Oregon university researchers push novel plan to fight climate change
By Gosia Wozniacka
A team of scientists led by Oregon State University researchers has devised a new climate change scenario that offers different thinking on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: equity and more education for girls and women, moving towards equalizing the gross domestic product around the world and a radical change in diets and farming practices, among other goals.
In a paper published earlier this year, the researchers show that social and economic justice are inextricably linked to global warming.
They hope climate experts and planners around the world can use the new scenario to look at climate solutions in a more holistic way and to set more inclusive goals for the future of human society.
“If we really aspire to be the best that humanity can be then social and economic justice need to be front and center in the solutions to the climate crisis,” said Oregon State University ecologist William Ripple, the lead author. “The time is right for this to be part of the discussion.”
Climate modelers around the world currently use five scenarios, known as shared socioeconomic pathways, to chart the Earth’s climate future. The scenarios, first published in 2016 by an international team of climate scientists and economists, offer five alternative ways of how the world will evolve under different socio-economic conditions, including population growth, technological advancement, access to health and education and economic growth.
The scenarios inform reports from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. These reports provide policymakers with regular assessments on climate impacts and solutions and serve as a scientific baseline in the international negotiations to tackle climate change.
The scenarios include a world of rapid economic growth and technological and human progress coupled with the exploitation of fossil fuel resources; a fragmented world of “resurgent nationalism” and regional insecurity; a world of ever-increasing inequality; and a “middle-of-the-road” world that follows historical trends.
The fifth—and best-case—scenario projects a world of more sustainably focused growth, decreased emissions and growing equality. It’s the only one among the five that assumes the Earth will reach the goals of the Paris Agreement, which include limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times.
But Ripple and his four co-authors from the United States, the Netherlands and Australia realized even the best-case scenario does not go far enough on gender equity and social justice because it’s rooted in economic growth, which is linked to higher greenhouse gas emissions. It also relies on still-unproven carbon dioxide removal technologies, which range from “scrubbers” that chemically remove carbon dioxide from the air to methods that capture the carbon, transport it and then pump it underground.
Adding a more equity-focused scenario to climate models would “provide a more comprehensive picture of what could lie ahead and help decision-makers prepare for a sustainable future that may look vastly different from the current paradigm of population and consumption growth,” the authors wrote.
‘Restorative Pathway’
The team’s scenario, dubbed the “restorative pathway,” turns widely accepted wisdom on its head.
It assumes climate change isn’t driven just by economic growth and carbon emission, Ripple said, but rather is the symptom of a bigger problem called ecological overshoot, or the over-exploitation of the Earth’s resources. Social and economic inequalities are closely linked with that overshoot, he said.
Under the proposed scenario, gross domestic product would become more equal across the world by 2100. In practice, this means a slowdown in consumption in the global North, a United Nations designation that includes the world’s developed countries where the wealthiest live, Ripple said.
High GDPs are linked with higher emissions and efforts to decouple GDP growth from emissions have fallen short thus far, so reduced consumption by wealthy countries would substantially reduce those emissions, he said.
Better education for girls and women would lead to better opportunities for women in the workforce and to lower fertility rates, slowing down the Earth’s population growth, the researchers show in their analysis. A smaller population would, in turn, use fewer resources and land.
Wide adoption of plant-based diets, regenerative farming practices and more efficient fertilizer use are also key assumptions in the scenario.
“Eating plants instead of meat and dairy is one of the most significant environmental acts we can do multiple times each day,” Ripple said.
These changes would lead to a reduction in forestland converted into cropland and livestock-grazing land, boosting biodiversity and forest carbon capture, according to the researchers. The practices also would reduce nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas linked with agricultural use that the other scenarios do not account for.
“These factors can all work hand-in-hand for an ideal future,” Ripple said. “We need to have gender equality and social justice show up in a much bigger way in our climate planning.”
Smaller Footprint
To come up with the new future scenario, the research team examined a variety of climate and socio-economic data going back 500 years and then modeled data forward to the year 2100.
They found that humanity’s consumption of resources greatly accelerated after the mid-1800s, leading to severe impacts.
But under the newly proposed scenario, key planetary vital signs—from per capita GDP and cropland acreage to greenhouse gases—would see a significant shift downward, with only a minimal need to rely on carbon capture technologies.
Scientists still need to conduct more exact calculations and modeling to make sure the new scenario is plausible and internally consistent.
Ripple said he realizes the new scenario may be hard to reach.
To achieve it, countries would likely have to pass policies such as a carbon tax to force the well-off to pay more for their emissions. They would need to prioritize education, nature conservation and diet shifts—all difficult changes for many. But, he said, they’re worthy aspirations.
“If we don’t discuss the most sustainable future scenario, then we have very little chance of that becoming reality,” he said.
Ripple used to work as an ecologist doing field work, but now is also studying climate change after watching the devastating impacts of California’s wildfires. In 2019, he was lead writer on an article, co-signed by more than 11,000 scientists from more than 150 countries, that declared a “climate emergency” for planet Earth.
Beyond encouraging politicians to address global warming and inequality as quickly as possible, Ripple said every person can adopt a smaller carbon footprint.
He has tried to do so himself by buying less, choosing walking or biking over driving, hanging clothes out to dry instead of using a dryer and eating a plant-based, 100- percent vegan diet for the past 12 years.
“There are co-benefits, I’m feeling great,” he said. “As the saying goes, what’s good for the person is also good for the planet.”
Gosia Wozniacka is an environmental justice reporter. She covers pollution impacts, clean energy, wildfires and extreme heat.
Source: oregonlive.com, January 11, 2024.