Posted on 04/08/2024 3:44:39 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
A new study led by Jarmo Kikstra, a research scholar in the IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program, explores whether reducing production and consumption growth could make a significant contribution to resolving the climate crisis.
As the effects of climate change become more severe and the scale of environmental damage gains magnitude, some researchers disagree about the desirability and feasibility of further economic growth in high-income countries. More recently, the case has been made for exploring a "degrowth" (or post-growth) strategy.
Such a strategy would entail reducing less necessary forms of production and consumption (rather than growing them) with the goal of reducing environmental pressures in a way that is democratically planned and improves equity and human well-being.
Assessment reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), however, have not yet featured mitigation scenarios with degrowth in high-income regions because little quantitative research has been done on such scenarios. In a new study, IIASA scientists and their colleagues analyzed whether degrowth could help to enable ambitious climate mitigation. They focused on a case study of Australia—a high-income, high-resource use country.
In their study, published in Economics Systems Research, the authors applied MESSAGEix—an integrated assessment model (IAM)—for a simple, explorative illustration of what information IAMs could provide in terms of projecting the future under a degrowth scenario.
The model was used to explore 51 scenarios, including those projecting no growth in consumption or even a reduction of consumption per capita. Although some degrowth modeling exists, the authors took a previously unexplored approach: they focused on what transition is required—under different economic growth assumptions—to achieve a particular emissions reduction target.
One of the primary aims of this project was to compare such scenarios to the ones that currently are common in the literature (those following the so-called Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) framework, where GDP grows in all pathways for all regions and points in time during the twenty-first century.
"Part of the degrowth literature talks about how historically energy and emissions decoupling has not been fast enough, and uses this to argue for a degrowth strategy," says Kikstra.
"We show that this is not a black-or-white debate. The nuance lies in the fact that also under degrowth strategies, forms of decoupling are necessary. But these are structurally different dynamics, which relate to a broad set of policies. A lot of new research is required to model such strategies, and we lay out different options to do so."
"The results of the study suggest that fast emissions reductions in countries like Australia could be enabled in scenarios characterized by reduced or zero growth. Possibly even faster than in virtually all of the most ambitious mitigation scenarios described in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report Scenario Database," says Bas van Ruijven, co-author of the study, research group leader, and principal research scholar in the IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment program.
The study also shows that reduced energy demand paired with lower GDP per capita lessens technological feasibility concerns by reducing the need for upscaling solar and wind energy and limiting future material needs for renewables as electricity generation stabilizes in the second half of the century.
"However, even in a scenario that halts economic growth, we show a fourfold increase in solar and wind energy is necessary by 2030, compared to 2020, for Australia to meet ambitious climate targets," says Joeri Rogelj, another co-author of the study and a senior research scholar in the IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program.
Finally, the study also looks at the risk lower energy availability could have on providing decent living standards for all. It shows the tradeoff between growth and inequality reduction, illustrating what corridors exist for meeting human needs and climate goals.
The authors highlight that further analysis is required to dissect the complex dynamics of an actual real-world degrowth transition scenario. This includes a better understanding of the sociocultural and economic feasibility of lower-growth pathways, as faster reductions in energy demand may entail deeper sociocultural feasibility concerns, depending on the policies involved.
During World War II, some Russian-funded “at university, professors” appeared to be distressed about . . . climate change.
Because they were in the communications net between the growing U.S. defense department aka the War Department, they had access to enough “air research” -types in uniform, that they proposed a study of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
A B-25 was instrumented, and with the “experts” aboard, made some passes over the mountains to the west - relative to the D.C.
The “blue haze” turned out to be nature’s work, God’s greater construction work.
“Is it good for tackling climate change?”
It probably is, but we need a big Demonstration Project to quantify the benefits. Here’s the Work Scope for the Demonstration Project::
All Democrats, progs, marxists, government employees, communists, anybody who voted for a “D” in the past 30 years, BLM, “End Oil,” and antifa must immediately sell their car, buy a bicycle, reduce their wardrobe to a few shirts and pants or skirts, sell their furnace and AC, disconnect electricity to their homes, downsize to a 600 sq ft apartment in a 40 story tall housing project, not take any airplane flights and eat bugs.
After five years we can assess the results of this approach.
Only a Commie would even think of a question like that.
If they really cared about the environment, they would just shut down the electrical grid. Nothing gets done without it and the climate change problem is solved immediately. 🤣
The assumptions of this study are false. Trying to obtain positive results with false assumptions is crazy.
Human effect on the overall climate is immeasurably small. So they have to lie about it.
High income countries are not the problem as far as *climate change* is concerned.
China would be a better place to start.
“Climate change” is the common adversary spawn by Maurice Strong that is used by the NWO’s appointed thug governments to subdue freedom from the common citizens. Maurice Strong was a George Soros buddy who died while living in Beijing China a few years ago.
It annoys me that a magazine devoted to Physics would even publish something like this. These Climate Cultists are like bed bugs , blood sucking parasites that get everywhere and return nothing but poop.
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