How can we effectively modify the dangerous human striving for more and more?

In one of the last issues of Science (3 July, p.11), Thomas R. Pickering, in an Editorial mentioned, “ We can begin to think now on a larger scale – an opportunity not to be wasted.” and pointing to interrelationships “…that the issues of economic growth, development, and poverty be seen as linked with the key drivers of food, water, and health, just as climate change is now linked to the key drivers of energy and environment…” he suggested: “Because improvements in any one area depend on the other two, why not devote a summit at the UN General Assembly to the interlinked broad questions of food water and health ?”

Indeed a wonderful idea and first and foremost demonstrating, the world is not a collection of things but a system of interacting processes (dynamics in signaling networks!) So, focusing on natural sciences alone will never be enough, to solve the challenging questions for our planet’s future. There is a human-induced warming in addition to natural trends and cycles of natural climate change and of course, if there should be a solution at all, we have to mind social sciences as well.

Truism is: Economic growth cannot be unlimited and ecology shows the fatal consequences of the call for a never ending consumerism. Ongoing conceptions, initiated by the global financial crisis together with “Peak Oil” and climate crisis, like the “Green New Deal” together with an up-dated “green Keynesianism” are perhaps better than nothing but, basing on sole economic growth, they cannot be the solution.

Kohlmann

How can the human population explosion be curbed?

Obviously this is an extremely sensitive and political issue but the facts are simple – there are too many people in the world for the finite number of resources it holds. This issue must be raised fearlessly if the world is to survive as we know it. More people will only impact the earth further.

Can we quantify uncertainties in complex models of the complete Earth System?

The models we are using to base our judgements on are all imperfect. We must acknowledge this and attempt to address quantitatively how these uncertainties affect the judgements we are able to make on the basis of these models. Without uncertainty estimates (error bars if you like) any decision making will be arbitrary. With them it is more complex, remains subjective but at least can be justified and explained. This will be essential if the hard choices that we face are to be effectively communicated and acted on. Addressing uncertainty is central to all aspects of modelling, from the dynamic climate models to models of ecological systems, society and economics. Coupling such models makes uncertainty quantification even more essential. I believe this is a fundamental question to address before we can even start to answer specific questions about the Earth System.

How will humanity manage peak oil and climate change impacts and promote an ordered and gradual transition to low carbon economies?

The strong environmental effects of greenhouse gas emissions derived from oil use and the negative socio-economic consequences of future oil scarcity make it urgent to shift to alternative affordable energy sources. A recent assessment of the International Energy Agency, an OECD prestigious institution, alerts that oil shortage and increased energy costs can easily be an immediate reality after the current financial crisis if massive and strategic investments in oil industry are not rapidly and massively implemented.

Multiple economic, scientific, technological and political pathways should be implemented to achieve this global energy transition. States should empower their national strategies to improve the efficiency in energy generation, transmission and consumption and thus reduce progressively carbon emissions. States should also facilitate the massive deployment of renewable energies and public transport, promote the progressive electrification of the car industry, and globally shift to sustainable strategies in many other economic sectors. At the international level, governments should rapidly promote multilateral and bilateral cooperative agreements on energy and climate policies. In addition, states might promote the creation of a United Nations international programme to facilitate and coordinate a world-wide ordered and non-traumatic transition to low-carbon and energy-efficient economie. This UN international programme could develop or facilitate multilateral regulatory agreements to avoid the emergence of speculative dynamics and volatility on oil prices that ultimately damage economic stability and increase ongoing global food-security crisis. Finally, I advocate for a much greater scientific effort urgently placed on the interactions between peak oil, climate change and global society change. The scale, urgency and severity of peak oil and climate change mean that no action is too small to matter, too large to contemplate, or too soon to begin. There is not much time left.

What are the levels of sustainable development within each country and can these levels be quantified and compared to other countries?

Although complex, a standardized sustainability index per country, comparable to other countries, should be researched and presented. This would indicate levels of sustainability within countries, taking population growth/age, natural resources, pollution levels, etc. into account. Based on this, areas for education/action can be identified. This is both a earth system & social science topic combined, and the final outcome should be to raise awareness within these problem sectors.

How can we get past the debates between natural and anthropogenic causes of global changes, and shift our attention towards reducing and dealing with the impacts of these changes?

How to minimize the natural vs anthropogenic controversy on global changes/warming issues? It seems that there is no more scientific doubts that climate changes are moving the earth system to a warmer period. It seems that the actual controversy on how much is natural and how much is human related is a worthless discussion in many senses. We have to focus on how to diminish the impacts rather than finding which is the guilty mechanism or process. Whatever the solutions, they have to be implemented in the human dimension first.

What are the criteria for assessing the effectiveness of integrated conservation and development practices?

The paradigm shift in conservation and the commitment of international organizations to the goals of sustainable development gave birth to integrated conservation and development practices (ICDP). Naughton-treves et al. (2005) in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources concludes that ICDPs have had limited success in improvement of social welfare and biodiversity conservation. There is confusion in operationalising the multiple objectives, ambiguous mandates, and assessing the effectiveness of parks and reserves.

Contribution of conservation areas to development goals and poverty reduction is a complex endeavor and there is no set of conservation strategies for different regions and sub-regions of the world considering the fundamental differences between their institutional and historical context (Naughton-Treves et al. 2005). Combination of conservation and development without any change in market has an inherent contradiction and seeking a win-win situation might be elusive. Either conservation and development objectives should be separated (Berkes 2004) or there should be trade-offs between the two (Garnett et al. 2007) and the compromise would be development projects that minimize environmental degradation and conservation projects that minimize economic loss (Borgerhoff Mulder and Coppolillo 2005). Holland (2005) suggests that the challenge for ICDPs is shifted from “Parks vs people” to “park insiders vs outsiders” (Naughton-Treves et al. 2005).

Foot Note: Frank and Blomley (2004) describe ICDPs as “…approaches to the management and conservation of natural resources in areas of significant biodiversity value that aim to reconcile the biodiversity conservation and socio-economic development interests of multiple stakeholders at local, regional, national and international levels”.

How can we obtain non-biased probability distributions (i.e. error bars) for various aspects of Earth System model projections as climate sensitivity, sea-level rise or MOC strength?

Earth System models used for decadal and centennial projections are usually manually tuned in a high dimensional parameter space to fit current day’s climate. For physically and statistically reliable PDFs of climate quantities of interest at the end of this century we need methodical development and improvement of: automatic tuning processes, valid training data sets & methods, automatic initialisation & bottom up and top down validation attempts. Political decision methods are based on costs and benefits derived from these resulting PDFs and political action/inaction is decisive in this decade. We need to improve the quantitative aspects of the Earth System modeling enterprise substantially to justify massive welfare redistributions for the coming generations. The suggested technical development extends the questions concerning climate sensitivity and sea-level rise because it addresses general methodological difficulties in Earth System Modeling.

How can we convince the richest 20% of humanity to half their ecological impacts by 2012?

The richest 20% degrade their own and everybody else’s quality of life, so stand to gain from reducing their impact, they are perceived as role models by large parts of the global population, and they started the problems associated with excessive consumption, so should take the lead in implementing available solutions urgently.

Can products and services be labeled in such a way to allow proper quantification of environmental impact at the consumer, household, and institutional levels?

Any attempt to link educational efforts, social campaigns, and even the spread of Earth Systems scientific knowledge with behavioral change capable of causing significant positive environmental consequences will require quantification of environmental impact at the individual, household, and institutional levels. However, such quantification is still very complex, coarse, and innacurate. Basic and applied reasearch, as well as standardization and policy making will be fundamental in this area. Just like WeightWatchers count calories based on product labels, so ClimateWatchers should be able to count GHG emissions. Environmental impact labels should be mandatory, but we don’t have such labels, neither the science to provide the information to print on these labels.