Domino Effects in the Earth System – the Potential Role of Wanted Tipping Points 3
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Caribbean Climate Change Plans Submitted to the UNFCCC Alexandre Gellert Paris – RCC St Georges (A Collaboration Between UNFCCC and WINDREF)
Caribbean climate change plans submitted to the UNFCCC Alexandre Gellert Paris – RCC St Georges (a collaboration between UNFCCC and WINDREF) On 30 November 2015, world leaders will gather in Paris for the twenty-first Conference of the Parties (COP 21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). When they met in Durban, South Africa, in 2011, all 196 Parties to the UNFCCC agreed on “adopting a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties”1 at COP 21. Since Durban, the agreement has been reiterated and reinforced by the international community, and expectations are high for a global pact to address climate change. As part of the process, countries were invited to present their climate change plans – or intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) – to the UNFCCC. 177 countries have submitted their INDCs to date, representing growing political will to take action on climate change and what Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, has described as a “previously unseen engagement”. The INDCs are a decisive step in the challenging path towards an orderly transition to a global society aligned with the boundaries of the climate system. Several of the INDCs highlight the link between the implied actions to address climate change and the development priorities, including social and economic development and poverty eradication. Some of the INDCs include an unconditional mitigation component alongside an enhanced conditional one. Most of the conditional components relate to the provision of finance, technology or capacity-building support and translate into a percentage increase in the level of effort associated with the related unconditional component. -
Climate Change Inaction and Optimism
philosophies Review Climate Change Inaction and Optimism Philip J. Wilson Independent Researcher, Kent CT18 8EN, UK; [email protected] Abstract: The problem of climate change inaction is sometimes said to be ‘wicked’, or essentially insoluble, and it has also been seen as a collective action problem, which is correct but inconsequential. In the absence of progress, much is made of various frailties of the public, hence the need for an optimistic tone in public discourse to overcome fatalism and encourage positive action. This argument is immaterial without meaningful action in the first place, and to favour what amounts to the suppression of truth over intellectual openness is in any case disreputable. ‘Optimism’ is also vexed in this context, often having been opposed to the sombre mood of environmentalists by advocates of economic growth. The greater mental impediments are ideological fantasy, which is blind to the contradictions in public discourse, and the misapprehension that if optimism is appropriate in one social or policy context it must be appropriate in others. Optimism, far from spurring climate change action, fosters inaction. Keywords: cognitive weakness; moral hazard; optimism; climate delay; tragedy of the commons 1. Introduction In 1946 Karl Popper gave a talk entitled ‘Are there philosophical problems?’ chaired by Ludwig Wittgenstein. Popper argued that there really are philosophical problems while Wittgenstein regarded them as mere linguistic entanglements. Exchanges became Citation: Wilson, P.J. Climate vehement, the latter using a poker to emphasize his assertions. In Popper’s version of Change Inaction and Optimism. events, in reply to Wittgenstein’s challenge to name a real moral rule, he replied ‘Not to Philosophies 2021, 6, 61. -
The Trajectory of the Anthropocene: the Great Acceleration
ANR0010.1177/2053019614564785The Anthropocene ReviewSteffen et al. 564785research-article2015 Review The Anthropocene Review 1 –18 The trajectory of the © The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: Anthropocene: The Great sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/2053019614564785 Acceleration anr.sagepub.com Will Steffen,1,2 Wendy Broadgate,3 Lisa Deutsch,1 Owen Gaffney3 and Cornelia Ludwig1 Abstract The ‘Great Acceleration’ graphs, originally published in 2004 to show socio-economic and Earth System trends from 1750 to 2000, have now been updated to 2010. In the graphs of socio-economic trends, where the data permit, the activity of the wealthy (OECD) countries, those countries with emerging economies, and the rest of the world have now been differentiated. The dominant feature of the socio-economic trends is that the economic activity of the human enterprise continues to grow at a rapid rate. However, the differentiated graphs clearly show that strong equity issues are masked by considering global aggregates only. Most of the population growth since 1950 has been in the non-OECD world but the world’s economy (GDP), and hence consumption, is still strongly dominated by the OECD world. The Earth System indicators, in general, continued their long-term, post-industrial rise, although a few, such as atmospheric methane concentration and stratospheric ozone loss, showed a slowing or apparent stabilisation over the past decade. The post-1950 acceleration in the Earth System indicators remains clear. Only beyond the mid-20th century is there clear evidence for fundamental shifts in the state and functioning of the Earth System that are beyond the range of variability of the Holocene and driven by human activities. -
The Ocean and Climate Youth Ambassadors Programme “A Journey for Climate Hope” September-October 2017
The Ocean and Climate Youth Ambassadors Programme “A journey for climate hope” September-October 2017 PEACE BOAT 1 Introduction With 34 years’ experience organizing educational Building momentum and engaging stakeholders voyages, Peace Boat strongly believes in the power in the countries visited of personal experiences and testimony as a call to action and regularly uses its ship as a venue to Embarking in Barcelona, the young leaders engaged share such first-hand experiences. Peace Boat visits with local, regional and national governments, civil many small island developing states (SIDS) where society and the scientific community taking part in participants learn about climate change and marine awareness raising and outreach events in ports visited, Content degradation. Peace Boat’s Ocean and Climate Youth including in France, Portugal, the United Kingdom Ambassadors Programme, announced at the Ocean and Iceland, concluding their voyage in New York. Conference in June 2017, brought youth leaders About Peace Boat: 2 Participants gave testimony of their experiences and from states on the front line of climate change the impact of climate change and marine degradation Introduction: 3 and marine degradation to travel onboard Peace on their communities, through Talanoa, defined in Boat’s ship in Europe and to New York, engaging Profiles of participants: 4-5 Fiji’s Vision as ‘inclusive, participatory and transparent in capacity building and bringing their message to dialogue that builds empathy and leads to decision Small island nations: 6-7 citizens and government representatives through making for the collective good’. the voyage. The programme was recognized by Barcelona: 8-9 the COP23 Presidency Secretariat as an Endorsed The programme was first announced at the Ocean Lisbon: 10-11 About Event of COP23. -
Earth: a Single, Complex and Rapidly Changing System
INTERVIEW with keynote speaker Dr. Will Steffen, The Australian National University and the Stockholm Resilience Centre, AUSTRALIA Keynote Plenary Session 1 Thursday, 21 September, 10:30 – 12:00 Rolf Böhme Saal (Konzerthaus Freiburg) The Earth System, the Anthropocene and the World’s Forests Earth: a single, complex and rapidly changing system By Bob Burt IUFRO Science Writer “It’s important to put the changes that are occurring to the world’s forests in a much larger, long-term perspective,” said Dr. Will Steffen. “Land systems in general, but forests in particular, play an important role in the functioning of the Earth System.” Dr. Steffen, a leading proponent of the Anthropocene – a proposed epoch dating from the beginnings of significant human impact on earth’s geology and ecosystems – will be a keynote speaker at the IUFRO 125th Anniversary Congress in Freiburg. Dr. Steffen, along with Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen and other scientists, contends that the Holocene, the 10,000-year geological epoch since the last ice age, in which the earth’s environment has been unusually stable, is being, or has already been, supplanted by an epoch in which human intervention has become a – and perhaps “the” – major driver of environmental change. Since the mid-20th century, carbon dioxide emissions, sea level rise, the mass extinction of species around the world and the transformation of land by deforestation and development have effectively ended the Holocene and ushered in the Anthropocene, they say. “The Earth System is now in a rapidly-changing, highly transient phase in which the end point is not known, and cannot be predicted. -
The Water Planetary Boundary: Interrogation and Revision
1 The water planetary boundary: interrogation and revision 2 This is a non-peer reviewed preprint submitted to EarthArXiv which is in review at “One Earth” 3 Tom Gleeson 1,2, Lan Wang Erlandsson 3, 4, 8, Samuel C. Zipper 1, Miina Porkka 3, 8, Fernando Jaramillo 2, 5, 4 Dieter Gerten 6,7, Ingo Fetzer 3,8, Sarah E. Cornell 3, Luigi Piemontese 3, Line Gordon 3, Johan 5 Rockström 2, 6, Taikan Oki 9, Murugesu Sivapalan 10, Yoshihide Wada 11, Kate A Brauman 12, Martina 6 Flörke 13, Marc F.P. Bierkens 14,15, Bernhard Lehner 16, Patrick Keys17, Matti Kummu 18, Thorsten 7 Wagener 19, Simon Dadson 20, Tara J. Troy1, Will Steffen 3, 21, Malin Falkenmark 3, James S. Famiglietti 22 8 1 Department of Civil Engineering, University of Victoria, Canada 9 2 School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria 10 3 Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden 11 4 Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto, Japan 12 5 Department of Physical Geography, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden 13 6 Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Member of the Leibniz Association, Potsdam, 14 Germany 15 7 Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Geography Dept., Berlin, Germany 16 8 Bolin Centre of Climate Research, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden 17 9 Integrated Research System for Sustainability Science, University of Tokyo, Japan 18 10 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 19 Urbana IL 61801, USA. Department of Geography and Geographical Science, University -
Paris Climate Talks
NATURE | VIDEO Paris climate talks: Voices from the frontline Politicians, scientists, environmentalists and others tell Nature about their hopes for the UN climate summit — and what comes next. Noah Baker & Jeff Tollefson 30 November 2015 PARIS Negotiators from more than 190 nations have gathered in Paris to hash out a new global agreement to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Nature's roving reporters are on the scene at the United Nations climate summit, interviewing key players in the talks about why they're at the meeting, how they define a “good deal”, and why they care about climate change. Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Nature special: 2015 Jostein Solheim, CEO of ice-cream maker Ben & Jerry's Paris climate talks Margaret Leinen, director of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography Brian Schatz, US senator from Hawaii Bill Gates, philanthropist and Microsoft founder Lidy Nacpil, environmental activist from the Philippines Anote Tong, president of Kiribati Diana Liverman, co-director of the University of Arizona Institute of the Environment Izabella Teixera, Brazil's environment minister Saleemul Huq, advisor to least-developed nations Manuel Pulgar Vidal, Peru's environment minister Sam Smith, leader of the WWF Climate and Energy Initiative Karsten Sach, German negotiator Wimar Witoelar, spokesman for Indonesia's environment minister Andrew Steer, president of the World Resources Institute Henry Puna, prime minister of the Cook Islands Chebet Maikut, a negotiator for Uganda Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Christiana Figueres is the UN's top climate-change official. She tells Nature about her hopes for the climate talks in Paris. -
2992 JU 1 the Anthropocene, Climate Change, and the End
Word count: 2,992 J.U. 1 The Anthropocene, Climate Change, and the End of Modernity As the concentration of greenhouse gases has increased in the atmosphere, the world has warmed, biodiversity has decreased, and delicate natural processes have been disrupted. Scientists are now deliberating whether a variety of profound growth related problems have pushed the world into a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene. The shift from the Holocene, a unique climatically stable era during which complex civilizations developed, signals increasingly harsh climatic conditions that may threaten societal stability. Humanity has long impacted the environment. Since the rise of industrial capitalism, the rates of carbon emissions and natural resource usage have increased. The late twentieth century ushered in an era of neoliberalism and economic globalization, during which growth at any cost policies were established and emission rates began to increase exponentially. Today, as the Anthropocene era progresses, humanity continues to reach new levels of control over the environment, though nature increasingly threatens the existence of its manipulator. Over the past two centuries, humanity has possibly thrown the world into the “sixth great extinction,” doubled the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, disrupted the phosphorus cycle upon which food supplies depend, and stressed or exhausted the supplies of countless other natural resources.1 These problems disproportionately affect the world’s poorest, hurting minorities, women, and native populations the most. As the consumption rates of the affluent Global North negatively impact those in disparate parts of the world who have contributed the least to global warming, more reflexive and empathetic connections must form to address past wrongs and create a shared future. -
Anthropocene
ANTHROPOCENE Perrin Selcer – University of Michigan Suggested Citation: Selcer, Perrin, “Anthropocene,” Encyclopedia of the History of Science (March 2021) doi: 10.34758/be6m-gs41 From the perspective of the history of science, the origin of the Anthropocene appears to be established with unusual precision. In 2000, Nobel laureate geochemist Paul Crutzen proposed that the planet had entered the Anthropocene, a new geologic epoch in which humans had become the primary driver of global environmental change. This definition should be easy to grasp for a generation that came of age during a period when anthropogenic global warming dominated environmental politics. The Anthropocene extends the primacy of anthropogenic change from the climate system to nearly every other planetary process: the cycling of life-sustaining nutrients; the adaptation, distribution, and extinction of species; the chemistry of the oceans; the erosion of mountains; the flow of freshwater; and so on. The human footprint covers the whole Earth. Like a giant balancing on the globe, each step accelerates the rate of change, pushing the planet out of the stable conditions of the Holocene Epoch that characterized the 11,700 years since the last glacial period and into a turbulent unknown with “no analog” in the planet’s 4.5 billion-year history. It is an open question how much longer humanity can keep up. For its advocates, the Anthropocene signifies more than a catastrophic regime shift in planetary history. It also represents a paradigm shift in how we know global change from environmental science to Earth System science. Explaining the rise the Anthropocene, therefore, requires grappling with claims of both ontological and epistemological rupture; that is, we must explore the entangled histories of the Earth and its observers. -
Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene PERSPECTIVE
PERSPECTIVE Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene PERSPECTIVE Will Steffena,b,1, Johan Rockströma, Katherine Richardsonc, Timothy M. Lentond,CarlFolkea,e, Diana Livermanf, Colin P. Summerhayesg, Anthony D. Barnoskyh, Sarah E. Cornella, Michel Crucifixi,j, Jonathan F. Dongesa,k, Ingo Fetzera, Steven J. Ladea,b,MartenSchefferl, Ricarda Winkelmannk,m, and Hans Joachim Schellnhubera,k,m,1 Edited by William C. Clark, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and approved July 6, 2018 (received for review June 19, 2018) We explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabilization of the climate at intermediate temperature rises and cause continued warming on a “Hothouse Earth” pathway even as human emissions are reduced. Crossing the threshold would lead to a much higher global average temperature than any interglacial in the past 1.2 million years and to sea levels significantly higher than at any time in the Holocene. We examine the evidence that such a threshold might exist and where it might be. If the threshold is crossed, the resulting trajectory would likely cause serious disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies. Col- lective human action is required to steer the Earth System away from a potential threshold and stabilize it in a habitable interglacial-like state. Such action entails stewardship of the entire Earth System—biosphere, climate, and societies—and could include decarbonization of the global economy, enhancement of -
Center for Humane Technology | Your Undivided Attention Podcast
Center for Humane Technology | Your Undivided Attention Podcast Episode 18: The Stubborn Optimist's Guide to Saving the Planet Christiana Figueres: There was so much hope that this would be the moment when countries would actually agree on a global framework to address climate change. Tristan Harris: Today on the show we have Christiana Figueres, who's intimately familiar with the high stakes of climate change negotiation. She became the United Nations top climate official after the failed Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009. Christiana Figueres: That session ended up in blood, in screams, in tears and heads of state leaving ahead of time. It was just total disaster. Little did I know that I would then six months later be called upon to pick up the pieces from the garbage can and say, "Right, you figure out what to do with this mess." Tristan Harris: As one of the main architects of the Paris Agreement, she helped bring more than 195 countries on board to meet the climate change goals. How do you negotiate something that is a global problem and harness and jujitsu the emotions and injustices and the feelings of being burned from all of these different countries to take a common action for a common purpose, for a common future. Christiana is author of the new book, The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis, co- written with Tom Rivett-Carnac to outline how a radical shift in mindset can and must lead to a shift in action. Tristan Harris: Now you might be wondering why would a podcast that's normally about how technology is impacting society interview a global climate change expert who negotiated the Paris Accords? It's because whether we act on climate or not, or on the timescales that we have depends on what 3 billion people believe about it. -
La Zona Fronteriza Perú-Ecuador: Su Potencial Para Participar En El Mercado Internacional
La Zona Fronteriza Perú-Ecuador: Su Potencial para Participar en el Mercado Internacional de Reducción de Emisiones Estudio preparado para el Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo Julio, 2002 1700 Connecticut Avenue N.W. · Washington, DC 20009 · USA Tel: 1-202-588-0155 · Fax: 1-202-588-0756 · www.csdanet.org RECONOCIMIENTO Este estudio fue contratado por el Departamento de Operaciones Regionales 3 del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID), como un aporte al trabajo del Grupo Consultivo del Plan Binacional de Desarrollo de la Región Fronteriza Perú-Ecuador. El estudio fue preparado bajo la coordinación de Christiana Figueres, Directora del Centro de Desarrollo rganización sin fines de lucro dedicada desde 1994 al tema de cambio climático en América Latina. El estudio contó con la excelente participación del Ing. Marcos Castro, Director de la Corporación del Mecanismo de Desarrollo Limpio (CORDELIM) en el Ecuador, y del Ing. Marco Aurelio González, Director de Finanzas Ambientales en Perú. La riqueza del estudio se debe a la generosa colaboración de muchas personas en ambos países quienes ofrecieron su perspectiva y su experiencia. En Perú queremos agradecerles a: Embajador Manuel Picasso, Director Ejecutivo, Plan Binacional Mario López, Director de Coordinación, Plan Binacional Mauro Mendoza, Medio Ambiente, Plan Binacional María Cecilia Rozas, Directora de Medio Ambiente y Desarrollo Sostenible, Ministerio Relaciones Exteriores Mariano Castro, Secretario Ejecutivo, CONAM Martha Peralta, Programa Nacional para el Manejo de Cuencas Hidrográficas