Download AOSS_480_L13_Climate_Change_Response_20080219

Climate Change: The Move to Action
(AOSS 480 // NRE 501)
Richard B. Rood
734-647-3530
2525 Space Research Building (North Campus)
[email protected]
http://aoss.engin.umich.edu./people/rbrood
Winter 2008
February 19, 2008
Class Basics
• A ctools site for all
– AOSS 480 001 W08
• This is the official repository for lectures
• Email [email protected]
• Class Web Site and Wiki
– Climate Change: The Move to Action
– Winter 2008 Term
• Wunderground Climate Page
– Posted Introduction of the New Rough Guide
– My recent series on models
Lectures coming up
• http://www.snre.umich.edu/events
Readings on Local Servers
• Assigned
– Brooks: Framework for Understanding
Vulnerability and Adaptive Ability
Of Interest
– Eakin: Building Adaptive Capacity
• A basic reference
– Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Web Portal
QuikClimate AOSS 605
• Meet in Space Research Building, 4:30,
February 19, 2008, Room TBD.
– Lounge in front of auditorium.
Projects
• Projects discussion
– What topics are being discussed?
– Are groups organizing?
– Present a prospectus?
Outline of Lecture
• Climate change and society
– Impacts based approach
– Knowledge based approach
• Value systems and rationality
• Relation of climate change to, say, energy
and agriculture
– Conflicting interests
• Mitigation and Adaptation
• Formalizing the approach to adaptation
– Social justice
Coherent and Convergent?
• There is evidence in both the physical climate
system and ecosystems of systematic global
warming.
• This evidence shows correlated behavior
through many systems.
• Taken independently each piece could be
challenged.
• Taken together the evidence converges.
– Consistent with human-related forcing
Climate Change Motivates Concern?
NO
Greenhouse Effect
(Observation and
Theory)
PREDICT
consequential rise in
global temperature /
Rapid enough to
disrupt society and
commerce
Observations of the
past. / Large and small
climate shifts. / Relation
between CO2 and
Temperature
Rapid CO2 increase
/ Comparable to ice
age – temperate
difference
Should we be concerned ?
YES
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS
NO
PREDICT
consequential rise in
global temperature /
Rapid enough to
disrupt society and
commerce
Should we be concerned ?
YES
HEAT
SEA LEVEL RISE
WATER
ECOSYSTEMS
WEATHER
IMPACTS ON KEY HUMAN ACTIVITIES
NO
Anticipate
consequential rise in
global temperature /
Rapid enough to
disrupt society and
commerce
Should we be concerned ?
Even if you think “NO,”
you will be impacted.
YES
HEAT
SEA LEVEL RISE
WATER
WEATHER
ECOSYSTEMS
“BUSINESS”
PUBLIC HEALTH ENERGY
AGRICULTURE
INTERACTIONS WITH HUMAN BEHAVIOR
SEA LEVEL RISE
HEAT
WATER
WEATHER
ECOSYSTEMS
“BUSINESS”
PUBLIC HEALTH ENERGY
MORE
RELIGION
AGRICULTURE
MORE
POLICY
SOCIAL JUSTICE
LAW
WHAT WE JUST DID
• Took the direction of climate change
impacts and how it is likely to influence
our societies.
– Through impact on natural resources.
– That impact health, food, economy.
– That motivate and form policy and law.
– That are directed by beliefs and ethics.
This impacts-based approach stands in contrast
to the past knowledge based approach
• Until the last year or so, climate change
was broadly debated on the presumed
knowledge of predictions.
Based on scientific investigation
SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION OF CLIMATE CHANGE
How we interpret the results of that investigation
Belief System Values Perception Cultural Mandate
Societal Needs
SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION OF CLIMATE CHANGE
National Religious Partnership for the Environment
Which relies on how we get out information
Belief System Values Perception Cultural Mandate
Societal Needs
information flow: research, journals, press, opinion, …
SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION OF CLIMATE CHANGE
Which does influence scientific investigation
Belief System Values Perception Cultural Mandate
Societal Needs
information flow: research, journals, press, opinion, …
SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION OF CLIMATE CHANGE
It all gets stirred together
Belief System Values Perception Cultural Mandate
Societal Needs
information flow: research, journals, press, opinion, …
SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION OF CLIMATE CHANGE
And different communities have intrinsic interests
RELIGION
POLICY
“BUSINESS”
ECONOMICS
PUBLIC HEALTH
ENERGY
LAW
SOCIAL JUSTICE
Belief System Values Perception Cultural Mandate
Societal Needs
information flow: research, journals, press, opinion, …
SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION OF CLIMATE CHANGE
What are the pieces which we must consider?
(what are the consequences)
Security
Food
Environmental
National
RELIGION
Societal Success
Standard of Living
...???...
POLICY
“BUSINESS”
ECONOMICS
PUBLIC HEALTH
ENERGY
??????
SOCIAL JUSTICE
Belief System Values Perception Cultural Mandate
Societal Needs
information flow: research, journals, press, opinion, …
SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION OF CLIMATE CHANGE
Impacts versus knowledge-based approach
• They get to the same place:
– Impacts is more tangible. It directly impacts
people, resources, and economies. It is more
reactionary.
– Knowledge based is less tangible, does not have
the “proof” of impacts. It is more anticipatory.
• These are conflicting subcultures
– Valuation of knowledge
– Valuation of commerce
– Valuation of social justice
A little time for transition
• Time to think and talk?
• Hold these notions in mind as we seek to find
the tensions in the projects that we define.
• It is good to place some tension in the project
teams.
– It’s real.
– It strengthens results.
– It moves problems out of the realm of academia
Climate Change Relationships
• Energy use and climate change have a
special relationship.
CLIMATE CHANGE
ENERGY
Energy and Climate Change
• Our primary source of energy, burning
fossil fuels, is the primary cause of
climate change.
• Energy is a resource that is extremely
stressed.
• Use of energy is strongly correlated with
societal success.
• Societal success is in our best interests.
Energy and Climate Change
• To address climate change requires us to approach
energy in a fundamentally different way.
– Fundamental
• Stresses on energy, energy security, can be
addressed in ways that do not address climate
change.
• The impact of climate change, environmental
security, on society is perceived as being less urgent
than energy security.
• And energy security is crucial to societal success,
which can be change in stunningly short amounts of
time.
Short-term versus long-term
• This is a classic short-term versus longterm problem.
– Ethics
– Economics
– React versus anticipation
• Knowledge base versus business base?
Climate Change Relationships
CLIMATE CHANGE
SOCIETAL SUCCESS
• Consumption // Population // Energy
ENERGY
POPULATION
CONSUMPTION
SOCIETAL SUCCESS
Climate Change Relationships
• Consumption // Population // Energy
ENERGY
POPULATION
CONSUMPTION
WATER RESOURCES
CLIMATE CHANGE
AGRICULTURE
PUBLIC HEALTH
Climate change relations
• All of these issues, and they are big
issues, carry a relationship to each
other. Set energy and climate change
at the center. Then, say, agriculture
carries both dependent and
independent relationships with climate
change and energy.
Predictions motivate action
How should we
respond to the
predictions?
Must remember that the climate
problem is currently entwined with
energy sources, energy use.
Energy use touches every part of society.
Societal success.
Standard of living.
For example: At the individual level
cheap energy might be the choice.
Impact on agriculture
Drought-flood
Moisture stress
More insects
Longer growing season
COST OF ENERGY
DOUBLE CROP
COST OF WATER / INSECTICIDE
For example: Or whole sector might
change its focus because there is money
to be made in energy
Impact on agriculture
ENERGY PRODUCTION
FOOD PRODUCTION
ENERGY SECURITY
FOOD SECURITY
NATIONAL SECURITY
NATIONAL SECURITY
GLOBAL TRADE
Predictions motivate action
How should we
respond to the
predictions?
How we respond depends very much
on the current capabilities of the
society or nation
Rich, technologically advanced
Resource rich, desiring richness
Ethics // Equality // Liability
Poor, low technologically
Return to the mitigation-adaptation framework
Science, Mitigation, Adaptation
Framework
It’s not an either / or argument.
Adaptation is responding to changes that might occur from added CO2
Mitigation is controlling the amount of CO2 we put in the atmosphere.
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 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
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
This is the “second” environmental problem
we have faced with a global flavor.
– Ozone is the first one. Is this a good model?
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
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
• 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?
Responses to the Climate Change Problem
Autonomous/
Individual
Policy/
Societal
Reactive
Anticipatory
Adaptation
Mitigation
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?
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.
Thanks to Maria Carmen Lemos
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”
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
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
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
Adaptive capacity
‘‘The ability of a system to adjust to
climate change (including climate
variability and extremes), to moderate
potential damages, to take advantage of
opportunities, or to cope with the
consequences.’’ (IPCC 2001).
Thanks to Maria Carmen Lemos
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
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
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 Lemo
Who are the debtors? The energy case
The environmental impacts caused by the extraction of natural
resources necessary for the production of energy are not compensated
in any form
Thanks to Maria Carmen Lemos
Amigos de la Tierra Int. y
Acción Ecológica 2002.
Undernourishment: Compare to energy use
Thanks to Maria Carmen Lemos
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
FRANCE
World Average
CO2 Emissions
Per Capita, 2000:
1.56 Tons
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
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
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
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
Most Vulnerable
Thanks to Maria Carmen Lemos
Thanks to Maria Carmen Lemos
The points
• 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
The End