is an iconic example.  CO2 is emitted into the atmosphere in the course of energy generation, but the costs of the emissions  ̶  in the form of current and future impacts of climate change on human welfare (e.g. sea level rise)  ̶  are paid by people subject to climate-related disturbances the world over.  Failure to link fossil fuel combustion to its negative environmental impacts hinders the necessary societal effort to reduce emissions.

A second flaw of neoliberal economics is that the prized growth of the economy places increasing demands on natural resources, e.g. the atmospheric capacity to cleanse itself.  The neoliberal assumption is that resources are unlimited if the price is right.  But on our densely populated planet, many natural resources are being overused and degraded.  In the cases where neoliberal economists do demonstrate concern for the future of the environment, the policy response is usually to put the burden for mitigation on the consumer. If someone is worried about climate change, they can buy an electric vehicle, and anyone not worried about it can buy a gasoline vehicle.

A primary alternative to neoliberal environmentalism is to include corporate and public institutions as responsible parties in addressing the negative environmental consequences of the economy on the environmental commons.  These bodies operate at the scale required and have the resources to study the future and plan appropriately.  Although state capitalism is perhaps not something to be emulated uncritically, China has recently demonstrated that if you want to rapidly reduce gasoline consumption, the government can intervene in many ways to make it happen without wrecking the economy.

Environmental sociologists refer to the process of Ecological Modernization (EM) as a path to governance where environment problems are addressed through policy changes and technological improvements, all in the context of modest economic growth.  EM is not revolutionary systemic change to the capitalist economic system.  It is more like continuous tinkering with policy (e.g. tax policy and pollution standards).  EM is a form of cultural evolution that follows the model of biological evolution.  Just as genetic variation provides the basis for natural selection in biological evolution, various policy alternatives provide the basis for political decisions in cultural evolution.  Of course, it helps to have public forums, informed citizens, engaged politicians, and forward-thinking leadership.

Here, I’ve referred to the future-oriented aspects of Earth System Science and Neoliberal Economics.  However, there is another whole discipline  ̶  Future Studies  ̶  that explicitly concerns itself with caring about the future.  One of its common topics is scenarios for the human enterprise on Earth, be it self-induced environmental change beyond our ability to adapt, toxic political systems leading to collapse of civilization, or establishment of a sustainable, high technology, global civilization.  Whether Future Studies is more at home in the Social Sciences or the Humanities is debated, but it is certainly a form of post-normal science, i.e. the practitioners commonly derive conclusions about public policy from their analyses.

Our primate brains may not be particularly well designed to think in terms of the global spatial scale and the multigenerational temporal scale.  Nevertheless, we find ourselves in the Anthropocene era and we must accept our responsibilities for deliberately acting at those scales.  Dogmatically clinging to market fundamentalism will not do the job.

Aspirations for a Just Earth System as well as a Safe Earth System

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David P. Turner / November 19, 2024

Recent commentary on paths to global sustainability has advocated for Earth system justice (ESJ), specifically for an Earth system that is just as well as safe.

A safe Earth system is one in which both the biosphere and the technosphere thrive.  Current threats to the biosphere and technosphere come in the form of well-documented anthropogenic impacts on Earth’s energy balance, the global biogeochemical cycles, and the biota.  Earth system scientists have identified a set of planetary boundaries – such as an atmospheric CO2 concentration and associated increase in global mean temperature – beyond which Earth system characteristics such as climate will be destabilized, thereby putting at risk the welfare of both humans and other species.

A just Earth system is more difficult to define.  Historically, justice has largely been concerned with how people treat each other.  The formulation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was an outstanding achievement in the struggle for social justice.  However, the advent of the Anthropocene era has generated new questions about equality and fairness.

One of the key observations relevant to defining ESJ is that the people most impacted by climate change (e.g. impacts from a greater frequency and intensity of extreme weather events) are often not the people who have made the biggest contribution to causing climate change.  The basis of this distributional inequity is that relatively wealthy people usually have high per capita greenhouse gas emissions, but their wealth also buffers them from the consequences of climate change.  To account for this differential exposure, Earth system scientists have begun to estimate just planetary boundaries that would protect even the relatively vulnerable.

While distributional inequity can be considered in the current time period (intragenerational), we must also consider inequity through time (intergenerational justice).  Recent generations have greatly benefited from fossil fuel combustion, but it is future generations that will mostly pay the costs as climate disruption becomes manifest.  In a just world, each generation would leave the planetary life support system in as good or better a condition than the condition in which they inherited it.  Following that principle would require much larger  investments in greenhouse gas emission mitigation than are currently being made.

The Earth system justice concept also raises the issue of interspecies justice.  What give Homo sapiens the right to drive other species extinct?  Since we have clearly entered the Anthropocene era (with its associated 6th Great Extinction), humanity now has a responsibility to care for other species, and indeed for the biosphere as a whole.

Achieving ESJ is a daunting challenge because, even when considering just the biogeochemical aspects of Earth system function, the technical and environmental questions about how to address global environmental change issues are already complex.  To add the related issues associated with intragenerational justice, intergenerational justice, and interspecies justice makes finding answers even more difficult ( e.g. the hydrologic cycle as it relates to meeting basic human needs while factoring in protection of aquatic ecosystems).

There are policies that could help make the Earth system safe but would not make it more just, such as appropriating land from indigenous people to create carbon sinks.  Likewise, there are policies that could help make the Earth system more just, but would not make it safer, such as building coal burning power plants in developing countries that provide relatively cheap and reliable energy but also emit large quantities of greenhouse gases.  So, although the objective of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions is straightforward, the questions of who has responsibility, how to go about it, and where to prioritize the efforts, are more nuanced.

Given the many trade-offs among safe planetary boundaries and just planetary boundaries, political decisions must be made.  In the political realm (at least when there is some semblance of democracy), there is generally both a forum at which the stakeholders on any given issue can express their positions, and a societal decision-making mechanism that attempts to account for, or reconcile, the various interests.  In the case of climate change mitigation, we are fortunate that many mitigation policies can also serve to promote social justice.  Investments to manage land for the purposes of carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation could also serve to maintain homelands for vulnerable Indigenous people.  Investments in education and provision of family planning services improve quality of life, and also serve to tamp down population growth and hence total greenhouse gas emissions. 

An important practical rationale for addressing inequity as part of addressing global environmental change is that impoverished people may be pushed to live in marginal environments and will exploit any available natural resources to survive.  They don’t have the luxury of worrying about whether the environment is being degraded.

More generally, many global environmental change problems require global scale solutions. That means humanity as a collective must address them.  A major problem with respect to inequity is that it erodes feelings of solidarity.  Inequity prevents the organization of humanity as a “we”.

Achieving a safe and just Earth system will require leaders who understand the issues elaborated here, as well as the building of Earth system governance institutions that allow relevant policies to be debated and promulgated both nationally and globally.  The Great Transition to a sustainable global civilization needs technological advances like a renewable energy revolution, but also efforts to mitigate multiple forms of injustice.

Extreme Weather Events, Social Tipping Points, and a Step-Change in Climate Change Mitigation

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David P. Turner / August 12, 2023

Figure 1.  Annual additions of coal-fired electricity generation in recent years. Image Credit.

The rash of extreme weather events and associated impacts on humans around the world in recent years (especially 2023) is setting the stage for radical societal changes at the local and global scale with respect to climate change mitigation efforts.  One recognizable step-change in that direction would be a planet-wide cessation in the issuing of permits to build new coal-fired power plants.

Extreme weather events (droughts, heat waves, fires, and floods) are very much in the news recently everywhere on the planet.  Within the scientific community, these events are understood as part of normal weather variability, but also as attributable in part to on-going anthropogenic climate warming.  This year (2023) is proving to be especially prone to extreme weather events because of an extra boost of warming associated with an El Nino event. 

Globally, climate scientists suggest that 85% of people have suffered from extreme weather events that are partially attributed to climate change.

Social science research has shown that people respond markedly to their personal experience with weather events.  In the U.S., polls (2022) find that 71% of Americans say their community has experienced an extreme weather event in the last 12 months and 80% of those respondents believe climate change contributed at least in some measure to the cause.  In China and India, recent polls suggest strong awareness about the climate change issue and support for governmental mitigation policies. 

Admittedly, awareness of the issue is much lower elsewhere.  Some countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have relatively high proportions of inhabitants that have “never heard of” climate change. 

Nevertheless, billions of people around the world are making the connection between their personal experience of an extreme weather event and climate change.  Perhaps a new level of political support for mitigation efforts will emerge?

The concept of tipping points is common in the climate change literature, i.e. that distinct large-scale processes such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet eventually reach a point where strong positive (amplifying) feedbacks are engaged and the process becomes irreversible (on a human timescale).  The concept has also begun to be applied to changes in social systems.  Given widespread changes in personal views about climate change, and perhaps appropriate societal interventions, particular societies and ultimately the global society may tip into a strong climate change mitigation stance.

A clear step-change in the global climate change mitigation effort would be a planet-wide cessation of permits for building new coal-fired electricity generating plants.  Coal emissions contribute about 40% to global fossil fuel emissions.

Tremendous momentum has already built up in that direction based on anti-coal environmentalism and the improving cost differential between coal power and other energy sources (primarily natural gas and renewables).  The U.S. and E.U. do not formally prohibit new coal plants but few have been built in recent years.

The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and China’s Belt and Road Initiative are no longer supporting construction of new coal-burning facilities and many countries have made commitments in their Nationally Determined Contribution statements that will require reduction in the burning of coal.

Remarkably, India has recently announced consideration of a policy to prohibit planning of new coal-fired plants for at least the next 5 years.

China is still permitting and building about 2 coal-fired power plants per week.  It is no doubt a big ask for China to adopt a no-new-coal-plants policy.  However, the country is suffering significantly from extreme weather events, from the negative effects of air pollution from coal combustion, and from the interaction of the those two factors.  And China leads the world in production of renewable energy. 

The autocratic style government in China is not conducive to bottom-up social tipping dynamics, but how the Zero-Covid policy was dropped is an interesting case study in social change.  Rumblings within the bureaucracy and multi-city protests appear to have influenced Xi Jinping to make the radical policy shift.  Given its massive contribution to the global total of new coal plants coming on line (Figure 1), if China stopped issuing building permits, the battle would be nearly won.

Two caveats to ending coal-fired power plant construction should be considered.  First is that the global demand for electricity will likely increase in the future because of 1) growth in the global population and increased per capita energy use in the developing world, 2) increasing demand from the conversion to electricity powered vehicles, and 3) wide application of AI technology.  To generate that energy from non-coal sources will be challenging but feasible.  The second consideration is the possibility of Carbon Capture and Storage, i.e. continuing to burn coal but capturing the associated CO2 emissions and sequestering them belowground.  This technological fix sounds good in theory but thus far decades of research and pilot studies do not support that it can be economically implemented at scale.

Across all of humanity, cultural differences tend to build silos around each society – especially differences in language, religion, and degree of technological development.  That isolation has diminished over the course of human development to this point, and with the advent of the Anthropocene we can begin to see humanity as a unified whole and as capable of working collaboratively  on global environmental change issues.

When the world does achieve consensus on ending the construction of new coal power plants, it will be a step-change in the global climate change mitigation effort.  It will also signal a step towards the emergence of a collective humanity, an indication that “we” can agree on, and implement, a path to a sustainable future on Earth.