scholarly journals Real Drivers of Climate Change?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Finlay
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Address Climate Change ◽  
Net Zero ◽  
Strategic Implementation

As momentum gradually builds behind the strategy to address climate change through the global attainment of net zero emissions, recent science, post-dating this strategic implementation, throws doubt on the efficacy of such a strategy. Instead this science points to other potentially significant, if not primary, drivers of global warming largely overlooked by the established approach.

scholarly journals Subnational Bipartisanship on Climate Change: Evidence from Surveys of Local and State Policymakers

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Lee ◽  
Dominik Stecula
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Carbon Tax ◽  
Climate Change Policy ◽  
Address Climate Change ◽  
Change Policy ◽  
State And Local ◽  
The U.S

While the U.S. Congress has repeatedly failed to pass national legislation to address climate change over the years, there has been much more progress among state and local governments. But is this progress on climate change policy at the subnational level merely a reflection of the dominance of the Democratic party in certain regions of the country, or does it reflect successful bipartisan action? In this essay, we present novel evidence from two surveys of subnational policymakers, conducted in 2015 and 2017, to demonstrate that there is widespread bipartisan agreement among Republican and Democrat policymakers at the subnational level about (1) the existence of global warming and (2) what to do about it. Specifically, a majority in both parties believe global warming is happening and support the use of renewable energy mandates—rather than cap-and-trade, carbon tax, or emissions standards—to address the problem.

scholarly journals Past-focused environmental comparisons promote proenvironmental outcomes for conservatives

2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (52) ◽  
pp. 14953-14957 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Baldwin ◽  
Joris Lammers
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
The Political ◽  
Psychological Processes ◽  
Address Climate Change ◽  
The Past ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Temporal Focus ◽  
Political Divide ◽  
Promising Avenue

Conservatives appear more skeptical about climate change and global warming and less willing to act against it than liberals. We propose that this unwillingness could result from fundamental differences in conservatives’ and liberals’ temporal focus. Conservatives tend to focus more on the past than do liberals. Across six studies, we rely on this notion to demonstrate that conservatives are positively affected by past- but not by future-focused environmental comparisons. Past comparisons largely eliminated the political divide that separated liberal and conservative respondents’ attitudes toward and behavior regarding climate change, so that across these studies conservatives and liberals were nearly equally likely to fight climate change. This research demonstrates how psychological processes, such as temporal comparison, underlie the prevalent ideological gap in addressing climate change. It opens up a promising avenue to convince conservatives effectively of the need to address climate change and global warming.

Educational Innovation to Address Climate Change Issues

2022 ◽  
pp. 263-278
Author(s):  
Tania Ouariachi ◽  
Menno Van Dam
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Higher Education ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Learning Environment ◽  
Educational Innovation ◽  
Address Climate Change ◽  
Complex Issue ◽  
The Core ◽  
Core Concepts

In recent years, we have seen an emerging trend: the application of recreational escape rooms to educational purposes to engage students in their learning environment. This trend also applies to higher education and to the complex issue of climate change. The objectives of this chapter are to revise literature in this domain and to share a case study for a digital and educational escape room related to climate change: “Escape Global Warming.” This digital escape room integrates the core concepts of climate change and global warming into a game to familiarize participants with this topic and with actions that can be taken to reduce and counteract the effects of climate change while entertaining. After playing, students acknowledge to being more knowledgeable about the issue and more motivated to learn.

scholarly journals Duty to Address Climate Change Litigation Risks for Australian Energy Companies—Policy and Governance Issues

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (23) ◽  
pp. 7838
Author(s):  
Prafula Pearce
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Institutional Investment ◽  
Address Climate Change ◽  
Climate Policies ◽  
Net Zero ◽  
Company Directors ◽  
The Government ◽  
Energy Companies ◽  
The Impact

The transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy requires cooperation from all, including corporations, shareholders, and institutional investors. The purpose of this paper is to explore climate change litigation risks for Australian energy companies and investors from a policy and governance perspective. Companies are increasingly reporting their climate policies to satisfy their shareholders and investor demands. In addition, the government and judiciary are making laws and decisions to support the Paris Agreement. This paper explores whether company directors can and, in some cases, should be considering the impact of climate change litigation risks on their business, or else risk breaching their obligation to exercise care and diligence under the Corporation Act 2001 (Cth, Australia). The paper concludes that in addition to reducing climate change litigation risks, Australian energy companies and institutional investment bodies that invest in Australian energy companies can make informed climate risk decisions by aligning their investments with the goal of net-zero or reduced emissions.

scholarly journals What Can We Do to Address Climate Change?

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paloma Trascasa-Castro ◽  
Christopher J. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Carbon Dioxide ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Address Climate Change ◽  
Net Zero ◽  
Climate Simulations ◽  
Gas Removal ◽  
To Come ◽  
Urgent Action

Climate change is one of the most serious problems that humans face today, but until now progress in stopping it has been slow. Climate simulations show that Earth will only stop warming when we reach “net zero” emissions. This means that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are cancelled out by an equal amount of greenhouse gas removal from the atmosphere. Worldwide efforts to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 are necessary to avoid some of the worst effects of climate change. Achieving net zero will require huge changes to our society. While there are some things we can all do to fight climate change, the biggest changes need to come from the way our businesses and countries are run, where we get our energy from, how we travel, and how much “stuff” we consume and waste. By taking urgent action, we can ensure the future well-being of billions of people worldwide.

Modelling ecosystem adaptation and dangerous rates of global warming

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Millington ◽  
Peter M. Cox ◽  
Jonathan R. Moore ◽  
Gabriel Yvon-Durocher
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Diffusion Rate ◽  
Individual Species ◽  
Genetic Evolution ◽  
Rates Of Change ◽  
Rapid Climate Change ◽  
Warming Climate ◽  
Intraspecies Competition ◽  
High Trait

Abstract We are in a period of relatively rapid climate change. This poses challenges for individual species and threatens the ecosystem services that humanity relies upon. Temperature is a key stressor. In a warming climate, individual organisms may be able to shift their thermal optima through phenotypic plasticity. However, such plasticity is unlikely to be sufficient over the coming centuries. Resilience to warming will also depend on how fast the distribution of traits that define a species can adapt through other methods, in particular through redistribution of the abundance of variants within the population and through genetic evolution. In this paper, we use a simple theoretical ‘trait diffusion’ model to explore how the resilience of a given species to climate change depends on the initial trait diversity (biodiversity), the trait diffusion rate (mutation rate), and the lifetime of the organism. We estimate theoretical dangerous rates of continuous global warming that would exceed the ability of a species to adapt through trait diffusion, and therefore lead to a collapse in the overall productivity of the species. As the rate of adaptation through intraspecies competition and genetic evolution decreases with species lifetime, we find critical rates of change that also depend fundamentally on lifetime. Dangerous rates of warming vary from 1°C per lifetime (at low trait diffusion rate) to 8°C per lifetime (at high trait diffusion rate). We conclude that rapid climate change is liable to favour short-lived organisms (e.g. microbes) rather than longer-lived organisms (e.g. trees).

Speaking of Psychology: Psychologists Address Climate Change

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaitlin Luna ◽  
Kim Mills ◽  
Brian Dixon ◽  
Marcel de Sousa ◽  
Christine Roland Levy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Address Climate Change

Political Preferences, Personality Traits, and Environmentalism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Soutter ◽  
René Mõttus
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Personality Traits ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Environmental Attitudes ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
Party Voting

Although the scientific evidence of anthropogenic climate change continues to grow, public discourse still reflects a high level of scepticism and political polarisation towards anthropogenic climate change. In this study (N = 499) we attempted to replicate and expand upon an earlier finding that environmental terminology (“climate change” versus “global warming”) could partly explain political polarisation in environmental scepticism (Schuldt, Konrath, & Schwarz, 2011). Participants completed a series of online questionnaires assessing personality traits, political preferences, belief in environmental phenomenon, and various pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours. Those with a Conservative political orientation and/or party voting believed less in both climate change and global warming compared to those with a Liberal orientation and/or party voting. Furthermore, there was an interaction between continuously measured political orientation, but not party voting, and question wording on beliefs in environmental phenomena. Personality traits did not confound these effects. Furthermore, continuously measured political orientation was associated with pro-environmental attitudes, after controlling for personality traits, age, gender, area lived in, income, and education. The personality domains of Openness, and Conscientiousness, were consistently associated with pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours, whereas Agreeableness was associated with pro-environmental attitudes but not with behaviours. This study highlights the importance of examining personality traits and political preferences together and suggests ways in which policy interventions can best be optimised to account for these individual differences.

Graubündens Wald im Fokus | Focus on the Grisons forest

2009 ◽  
Vol 160 (7) ◽  
pp. 195-200
Author(s):  
Reto Hefti
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Natural Hazards ◽  
Positive Attitude ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Intensive Use ◽  
Form Part ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
The Government

In the mountainous canton Grisons, much visited by tourists, the forest has always had an important role to play. New challenges are now presenting themselves. The article goes more closely into two themes on the Grisons forestry agenda dominating in the next few years: the increased use of timber and climate change. With the increased demand for logs and the new sawmill in Domat/Ems new opportunities are offered to the canton for more intensive use of the raw material, wood. This depends on a reduction in production costs and a positive attitude of the population towards the greater use of wood. A series of measures from the Grisons Forestry Department should be of help here. The risk of damage to infrastructure is particularly high in a mountainous canton. The cantonal government of the Grisons has commissioned the Forestry Department to define the situation concerning the possible consequences of global warming on natural hazards and to propose measures which may be taken. The setting up of extensive measurement and information systems, the elaboration of intervention maps, the estimation of the danger potential in exposed areas outside the building zone and the maintenance of existing protective constructions through the creation of a protective constructions register, all form part of the government programme for 2009 to 2012. In the Grisons, forest owners and visitors will have to become accustomed to the fact that their forests must again produce more wood and that, on account of global warming, protective forests will become even more important than they already are today.

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