This paper investigates the relationship between emissions of carbon dioxide and the ongoing process of demographic transition in OECD countries. Our research is motivated by suggestions in the literature that emission-relevant consumption patterns may depend on the position in the life cycle and on the birth cohort to which people belong. We augment standard macroeconomic emission regressions by including the age and cohort composition of the population. Our estimation results on a panel of data for 26 countries, spanning the period 1960–2005, suggest that both life-cycle and cohort effects belong in a macroeconomic emission function for carbon dioxide. We find that shifts in both the age and the cohort composition have contributed to rising carbon emissions in OECD countries.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2011.07.016

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A case study of Denver, Colorado explores the roles of three social actors—individual users, infrastructure designer-operators, and policy actors—in near-term greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation in U.S. cities. Energy efficiency, renewable energy, urban design, price- and behavioral-feedback strategies are evaluated across buildings–facilities, transportation, and materials/waste sectors in cities, comparing voluntary versus regulatory action configurations. GHG mitigation impact depends upon strategy effectiveness per unit, as well as societal participation rates in various action-configurations. Greatest impact occurs with regulations addressing the vast existing buildings stock in cities, followed by voluntary behavior change in electricity use/purchases, technology shifts (e.g., to teleconferencing), and green-energy purchases among individual users. A portfolio mix of voluntary and regulatory actions can yield a best-case maximum of 1% GHG mitigation annually in buildings and transportation sectors, combined. Relying solely on voluntary actions reduces mitigation rates more than five-fold. A portfolio analysis of climate action plans in 55 U.S. cities reveals predominance of voluntary outreach programs that have low societal participation rates and hence low GHG impact, while innovative higher-impact behavioral, technological, and policy/regulatory strategies are under-utilized. Less than half the cities capitalize on cross-scale linkages with higher-impact state-scale policies. Interdisciplinary field research can help address the mis-match in plans, actions, and outcomes.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/es203503a

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► Migration theory can advance understanding of the destinations of current environmental mobility. ► There is little evidence to support claims of mass environmental migration to the global north. ► Forced or voluntary immobility in environmentally vulnerable areas may be a serious problem. ► Many environmental moves will be by individuals and not whole households. ► In Europe most environmentally driven mobility will be from within the European Union.

doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2011.09.004

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Drawing on an increasing evidence base that has assessed elements of the influence of the environment on migration, this paper presents a new framework for understanding the effect of environmental change on migration. The framework identifies five families of drivers which affect migration decisions: economic, political, social, demographic and environmental drivers. The environment drives migration through mechanisms characterised as the availability and reliability of ecosystem services and exposure to hazard. Individual migration decisions and flows are affected by these drivers operating in combination, and the effect of the environment is therefore highly dependent on economic, political, social and demographic context. Environmental change has the potential to affect directly the hazardousness of place. Environmental change also affects migration indirectly, in particular through economic drivers, by changing livelihoods for example, and political drivers, through affecting conflicts over resources, for example. The proposed framework, applicable to both international and internal migration, emphasises the role of human agency in migration decisions, in particular the linked role of family and household characteristics on the one hand, and barriers and facilitators to movement on the other in translating drivers into actions. The framework can be used to guide new research, assist with the evaluation of policy options, and provide a context for the development of scenarios representing a range of plausible migration futures.

doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2011.10.001

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In the words of its progenitor Dr. Rick Potts (anthropologist), the climate variability hypo states that: “Maybe this [the 700K years of dramatic environmental changes beginning about 800Ky bp in the area around Olorgesallie, Kenya] has something to do with human evolution, and it’s not the survival of the fittest in any one environment but the survival of the more versatile, the more general and flexible creatures that would really persist over time. This gave me a new insight into human evolution. The origin of stone tools, the expansion of the brain, and the complexity of social life that we see with the emergence of our own species may actually be a response not to just the dry savanna or the cold Ice Age but to the wide and dramatic variability of climate over time… What we have found is that the most prolonged periods of climate variability early on corresponded with the origin of stone tools and of eating meat, and the origin of our own genus, Homo. Then, later on, another prolonged period of climate variability, very dramatic, corresponded with the origin of modern human behavior and our own species.”

Now, if I were a climate change skeptic, I might say, ‘You see, what makes us so special and successful as a species is our ability to adapt to climate changes. Therefore, we should not fear or try to do anything to prevent humanly induced climate change: we will simply adapt to the changes as we, and our evolutionary cousins, always have.’

Well first we should remember that the CV Hypothesis refers to the species Homo erectus and not our own and Erectus was around for 1.5 million years before going extinct. It could be that the adaptability of Erectus was unique to that species and not ours.

But let as presume that Homo sapiens also possesses this special quality of being able to adapt to dramatic environmental change. One would still have to establish the parameters of the changes that were survived in the past in order to predict our ability to survive a similar set of changes. If the changes wrought by our behavior somehow differ from the observed set then we would have to add an element of uncertainty to the model’s predictive power. If could be that Erectus’ ability to adapt was unique to that set of environmental changes and not any and every set of environmental changes.

I suspect that if we compare the typology and kinetics of the environmental changes which took place in those 700K years with those occurring in our own time (and forthwith), we will find that there is a significant qualitative difference in those two data sets. First, the changes we will probably experience in the next several millenia are not exclusively about climate variables (temperature, precipitation, etc), but also about geochemical alterations (acidification, eutrophication, soil denutrification, toxic pollution) and geobiological alterations (habitat loss, diversity loss, species loss, genetic bottlenecks, etc.). Furthermore, the numbers of Homo individuals on the Earth today vastly exceeds (probably) the number of Erectus around back then; environmental disturbances from here on out could have a different, more cataclysmic, set of impacts due to population size. Finally, there is perhaps the most crucial difference of all: the rate of change. As dramatic as those 700K years of changes may have been, it may well be that the changes we will be experiencing will happen much, much faster than that. In order to adapt it stands to reason that one must have also time to observe, react, plan, and implement. Evolutionary adaptation requires yet another time frame. It is unlikely that the environmental changes on our horizon will allow us the same behavioral or evolutionary luxury as benefited Homo erectus; due to our ecology we may be well adapted to a specific rate range of environmental change.

I would urge Dr. Potts and other researchers to compare and contrast the environmental changes that may have led to the phenomenal evolutionary success of Homo erectus and Homo sapiens with those we may anticipate as a result of our current ecological impacts. Resting on Homo’s past laurels may yet prove unwarranted as a justification for doing nothing about humanly induced climate change in the 21st Century.

I encourage readers of this post to provide hyper-references to subsequent research on this topic, if known.

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Ed. Note: Could it be that a large population growth rate was, at that time and perhaps also later in human history, a competitive advantage? Is is possible that human proliferation on Earth has now created a new set of survival conditions within which rapid population growth no longer confers such an advantage?

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1206930

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