249 Matching Annotations
  1. Nov 2021
    1. Many high-carbon activities are also highly routinized. From a psychological perspective, this bears the hallmarks of habitual behavior, in that environmentally significant actions are often stable, persistent, and an automatic response to particular contexts (159), e.g., commuting by car repeatedly over many months or years. Theories of social practice offer a contrasting account in which routines coevolve with infrastructures, competencies, conventions, and expectations (160). For example, developments in urban infrastructure, everyday routines, and the shifting social significance of private transport have culminated in the car becoming a dominant mode of mobility (161). Elsewhere, coordinated developments across spheres of production and consumption have led to the freezer becoming regarded as a domestic necessity (162), and changing patterns of domestic labor and shifts toward sedentary recreation have contributed to the rise in indoor temperature control (163). Although such assemblages shift over time, policy and action intended to reduce emissions have been ineffective in coordinating changes throughout these social and material configurations. As a consequence, routinized, commonplace, and largely unconscious behaviors remain mostly unaffected, with many high-carbon activities even growing and expanding (e.g., frequent flying).

      New stories and narratives, in other words, new social imaginaries of viable low carbon life styles can help bring about a shift. By adopting the viable story, it primes individuals to seek technology elements that are designed to fit that new social imaginary.

      As mentioned above, community economists Michael Shuman demonstrates how relocalizing can create new patterns of behavior consistent with a desirable future.

      The Swiss 2000 Watt society is another example of such a new social imaginary https://www.2000-watt-society.org/what as is Doughnut Economics https://doughnuteconomics.org/

      We must engage film-makers, artists, playwrights to create stories of such alternative futures of living within planetary boundaries, doughnut economics and eco-civilizations.

    2. Critical to historical and ongoing carbon lock-in has been the pervasive failure in industrial, modern societies to imagine desirable ways of living that are neither wedded to the carbon economy nor dependent on narratives of progress reliant on perpetual economic growth (see Section 4.1). This scarcity of plausible imaginaries underpins many of the factors discussed in this article and persists for a number of interconnected reasons.

      It is critical to create stories and narratives of what an ecologically regenerative society living within planetary boundaries looks like at a local level that we are familiar with. We need enliven and enact futures studies and backcast to our current reality.

      Imaginative storytelling by the artists is critical at this time so that we can imagine and not be so afraid of what a transformed future looks like. Indeed, if we do it right, it can be FAR BETTER than our current unbalanced civilization.

    1. This report is an essential companion for policymakers working at the intersection of society and climate change.”

      Policy alone may not be sufficient to change this deeply ingrained luxury lifestyle. It may require deep and meaningful education of one's deeper humanity leading to a shift in worldviews and value systems that deprioritize materially luxurious lifestyles for using that wealth to redistribute to build the future wellbeing ecocivilization. Transform the wealthy into the heros of the transition. Shaming them and labeling them as victims will only create distance. Rather, the most constructive approach is a positive one that shifts our own perspective from holding them as villains to heros.

    2. Dr. Lewis Akenji, the lead author of the report says: “Talking about lifestyle changes is a hot-potato issue to policymakers who are afraid to threaten the lifestyles of voters. This report brings a science based approach and shows that without addressing lifestyles we will not be able to address climate change.”

      This underscores the critical nature of dealing with the cultural shift of luxury lifestyle. It is recognized as a "hot potato" issue, which implies policy change may be slow and difficult.

      Policy changes and new legal tools are ways to force an unwilling individual or group into a behavior change.

      A more difficult but potentially more effective way to achieve this cultural shift is based on Donella Meadows' leverage points: https://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/ which identifies the top leverage point as: The mindset or paradigm out of which the system — its goals, power structure, rules, its culture — arises.

      The Stop Reset Go (SRG) open collective project applies the Deep Humanity (DH) Human Inner Transformation (HIT) process to effect impactful Social Outer Transformation (SOT). This is based on the inner-to-outer flow: The heart feels, the mind thinks, the body acts and a social impact manifests in our shared, public collective human reality.

      Meadows top leverage point identifies narratives, stories and value systems that are inner maps to our outer behavior as critical causal agents to transform.

      We need to take a much deeper look at the pysche of the luxury lifestyle. Philospher David Loy has done extensive research on this already. https://www.davidloy.org/media.html

      Loy is a Buddhist scholar, but Buddhist philosophy can be understood secularly and across all religions.

      Loy cites the work of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, especially his groundbreaking Pulitzer-prize-winning book: The Denial of Death. Becker wrote:

      "Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with. The lower animals are, of course, spared this painful contradiction, as they lack a symbolic identity and the self-consciousness that goes with it. They merely act and move reflexively as they are driven by their instincts. If they pause at all, it is only a physical pause; inside they are anonymous, and even their faces have no name. They live in a world without time, pulsating, as it were, in a state of dumb being. This is what has made it so simple to shoot down whole herds of buffalo or elephants. The animals don't know that death is happening and continue grazing placidly while others drop alongside them. The knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual, and animals are spared it. They live and they disappear with the same thoughtlessness: a few minutes of fear, a few seconds of anguish, and it is over. But to live a whole lifetime with the fate of death haunting one's dreams and even the most sun-filled days—that's something else."

      But Loy goes beyond mortality salience and strikes to the heart of our psychological construction of the Self that is the root of our consumption and materialism exasperated crisis.

      To reach the wealthy in a compassionate manner, we must recognize that the degree of wealth and materialist accumulation may be in many cases proportional to the anxiety of dying, the anxiety of the groundlessness of the Self construction itself.

      Helping all humans to liberate from this anxiety is monumental, and also applies to the wealthy. The release of this anxiety will naturally result in breaking through the illusion of materialism, seeing its false promises.

      Those of the greatest material wealth are often also of the greatest spiritual poverty. As we near the end of our lives, materialism's promise may begin to lose its luster and our deepest unanswered questions begin to regain prominence.

      At the end of the day, policy change may only effect so much change. What is really required is a reeducation campaign that results in voluntary behavior change that significantly reduces high impact luxury lifestyles. An exchange for something even more valued is a potential answer to this dilemma.

    1. New report out today reveals the #inequality that is pushing the 1.5C goal of the #ParisAgreement out of reach without urgent action. Together with colleagues at the Stockholm Environment Institute, we estimate the carbon footprints of the richest 1% in 2030 are set to be 30 times higher than the global per capita level compatible with the 1.5C goal. The footprints of the richest 10% in 2030 are set to be nearly 10 times that level, while those of the poorest half of the global population will remain far below it. In absolute terms, the emissions of the richest 10% alone are set to nearly amount to the global total in 2030 compatible with the 1.5C goal, while those of the remaining 90% are set to only just exceed it. The richest 1% are set for an increasing share of global total emissions, reaching 16% by 2030. Evidently it is not the consumption of most of the people on the planet that is driving the global #emissionsgap - but rather that of the richest minority.

      This Oxfam commissioned study points to how elites hold the rest of humanity hostage: https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/carbon-emissions-richest-1-set-be-30-times-15degc-limit-2030.

      What policy changes will governments enact? Can law against high carbon consumption be drafted into existence based on the premise that such extreme high carbon lifestyle actually constitutes crimes against humanity?

      Civil society must act as well. Individual’s must undergo a paradigm shift of the whole idea of luxury. It must be completely decoupled from its high carbon footprint. Carbon offsets are no good. Planting trees is yet another simplistic, one dimensional, reductionist solution....destroy an ancient forest and replace it with invasive monoculture tree crops. It is a false equivalency that enables the continuation of a high carbon lifestyle.

      Cultural change is required at this stage. This is an opportunity to educate the wealthy and give them a last opportunity to STOP their high carbon emission behavior, RESET it to low carbon redemptive behavior, and help civilization GO at the greatest speed possible towards a wellbeing ecocivilization.

      Another recent report from theNot or Cool Institute validates these findings:

      https://hotorcool.org/hc-posts/release-governments-in-g20-countries-must-enable-1-5-aligned-lifestyles/

      https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/climate-carbon-footprint-luxury-lifestyle-study/

    1. 2021 has heralded the dawn of a new form of hyper-carbon-intensive luxury travel, space tourism, in which hundreds of tonnes of carbon can be burned in just a ten-minute flight for around four passengers.28

      These should be identified.

    2. Gösling and Humpe found that no more than 1% of the world population likely accounts for half of aviation emissions.30

      Wow! Will carbon neutral fuels be greenwashing or real solutions? Will carbon neutral SpaceX flights be greenwashing, or real carbon neutrality?

    3. Earlier studies also established the major contribution to carbon footprints of the rich and famous from flights, especially via private jets. Gösling’s study constructed aviation emissions estimates based on tracking the international travel of celebrities via their social media postings. Footprints – from aviation alone – were found to be in excess of a thousand tonnes per year.27

      It's not surprising that yachts and private jets, the symbols of elite luxury.are culprits. Large and multiple mansions must be accounted for somewhere as well.

    4. The fact that these countries are still not on track to reach the 1.5⁰C per capita level by 2030, and have still not delivered the minimal commitment to mobilize $100bn per year in international climate finance by 2020, is a double indictment of their moral and legal failure in view of the equity principle at the heart of the UNFCCC and its Paris Agreement.

      The facts reflect the truth that developed economies are essentially unwilling to cede their way of life. The people of these economies want to cling to their high carbon way of life.

    5. The extreme difference between the expected carbon footprints of a small minority of the world’s population in 2030 and the global average level needed to keep the Paris Agreement’s 1.5⁰C goal alive is not tenable. Maintaining such high carbon footprints among the world’s richest people either requires far deeper emissions cuts by the rest of the world’s population, or it entails global heating in excess of 1.5⁰C above pre-industrial levels. There is no other alternative.

      Humanity and the entire biosphere should not be made to suffer for the whims of 1% of the population. National commitments are very difficult to negotiate. We must really begin to target High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI), for they may hold the fate of humanity in their hands.

    6. Chancel’s recent paper adds new insights by allocating national consumption emissions associated with capital investments to individuals within each country based on their share of asset ownership, derived from the latest wealth inequality datasets. He finds that emissions from investments make up an increasing share – up to 70% in 2019 – of the footprints of the world’s 1% highest emitters.32

      Hence, High Net Worth Individual Divestment (HNWID) is definitely an important future strategy.

    7. Between 2015 and 2030, the richest 1% are set to reduce their per capita consumption emissions by just 5%, compared with the 97% cuts needed to align with the global per capita level compatible with the 1.5⁰C goal

      This sentence seems contradictory to what Figure 3 shows, an increase of 1% of emissions for the top 1%. Either way, while we need a 97% reduction, their emissions are set to go up!

      It should be noted that Figure 3 shows that the top 10% are slightly decreasing their emissions from 34% in 2015 to 32% in 2030. THIS is a drop of approximately 5%. Perhaps this is what they are referring to.

    8. 4 In absolute terms, we find that despite the small total emissions cuts globally from 2015 to 2030, the total emissions associated with the richest 1% are set to continue to increase (see Figure 2). Notably, we also estimate that the total emissions associated with 90% of the global population combined will only just exceed the total global 1.5⁰C-compatible emissions level in 2030, while the total emissions associated with the consumption of just the richest 10% of the world population alone will nearly amount to that level. Figure 2: Total consumption emissions 1990–2030 of global income groups and the 2030 1.5⁰C-compatible total global emissions level Source: IEEP and SEI analysis This growth in the absolute emissions linked to the richest 1% also translates into a continued growth in their share of total global emissions, which we estimate will continue to grow from 13% in 1990 to 15% in 2015 and is set to reach over 16% by 2030 (see Figure 3).17 This continued increase is a reflection of the fact that in countries that are home to most of the world’s richest 1%, the carbon intensity of the economy is not set to improve sufficiently to offset the expected increase in income and consumption of those countries’ richest citizens.

      This figure reveals that between now and 2030, the top 11% (top 1% added to the next tier down, the top 10%) are responsible for roughly 50% of all carbon emissions. Hence, strategies for decarbonizing the top 11% are very strategic.

      Note that the carbon emissions of the 1% are actually INCREASING while everyone else is suppose to be decreasing by 97%!

    9. Wilk and Barros drew on 82 databases of public records to document billionaires’ houses, vehicles, aircraft and yachts. Applying carbon coefficients, they found billionaire carbon footprints easily run to thousands of tonnes per year, with superyachts the biggest contributor, each adding around 7,000 tonnes per year, for example.26

      This is a good study on the consumption and carbon footprint of the elites.

    10. Figure 6: Changing geographic source of emissions of world’s richest 1% 2015–2030

      China and India will have the largest growth of elites between 2015 and 2030. Therefore, strategic, culturally appropriate interventions need to be applied to this elite demographic.

  2. Oct 2021
  3. bafybeiery76ov25qa7hpadaiziuwhebaefhpxzzx6t6rchn7b37krzgroi.ipfs.dweb.link bafybeiery76ov25qa7hpadaiziuwhebaefhpxzzx6t6rchn7b37krzgroi.ipfs.dweb.link
    1. Recent research suggests that globally, the wealthiest 10% have been responsible foras much as half of the cumulative emissions since 1990 and the richest 1% for more than twicethe emissions of the poorest 50% (2).

      this suggests that perhaps the failure of the COP meetings may be partially due to focusing at the wrong level and demographics. the top 1 and 10 % live in every country. A focus on the wealthy class is not a focus area of COP negotiations perse. Interventions targeting this demographic may be better suited at the scale of individuals or civil society.

      Many studies show there are no extra gains in happiness beyond a certain point of material wealth, and point to the harmful impacts of wealth accumulation, known as affluenza, and show many health effects: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1950124/, https://theswaddle.com/how-money-affects-rich-people/, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-dark-reasons-so-many-rich-people-are-miserable-human-beings-2018-02-22, https://www.nbcnews.com/better/pop-culture/why-wealthy-people-may-be-less-successful-love-ncna837306, https://www.apa.org/research/action/speaking-of-psychology/affluence,

      A Human Inner Transformation approach based on an open source praxis called Deep Humanity is one example of helping to transform affluenza and leveraging it accelerate transition.

    2. 10% per annum

      Anderson has contextualized the scale of such an impact in his other presentations but not here. A recent example is the temporary emission decreases due to covid 19. A 6.6% global decrease was determined from this study: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00090-3#:~:text=After%20rising%20steadily%20for%20decades,on%20daily%20fossil%20fuel%20emissions. with the US contributing 13% due to lockdown impacts on vehicular travel (both air and ground). After the pandemic ends, experts expect a strong rebound effect.

  4. Sep 2021
    1. Exploring the consumption practices of the super-rich begins to highlight that they are best described as 'fast subjects' who dwell in what Castells (2000) terms the 'space of flows' rather than the 'space of places'.

      Good terminology- space of flows, denoting the necessity of (carbon intensive) travel to move from one place to another. Seen from the 19th century, even the average car-driving citizen of the 20th century is elite. A 100 hp car, which is now almost an average power rating of most internal combustion engines, is the power equivalent to the 19th century analog of maintaining 100 horses.

    2. it is apparent that the global elite must be regarded as transnational to the extent that they share similar global lifestyles. For Short and Kim (1999) the lifestyles of global managers present perhaps the clearest evidence that the shared consumption of similar goods and images is resulting in the creation of global lifestyles. Moving from city to city, the global managerial class characteristically occupies a series of corporate spaces designed for the international business traveller: international airports, business hotels, executive clubs, corporate health suites, restaurants and so on. The mobility of global managers is, however, eclipsed by that of the global super-rich. They are able to move easily from nation to nation by executive jet (rather than travelling by business class); they stay only in five-star hotels; they are able to access exclusive clubs and restaurants, they frequent ultra-expensive resorts in all continents, and collect the objet d'arts which can only be obtained in the most exclusive shops and auction houses. In short, their space-time routines centre on a globally-diffuse set of spaces regarded as 'the right places to see and be seen'. It is the nature of these spaces that we explore in our next section.

      The Deep Humanity challenge then, is to achieve an education program for these super-elites that shift aspirations from the extremely high carbon footprint lifestyle to a more frugal, within-planetary- boundary one. Without the context of a dedicated trans-disciplinary Human Inner Transformation (HIT) protocol, a scalable approach may prove challenging.

  5. Jul 2021
  6. May 2021
  7. Apr 2021
  8. Mar 2021
  9. Jan 2021
    1. In the context of net-zero targets, our 230-440bn tonne range would be consistent with a scenario where CO2 emissions decrease linearly from 2019 levels to net-zero by between 2032 and 2042. 

      Das ist die Begründung für die XR-Forderung nach Dekarbonisierung bis 2025 in den reichen Ländern.

    1. ReconfigBehSci on Twitter: ‘RT @NatureNews: COVID curbed carbon emissions in 2020—But not by much, and new data show global CO2 emissions have rebounded: Https://t.c…’ / Twitter. (n.d.). Retrieved 20 January 2021, from https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1351840770823757824

  10. Dec 2020
    1. Hier ist auch bemerkenswert, wie viele Wissenschaftler mitgearbeitet haben.

      Der Artikel steht sehr gut klar, weshalb das net zero-Ziel problematisch ist. Unter anderem erklärt er Basics des schnellen und des langsamen Carbon Cycle.

      Unter anderem wird dabei klar, dass es nur relativ wenig bringt, einfach darauf zu setzen neue Bäume zu pflanzen.

  11. Nov 2020
    1. The road from the geosciences to climate policy is long and winding. However, carbon budgets provide one of the simplest and most transparent means of connecting geophysical limits imposed by the Earth system to implications for climate policy.
  12. Sep 2020
  13. Aug 2020
    1. Factsheet, um die Begriffsverwirrung um den Begriff der "Klimaneutralität" aufzulösen und Manipulationen zu erschweren. Die AG Klimaneutral des CCCA, die hinter diesem Factsheet steht, formuliert Sieben grundlegende Forderungen - wohl der wichtigste Teil des Factsheets.

  14. Jun 2020
  15. May 2020
  16. Feb 2020
    1. As you can see, having one fewer child still comes out looking like a solid way to reduce carbon emissions — but it’s absolutely nowhere near as effective as it first seemed. It no longer dwarfs the other options. On this model, instead of having one fewer kid, you can skip a couple of transatlantic flights and you’ll save the same amount of carbon. That seems like a way more manageable sacrifice if you’re a young person who longs to be a parent.

      Even if I believed the highly optimistic predictions of very strong climate policy in the USA (which I don't), having one fewer child still reduces emissions each year more than twice as much as living car free or avoiding a trans-atlantic flight every year.

      And they state it as "instead of having one fewer kid, you can skip a couple of transatlantic flights and you’ll save the same amount of carbon." ... but this requires each parent to forgo 2 transatlantic flights they would have taken every year for the rest of their life, if I understand correctly.

  17. Apr 2018
    1. The market continues to grow with nearly $888 million being committed in 2015 alone, according to Ecosystem Marketplace’s most recent State of Forest Carbon Finance report. Forest carbon offset sales in North America totaled $74.5 million in 2015, with $11.3 million of those sales through voluntary markets and $63.2 million through compliance markets, mostly driven by California’s cap and trade program.

      Scale of carbon market in US

  18. Nov 2017
    1. Compared to 2005, in 2012, the PR principle failed to track sectoral CO2 flow, and embodied CO2 in import and interprovincial export increased, with manufacturing contributing the most; manufacturing should take more carbon responsibilities in the internal linkage, and tertiary sectors in the net forward and backward linkage, with sectors enjoying low carbonization in the mixed linkage; inward net CO2 flows of manufacturing and service sectors were more complicated than their outward ones in terms of involved sectors and economic drivers; and residential effects on CO2 emissions of traditional sectors increased, urban effects remained larger than rural ones and manufacturing and tertiary sectors received the largest residential effects.

      This is interesting!

  19. Oct 2017
    1. There are further projects we might undertake, i

      To do list going forward as suggested by Bethany Nowviskie.

      1. more effective communication
      2. foster collaborations
      3. find nobility in metadata enhancement, project maintenance & forward migration
      4. more agendas of empathy
      5. greater attention to matters of accessibility, minimal c computing (not sure what this is exactly!!)
      6. Libraries - need robust discourse around ephemerality. ( this is the concept of things being transitory, existing only briefly.)
      7. attend to the environmental & human cost of DH : CARBON FOOTPRINT , PRICE TAG
      8. bring technological savvy & deep historical conscience into the politics of 21st century.
      9. Amplify our voices
  20. Sep 2017
  21. Mar 2017