Cooler Heads
Climate-related disaster opens a window of opportunity for rural poor in northeastern Honduras
Kendra McSweeney & Oliver Coomes
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 29 March 2011, Pages 5203-5208
Abstract:
Two distinct views are evident in research on how rural communities in developing countries cope with extreme weather events brought by climate change: (i) that the resource-reliant poor are acutely vulnerable and need external assistance to prepare for such events, and (ii) that climate-related shocks can offer windows of opportunity in which latent local adaptive capacities are triggered, leading to systemic improvement. Results from a longitudinal study in a Tawahka community in Honduras before and after Hurricane Mitch (1994-2002) indicate that residents were highly vulnerable to the hurricane - due in part to previous development assistance - and that the poorest households were the hardest hit. Surprisingly, however, the disaster enabled the poor to initiate an institutional change that led to more equitable land distribution, slowed primary forest conversion, and positioned the community well to cope with comparable flooding occurring 10 y later. The study provides compelling evidence that communities can seize on the window of opportunity created by climate-induced shocks to generate sustained social-ecological improvement, and suggests that future interventions should foster local capacities for endogenous institutional change to enhance community resilience to climate shocks.
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The Hot Summer of 2010: Redrawing the Temperature Record Map of Europe
David Barriopedro et al.
Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The summer of 2010 was exceptionally warm in eastern Europe and large parts of Russia. We provide evidence that the anomalous 2010 warmth that caused adverse impacts exceeded the amplitude and spatial extent of the previous hottest summer of 2003. "Mega-heatwaves" such as the 2003 and 2010 events broke the 500-year-long seasonal temperature records over approximately 50% of Europe. According to regional multi-model experiments, the probability of a summer experiencing "mega-heatwaves" will increase by a factor of 5 to 10 within the next 40 years. However, the magnitude of the 2010 event was so extreme that despite this increase, the occurrence of an analogue over the same region remains fairly unlikely until the second half of the 21st century.
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Popular Consensus: Climate Change Is Set to Continue
Stephan Lewandowsky
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Most climate experts agree that human carbon dioxide emissions cause anthropogenic global warming (AGW), reflected in increased global temperatures during every decade since 1970. Nonetheless, some public figures have claimed that AGW stopped in 1998. In a large experiment (N = 200), participants extrapolated global climate data, presented graphically either as share prices or as temperatures. Irrespective of their attitudes toward AGW, and irrespective of presentation format, people judged the trend to be increasing. These results suggest that presentation of climate data can counter claims that AGW has stopped.
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Perceptions of climate change and willingness to save energy related to flood experience
A. Spence et al.
Nature Climate Change, March 2011
Abstract:
One of the reasons that people may not take action to mitigate climate change is that they lack first-hand experience of its potential consequences. From this perspective, individuals who have direct experience of phenomena that may be linked to climate change would be more likely to be concerned by the issue and thus more inclined to undertake sustainable behaviours. So far, the evidence available to test this hypothesis is limited, and in part contradictory1, 2, 3, 4. Here we use national survey data collected from 1,822 individuals across the UK in 2010, to examine the links between direct flooding experience, perceptions of climate change and preparedness to reduce energy use. We show that those who report experience of flooding express more concern over climate change, see it as less uncertain and feel more confident that their actions will have an effect on climate change. Importantly, these perceptual differences also translate into a greater willingness to save energy to mitigate climate change. Highlighting links between local weather events and climate change is therefore likely to be a useful strategy for increasing concern and action.
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Global Trends in Wind Speed and Wave Height
I.R. Young, S. Zieger & A.V. Babanin
Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Studies of climate change typically consider measurements or predictions of temperature over extended periods of time. Climate, however, is much more than temperature. Over the oceans, changes in wind speed and the surface gravity waves generated by such winds play an important role. We used a 23-year database of calibrated and validated satellite altimeter measurements to investigate global changes in oceanic wind speed and wave height over this period. We find a general global trend of increasing values of wind speed and, to a lesser degree, wave height, over this period. The rate of increase is greater for extreme events compared to the mean condition.
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A comparison of the nuclear options for greenhouse gas mitigation in China and in the United States
Chi-Jen Yang
Energy Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
China is quickly building up its nuclear power capacity while the hailed nuclear renaissance in the United States has been largely stagnant. The political and industrial structures explain the divergent paths. This paper draws lessons from the French experiences in deploying nuclear power and uses the lessons in comparing Chinese and U.S. policies. An authoritative political system and state-owned utility industry allow China to emulate the French approaches such as government-backed financing and broad-scale deployment with standardized design. The democratic political system and fragmented utility industry, and the laissez-faire ideology in the United States, on the other hand, are unfavorable to a nuclear renaissance. The prospect of a nuclear revival in the United States remains highly uncertain. As China builds up its nuclear industry, it will be able to reduce carbon emissions without a carbon price through a national plan to deploy low-carbon nuclear electricity, while the United States cannot implement a climate policy without a carbon price. American politicians should stop using China's lack of carbon cap as an excuse for postponing the legislation of a carbon price.
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Is economic growth for the birds?
Aaron Strong, John Tschirhart & David Finnoff
Ecological Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The environment provides ecosystem services that support human wants. Economic growth is important for raising human living standards. But whether economic growth benefits the environment is unclear. Research into this relationship has focused on a U-shaped association known as the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). As economies grow, environmental quality initially declines but ultimately recovers and improves. However, environmental quality has been narrowly defined in the research, largely neglecting the availability and range of ecosystem services. Because these services derive from biodiversity, we use avian biodiversity as a proxy for environmental quality. Our results replace the U-shaped relationship with a lazy-S relationship. As economies grow, environmental quality initially declines, then improves over intermediate growth, but ultimately declines at higher growth. The EKC hypothesis has been used to forward economic growth as a means for improving environment quality. Our results call into question policies that rely solely on economic growth for reversing environmental decline.
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The Construction of News: Energy Crises, Advocacy Messages, and Frames toward Conservation
Toby Bolsen
International Journal of Press/Politics, April 2011, Pages 143-162
Abstract:
Much of what people learn about politics comes from the mass media. How media outlets construct their reports have direct consequences for what people think about politics. Scholars and pundits have long debated about the factors that shape media choices. Yet there have been few direct investigations into how three major determinants shape political news: world events, advocacy groups, and the government. This article examines the relative impact of these factors by focusing on the construction of news related to energy conservation in the United States. Specifically, it looks at how events, messages crafted by interest groups, and government-sponsored public service announcements (PSAs) affect news frames and attributions of responsibility for the extant energy situation. It finds that events are the most important factor driving news coverage; advocacy groups are second, followed by PSAs. This suggests that news about conservation is driven more by events than messages supplied by agents seeking to influence public discourse. Thus, groups with specific agendas such as government and advocacy organizations can, at least at times, be limited in terms of their capacity to shape news coverage - which has implications for theories of media choice.
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Andreas Ziegler, Timo Busch & Volker Hoffmann
Energy Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines the relationship between disclosed corporate responses to climate change and stock performance on the European and US stock markets. Methodologically, we consider investor expectations and compare risk-adjusted returns of stock portfolios comprising corporations that differ in this indicator for environmental performance. In this respect, we apply the flexible Carhart four-factor model in addition to the restricted one-factor model based on the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). The main result of our portfolio analysis is that a trading strategy which consists of buying stocks of corporations disclosing responses to climate change and selling stocks of corporations with no disclosures has become more worthwhile over time in Europe. Furthermore, it can be shown that the relationship between disclosed corporate responses to climate change and stock performance has been positive for energy firms in the USA. One reason for these results could be the underlying stringency of institutional pressure with respect to global warming.
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Urban growth, climate change, and freshwater availability
Robert McDonald et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Nearly 3 billion additional urban dwellers are forecasted by 2050, an unprecedented wave of urban growth. While cities struggle to provide water to these new residents, they will also face equally unprecedented hydrologic changes due to global climate change. Here we use a detailed hydrologic model, demographic projections, and climate change scenarios to estimate per-capita water availability for major cities in the developing world, where urban growth is the fastest. We estimate the amount of water physically available near cities and do not account for problems with adequate water delivery or quality. Modeled results show that currently 150 million people live in cities with perennial water shortage, defined as having less than 100 L per person per day of sustainable surface and groundwater flow within their urban extent. By 2050, demographic growth will increase this figure to almost 1 billion people. Climate change will cause water shortage for an additional 100 million urbanites. Freshwater ecosystems in river basins with large populations of urbanites with insufficient water will likely experience flows insufficient to maintain ecological process. Freshwater fish populations will likely be impacted, an issue of special importance in regions such as India's Western Ghats, where there is both rapid urbanization and high levels of fish endemism. Cities in certain regions will struggle to find enough water for the needs of their residents and will need significant investment if they are to secure adequate water supplies and safeguard functioning freshwater ecosystems for future generations.
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The Regime Complex for Climate Change
Robert Keohane & David Victor
Perspectives on Politics, March 2011, Pages 7-23
Abstract:
There is no integrated regime governing efforts to limit the extent of climate change. Instead, there is a regime complex: a loosely-coupled set of specific regimes. We describe the regime complex for climate change and seek to explain it, using interest-based, functional, and organizational arguments. This institutional form is likely to persist; efforts to build a comprehensive regime are unlikely to succeed, but experiments abound with narrower institutions focused on particular aspects of the climate change problem. Building on this analysis, we argue that a climate change regime complex, if it meets specified criteria, has advantages over any politically feasible comprehensive regime. Adaptability and flexibility are particularly important in a setting - such as climate change policy - in which the most demanding international commitments are interdependent yet governments vary widely in their interest and ability to implement them. Yet in view of the serious political constraints, both domestic and international, there is little reason for optimism that the climate regime complex that is emerging will lead to reductions in emissions rapid enough to meet widely discussed goals, such as stopping global warming at two degrees above pre-industrial levels.
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Willingness to Pay for Electric Vehicles and their Attributes
Michael Hidrue et al.
Resource and Energy Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper presents a stated preference study of electric vehicle choice using data from a national survey. We used a choice experiment wherein 3029 respondents were asked to chose between their preferred gasoline vehicle and two electric versions of that preferred vehicle. We estimated a latent class random utility model and used the results to estimate the willingness to pay for five electric vehicle attributes: driving range, charging time, fuel cost saving, pollution reduction, and performance. Driving range, fuel cost savings, and charging time led in importance to respondents. Individuals were willing to pay (wtp) from $35 to $75 for a mile of added driving range, with incremental wtp per mile decreasing at higher distances. They were willing to pay from $425 to $3250 per hour reduction in charging time (for a 50 mile charge). Respondents capitalized about 5 years of fuel saving into the purchase price of an electric vehicle. We simulated our model over a range of electric vehicle configurations and found that people with the highest values for electric vehicles were willing to pay a premium above their wtp for a gasoline vehicle that ranged from $6,000 to $16,000 for electric vehicles with the most desirable attributes. At the same time, our results suggest that battery cost must drop significantly before electric vehicles will find a mass market without subsidy.
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Anthropogenic influences on natural animal mating systems
Jeffrey Lane, Maura Forrest & Craig Willis
Animal Behaviour, forthcoming
Abstract:
Anthropogenic influences on the natural world are widespread and well studied from various ecological vantage points. Their behavioural implications, however, are comparatively less well understood. We review four categories of influence on natural animal mating systems: habitat fragmentation, climate change, pollution and selective harvesting. We adopt a predictive approach, first reviewing the ecological determinants of mating system variation and then investigating how these determinants may be affected. Habitat fragmentation and climate change are directly altering the two fundamental predictors of mating system variation: the spatial and temporal distributions of resources. Pollution has implications for mating systems, via, for example, feminizing effects of endocrine disrupters and impeded efficacy of sexual communication. The influences of selective harvesting arise from the removal of phenotypic (and in some cases, genetic) variation in sexually selected traits. The ecological (e.g. by serving as an underlying mechanism contributing to Allee effects) and evolutionary (e.g. by driving microevolutionary trajectories that run counter to sexual selection) consequences of mating system disruption may be severe. The current lack of data, however, makes rigorous assessment of these consequences premature. Nevertheless, there is an analytical framework that can be used to make quantitative predictions, and we argue that applying it more broadly will help improve our understanding of the causes and consequences of anthropogenic influences on natural animal mating systems.
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Eco-labeling in commercial office markets: Do LEED and Energy Star offices obtain multiple premiums?
Franz Fuerst & Pat McAllister
Ecological Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper investigates the effect of eco-labeling on rental rates, sale prices and occupancy rates. The consensus emerging from previous studies appears to be that investors in and occupiers of eco-labeled buildings obtain a bundle of benefits related to lower operating costs, reputation benefits and productivity higher. In this study, a hedonic model is used to test whether the presence of an eco-label has a significantly positive effect on rental rates, sale prices and occupancy rates of commercial office buildings in the US. The results suggest that office buildings with Energy Star or LEED eco-labels obtain rental premia of approximately 3-5%. Dual certification produces an additive effect with rental premia estimated at 9%. Respective sale price premia for Energy Star and LEED labeled office buildings are 18% and 25%. The sale price premium for dual certification is estimated at 28-29%. An occupancy premium could not be confirmed for LEED labeled office buildings and only a small positive occupancy premium was found for Energy Star.