Everyday limits to adaptation

Adaptation to climate change, in terms of both academic and policy debates, has been treated predominantly as a local issue. This scalar focus points towards local agency as well as the contested responsibilisation of local actors and potential disconnects with higher-level dynamics. While there are growing calls for individuals to take charge of their own lives against mounting climatic forces, little is known about the day-to-day actions people take, the many hurdles, barriers, and limits they encounter in their adaptation choices, and the trade-offs they consider envisaging the future. To address this gap, this article draws on 80+ interviews with urban and rural residents in Western Australia to offer a nuanced analysis of everyday climate adaptation and its limits. Our findings demonstrate that participants are facing significant adaptation barriers and that, for many, these barriers already constitute limits to what they can do to protect what they value most. They also make visible how gender, age, and socioeconomic status shape individual preferences, choices, and impediments, revealing compounding layers of disadvantage and differential vulnerability. We argue that slow and reflexive research is needed to understand what adaptation limits matter and to whom and identify opportunities to harness and support local action. Only then will we be able to surmount preconceived neoliberal ideals of the self-sufficient, resilient subject, engage meaningfully with ontological pluralism, and contribute to the re-politicisation of adaptation decision making.

The Role of Felt Responsibility in Climate Change Political Participation

This research letter investigates the role of feelings of responsibility to reduce climate change (i.e., “felt responsibility”) as an antecedent to climate change related political behaviors and intentions, including willingness to join a campaign, likelihood of supporting pro-climate presidential candidates, and past contact with elected officials. Using nationally representative survey data (n = 1,029) we find that felt responsibility has a significant positive relationship with future behavioral intent, but not past behavior. Implications and future research are discussed.

A review of West African monsoon penetration during Green Sahara periods; implications for human evolution and dispersals over the last three million years

Green Sahara periods (GSPs) represent episodes during which the present-day Sahara was transformed into a savannah in response to intensification of the West African monsoon (WAM). Although GSPs might have dramatically altered the size, structure, and connectivity of human populations in Africa and nearby regions of Asia, their significance for human evolution remains unknown due to the problems involved in gauging the penetration of the WAM over the Sahara at evolutionary timescales. Here I reanalyse monsoon run-off and dust records back to 3 million years ago from Eastern Mediterranean ODP Site 967, and assimilate them with North African palaeoenvironmental data to substantiate penetration of the WAM front during GSPs to latitudes beyond 28°N. These results, coupled with demographic and ecological data for modern hunter-gatherers, point to a significant expansion of human populations during GSPs compared with background desert conditions. Given the clustering of GSPs around long-term maxima in the eccentricity of the Earth´s orbit, I propose that recurrent periods of human population expansion driven by GSPs led to an increased number of favourable mutations. Along with environmental factors favourable for triggering epigenetic changes, this might have led to the rise in enhanced phenotypic plasticity that underpins the speciation of hominin lineages at times of high climate variability envisaged by the variability selection hypothesis. Clustering of GSPs around the Pliocene/Pleistocene boundary, simultaneously with a protracted period of wetter conditions in East Africa and the Sinai Peninsula, further suggests that the initial colonization of Eurasia by hominins occurred circa 2.6 Ma, much earlier than typically considered.

Solar Geoengineering Governance: A Dynamic Framework of Farsighted Coalition Formation

Climate interventions with solar geoengineering could reduce climate damages if deployed in a globally coordinated regime. In the absence of such a regime, however, strategic incentives of single actors might result in detrimental outcomes. A well-known concern is that a "free-driver" (Weitzman 2015), the country with the strongest preference for cooling, might unilaterally set the global thermostat to its preferred level, thus imposing damages on others. Governance structures, i.e. more or less formal institutional arrangements between countries, could steer the decentralized geoengineering deployment towards the preferable global outcome. In this paper, we show that the coalition formation literature (an excellent summary is Ray & Vohra 2015) can make a valuable contribution to assessing the relative merit of different governance schemes. An important feature of the coalition formation literature is the sophisticated dynamic structure. A country pondering whether to leave a coalition anticipates that its departure could spark another process of disintegration among the remaining members of that coalition, which in turn may affect the assessment of whether leaving the coalition is worthwhile in the first place. This dynamic structure thus enables a more realistic picture of what coalitions are likely to form and remain stable. A second important feature of coalition formation models is wide control over the "rules of the game", for instance, which agents need to consent to a transition from one coalitional arrangement to another. This control over the institutional setting allows consistently comparing and discussing various international governance arrangements.

Probabilistic projections of future warming and climate sensitivity trajectories

Projections of future global mean surface warming for a given forcing scenario remain uncertain, largely due to uncertainty in the climate sensitivity. The ensemble of Earth system models from the Climate Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6) represent the dominant tools for projecting future global warming. However, the distribution of climate sensitivities within the CMIP6 ensemble is not representative of recent independent probabilistic estimates, and the ensemble contains significant variation in simulated historic surface warming outside agreement with observational datasets. Here, a Bayesian approach is used to infer joint probabilistic projections of future surface warming and climate sensitivity for SSP scenarios. The projections use an efficient climate model ensemble filtered and weighted to encapsulate observational uncertainty in historic warming and ocean heat content anomalies. The probabilistic projection of climate sensitivity produces a best estimate of 2.9 °C, and 5th to 95th percentile range of 1.5 to 4.6 °C, in line with previous estimates using multiple lines of evidence. The joint projection of surface warming over the period 2030 to 2040 has a 50% or greater probability of exceeding 1.5 °C above preindustrial for all SSPs considered: 119, 126, 245, 370 and 585. Average warming by the period 2050 to 2060 has a greater than 50% chance of exceeding 2 °C for SSPs 245, 370 and 585. These results imply that global warming is no longer likely to remain under 1.5 °C, even with drastic and immediate mitigation, and highlight the importance of urgent action to avoid exceeding 2 °C warming.

Enhancing natural cycles in agro-ecosystems to boost plant carbon capture and soil storage

One of society’s greatest challenges is sequestering vast amounts of carbon to avoid dangerous climate change without driving competition for land and resources. Here we assess the potential of an integrated approach based on enhancement of natural biogeochemical cycles in agro-ecosystems that stimulate carbon capture and storage while increasing resilience and long-term productivity. The method integrates plant photosynthesis in the form of (cover) crops and agroforestry which drives carbon capture. Belowground plant-carbon is efficiently stored as stable soil organic carbon (SOC). Aboveground crop and tree residues are pyrolyzed into biochar, which is applied to the soil reducing carbon release through decomposition. Enhanced weathering of basalt powder worked into the soil further captures and stores carbon, while releasing nutrients and alkalinity. The integrated system is regenerative, through enhanced virtuous cycles that lead to improved plant capture, biomass storage and crop yield, the prerequisites for large-scale carbon sequestration along with food security.

Climate change adaptation to extreme heat: A global systematic review of implemented action

Extreme heat events impact people and ecosystems across the globe, and they are becoming more frequent and intense in a warming climate. Responses to heat span sectors and geographic boundaries. Prior research has documented technologies or options that can be deployed to manage extreme heat and examples of how individuals, communities, governments, and other stakeholder groups are adapting to heat. However, a comprehensive understanding of the current state of implemented heat adaptations—where, why, how, and to what extent they are occurring—has not been established. Here, we combine data from the Global Adaptation Mapping Initiative with a heat-specific systematic review to analyze the global extent and diversity of documented heat adaptation actions (n = 301 peer-reviewed articles). Data from 98 countries suggest that documented heat adaptations fundamentally differ by geographic region and national income. In high-income, developed countries, heat is overwhelmingly treated as a health issue, particularly in urban areas. However, in low and middle income, developing countries, heat adaptations focus on agricultural and livelihood-based impacts, primarily considering heat as a compound hazard with drought and other hydrological hazards. 63% of the heat-adaptation articles feature individuals or communities autonomously adapting, highlighting how responses to date have largely consisted of coping strategies. The current global status of responses to intensifying extreme heat, largely autonomous and incremental yet widespread, establishes a foundation for informed decision making as heat impacts around the world continue to increase.

The role of negative emissions in meeting China’s 2060 carbon neutrality goal

China’s pledge to reach carbon neutrality before 2060 is an ambitious goal and could provide the world with much-needed leadership on how to limit warming to +1.5°C warming above preindustrial levels by the end of the century. But the pathways that would achieve net zero by 2060 are still unclear, including the role of negative emissions technologies. We use the Global Change Analysis Model to simulate how negative emissions technologies, in general, and direct air capture (DAC) in particular, could contribute to China’s meeting this target. Our results show that negative emissions could play a large role, offsetting on the order of 3 GtCO2 per year from difficult-to-mitigate sectors, such as freight transportation and heavy industry. This includes up to a 1.6 GtCO2 per year contribution from DAC, constituting up to 60% of total projected negative emissions in China. But DAC, like bioenergy with carbon capture and storage and afforestation, has not yet been demonstrated anywhere approaching the scales required to meaningfully contribute to climate mitigation. Deploying NETs at these scales will have widespread impacts on financial systems and natural resources, such as water, land and energy in China.

Atlantic meridional overturning circulation modulation of late Pleistocene to middle Holocene Asian summer monsoon variability and palaeoanthropological implications

Asia contains more than half the world’s population, and their lives are significantly related to summer monsoon moisture supply. Here, we investigate features and dynamics of late Pleistocene–middle Holocene Asian summer monsoon variability in the Nihewan Basin, North China, which was a critical home for early humans in East Asia throughout the Quaternary. We present new mineral magnetic records between ∼16 and 6 ka from the Yujiagou archeological site in the northern Nihewan Basin, which contains >40 000 stone tools, 2 pottery pieces and 19 686 mammal fossils. Magnetic properties of the Yujiagou section are dominated by pedogenic fine-grained magnetite/maghemite concentration, which ranges from superparamagnetic/single domain up to fine pseudo-single domain sizes. We use multiple environmental magnetic proxies, which measure pedogenic magnetite/maghemite concentration, to document that summer monsoon precipitation was low before ∼14.5 ka and high during the Bölling–Allerød warm period (14.5–12.8 ka), and shifted to low values at the onset of the Young Dryas cold period ∼12.4 ka, followed by a sustained long-term increasing trend from 12.4 to 6 ka. We relate these monsoon precipitation changes to the consistent Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation variability, which modulated North Hemisphere temperatures and displacements of Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone and Walker circulation over the Pacific Ocean. The observed large-amplitude deglacial Asian monsoon changes may have played a role in several key evolutionary changes in Asia implicated by the Yujiagou archeological evidence, including Paleolithic to Neolithic culture transition, Asian pottery development, and early human dispersals from Asia to America.

Examining climate change and sustainable/fast fashion in the 21st century: ‘Trash the Runway’

We interrogate fast fashion in the 21st century in the context of a changing climate, assessing emergent trends in sustainable fashion as an alternative consumption pathway through the annual ‘Trash the Runway’ event in Boulder, Colorado. In this research, we interviewed and surveyed designers and analyzed workshop activities that led up to their annual fashion show. We also interviewed and surveyed students at the University of Colorado who worked with designers to produce short films about them and their work. The project centers on decolonial practice by providing —who are often marginalized in decision-making processes—a stage to articulate policy and behavior changes to address climate change and sustainability. We found designers expressed reticence before the workshops and events to speak about climate change in everyday life, yet their design work creatively spoke powerfully for them, and they expressed less discomfort after the experience, while they advanced their skillset as climate communicators. Moreover, we found both designers and student partners reported that they think climate change will impact people greatly in the future. Also, while comparatively fewer respondents reported that climate change impacts them personally, our findings showed those noting personal impacts nearly doubled after participation in the sustainable fashion project. Although engagement with sustainable fashion helps to defetishize production processes and link consumption habits with awareness of climate and environmental change, more creative work should be done through fast- and sustainable-fashion endeavors to draw out spatial and temporal considerations of climate change threats here and now.