On The Horizon
In search of weakened resolve: Does climate-engineering awareness decrease individuals’ commitment to mitigation?
Maura Austin & Benjamin Converse
Journal of Environmental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
As climate predictions become more dire, it is increasingly clear that society cannot rely on mitigation alone. In response, climatologists and engineers have been developing climate-engineering technology to directly intervene on the climate through strategies such as solar radiation management and carbon dioxide removal. While these technologies have some encouraging features, they also involve risk on many dimensions. One behavioral risk that concerns many observers is the possibility that the prominence of climate-engineering scenarios could decrease the public's commitment to mitigation, a concern variously described as moral hazard or weakened resolve. Across 8 experiments (N = 2514) we tested whether exposure to naturalistic information about climate-engineering technology decreases individuals' commitment to mitigation efforts. We did not find compelling evidence of strong or reliable effects. We draw from motivational theory to contextualize our findings in a literature characterized by mixed results, and we propose new directions for behavioral research on the weakened-resolve/moral-hazard concern with respect to climate engineering.
Secure human attachment can promote support for climate change mitigation
Claudia Nisa et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 14 September 2021
Abstract:
Attachment theory is an ethological approach to the development of durable, affective ties between humans. We propose that secure attachment is crucial for understanding climate change mitigation, because the latter is inherently a communal phenomenon resulting from joint action and requiring collective behavioral change. Here, we show that priming attachment security increases acceptance (Study 1: n = 173) and perceived responsibility toward anthropogenic climate change (Study 2: n = 209) via increased empathy for others. Next, we demonstrate that priming attachment security, compared to a standard National Geographic video about climate change, increases monetary donations to a proenvironmental group in politically moderate and conservative individuals (Study 3: n = 196). Finally, through a preregistered field study conducted in the United Arab Emirates (Study 4: n = 143,558 food transactions), we show that, compared to a message related to carbon emissions, an attachment security–based message is associated with a reduction in food waste. Taken together, our work suggests that an avenue to promote climate change mitigation could be grounded in core ethological mechanisms associated with secure attachment.
Let’s get physical: Comparing metrics of physical climate risk
Linda Hain, Julian Koelbel & Markus Leippold
Finance Research Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
Investors and regulators require reliable estimates of physical climate risks for decision-making. While assessing these risks is challenging, several commercial data providers and academics have started to develop firm-level physical risk scores. We compare six physical risk scores. We find a substantial divergence between these scores, also among those based on similar methodologies. We show how this divergence could cause problems when testing whether financial markets are pricing physical risks. Hence, financial markets may not adequately account for the physical risk exposure of corporations using available risk scores. Finally, we identify key sources of uncertainty for further investigation.
Extreme sea levels at different global warming levels
Claudia Tebaldi et al.
Nature Climate Change, September 2021, Pages 746–751
Abstract:
The Paris agreement focused global climate mitigation policy on limiting global warming to 1.5 or 2 °C above pre-industrial levels. Consequently, projections of hazards and risk are increasingly framed in terms of global warming levels rather than emission scenarios. Here, we use a multimethod approach to describe changes in extreme sea levels driven by changes in mean sea level associated with a wide range of global warming levels, from 1.5 to 5 °C, and for a large number of locations, providing uniform coverage over most of the world’s coastlines. We estimate that by 2100 ~50% of the 7,000+ locations considered will experience the present-day 100-yr extreme-sea-level event at least once a year, even under 1.5 °C of warming, and often well before the end of the century. The tropics appear more sensitive than the Northern high latitudes, where some locations do not see this frequency change even for the highest global warming levels.
Linking Arctic variability and change with extreme winter weather in the United States
Judah Cohen et al.
Science, 3 September 2021, Pages 1116-1121
Abstract:
The Arctic is warming at a rate twice the global average and severe winter weather is reported to be increasing across many heavily populated mid-latitude regions, but there is no agreement on whether a physical link exists between the two phenomena. We use observational analysis to show that a lesser-known stratospheric polar vortex (SPV) disruption that involves wave reflection and stretching of the SPV is linked with extreme cold across parts of Asia and North America, including the recent February 2021 Texas cold wave, and has been increasing over the satellite era. We then use numerical modeling experiments forced with trends in autumn snow cover and Arctic sea ice to establish a physical link between Arctic change and SPV stretching and related surface impacts.
Understanding the importance of sexism in shaping climate denial and policy opposition
Salil Benegal & Mirya Holman
Climatic Change, August 2021
Abstract:
In the USA, a sizable share of the population denies the human causes of climate change and opposes policies to address it. System justification, where individuals fight to protect a socio-economic order, undergirds this opposition. We argue that sexism, representing an investment in gendered hierarchies, contributes to climate change denial and policy opposition. Using nationally representative surveys from 2016 to 2018, we show a consistent relationship between sexism and opposition to climate change beliefs and policies. These results are consistent across measures of both climate change beliefs and support for climate policy. We then show that sexism is correlated with climate denial and opposition to climate policy within a wide variety of subgroups of interest: for both Democrats and Republicans and for groups sorted by ideology, gender, education, and age. We then extend our analysis back in time, looking at data from 2012, finding similar effects prior to the 2016 election. The consistent findings point to the central role that system justifying beliefs about gender play in shaping attitudes about climate change in the USA.
Climate change threats increase modern racism as a function of social dominance orientation and ingroup identification
Fatih Uenal et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Processing information on the negative consequences of climate change can have unrelated side-effects such as increased outgroup derogation. Previous research suggests differing theoretical explanations for these “generalization” effects such as buffering existential anxiety. Across two pre-registered experiments (N = 1031; USA & UK), we examine whether ingroup identification and social dominance orientation (SDO) moderate the relationship between experimentally induced collective threats and subjective threat perceptions (i.e., climate change and intergroup threat), modern racism, and pro-environmental collective action support. In Study 1, SDO and ingroup identification were measured 2 years prior to our experiment as antecedents of threat perceptions. Our results suggest that informing individuals about negative consequences of climate change (e.g., wildfires, floods, resource scarcity, health etc.), leads to higher intergroup threat perceptions and modern racism. These generalization effects, in turn, are moderated by SDO but not by ingroup identification. In Study 2, we successfully replicate our findings, measuring SDO and ingroup identification directly after the threat manipulation. Moreover, we use a behavioral measure of pro-environmental collective action to assess more direct stimuli-responses. In Study 2, again, we show that SDO moderates the generalization effects. In contrast, ingroup identification showed only marginally significant moderation of the generalization effect and did not increase itself in response to experimental threat-cues. Notably, we also find that intergroup threat-cues generalize onto higher climate change threat perceptions. No effects on behavioral collective action support were found.
Tradeoffs between fertility and child development attributes: Evidence from coral bleaching in Indonesia
Pasita Chaijaroen
Environment and Development Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Coral bleaching is associated with large income shocks and a substantial decrease in protein consumption among the affected fishery households in Indonesia [Chaijaroen (2019) Long-lasting income shocks and adaptations: evidence from coral bleaching in Indonesia. Journal of Development Economics 136, 119–136]. According to the health and economics literature, early childhood exposures to shocks such as those from coral bleaching can have long-lasting effects on health, schooling, and other later-life outcomes. This paper explores how the mass coral bleaching in 1998 affected household decisions on fertility and child development. Using the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) and a triple differences approach, results from 2000 suggest an increase in fertility and an increased likelihood of severe childhood stunting among the affected households. For comparison, rainfall shocks are associated with a decrease in fertility and smaller adverse effects on child health and schooling outcomes. This study suggests that the effects of coral bleaching might have been underestimated, and our findings yield more targeted policy recommendations on climate shock mitigation.
Achieving negative emissions through oceanic sequestration of vegetation carbon as Black Pellets
Leonard Miller & Philip Orton
Climatic Change, August 2021
Abstract:
Natural processes and human activities produce vast amounts of dead vegetation which return CO2 to the atmosphere through decay and combustion. If such vegetation could be converted into biocoal and sequestered on the ocean floor, it could reduce the accumulation of atmospheric CO2 without involving sequestration in the form of CO2. Given that raw vegetation is unsuitable for large-scale energy applications, a process was developed to convert raw vegetation into a form of biocoal, termed Black Pellets, that solves the logistical and energy conversion problems of using raw vegetation for power generation. Seemingly overlooked is that properties of Black Pellets—higher density than seawater and resistance to microbial decay—may offer an environmentally safe way of sequestering vegetation carbon on the sea floor. Sequestering vegetation carbon by depositing biocoal as Black Pellets in the deep ocean (oceanic sequestration of biocoal—OSB) would be a means of achieving long-lasting negative emissions. Sacrificing the energy content of the deposited pellets would require substituting energy from other sources. If the substitute energy could be from lower-carbon natural gas or carbon-free sources, the effects would be less accumulation of atmospheric CO2 compared to using the pellets for energy and a nearly 60 to 100% reduction in the need for geologic sequestration compared to bioenergy carbon capture and storage (BECCS). If confirmed by research, OSB would be an addition to the sparse toolbox of negative emission technologies (NETs) which would give humankind more flexibility in meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement.