Passenger Car Use and Climate Change. Quantifying the Impacts of Technological Innovations Needed for Substantial CO2 Emission Reductions

The purpose of the study is to model scenarios of technological innovations in the global passenger vehicle fleet, i.e., improvements in the energy economy of average regional vehicle fleets and blending of alternative fuels. This is to quantify the potential CO2 emission reductions that may stem from enhancing "business-as-usual technologies" in cars with respect to a set of baseline car stock projections. The study adopts an international approach quantifying in total 11 world regions, thereby conceptualising regionally distinct growth patterns of average car stocks until 2050. Scenario analysis is used to analyse impacts of alternative futures in car technology, i.e., the adoption of efficiency improvements or the blending of low-carbon biofuels to overcome business-as-usual growth in car-related CO2 emissions. To facilitate the assessment the present study is based on a multi-model approach to car demand, applying two types of methodologies rooted in the economics of consumption, utility maximisation and single equation models, to derived reference scenarios of car stock growth. They assume that preferences are the same throughout world regions, following the American lifestyle of individual passenger vehicle demand. The models are calibrated using empirical data that have been originally collated from international sources for the purpose of the study. Computation results show that given substantial growth in regional vehicle fleets under business-as-usual assumptions particularly in transition and developing regions, technological improvements in vehicle efficiency must be complemented by growing biofuel use with increasing mitigation potential in order to brake the trend of ever rising CO2 emissions. We conclude that a necessary absolute reduction in emissions from the passenger car sector needs tremendous efficiency improvements in the passenger vehicle fleet accompanied by a growing share of biofuel use. However, lifestyle and behavioural changes in overall mobility patterns are imperative to mitigate emissions from the car sector

Workshop on "Agent-Based Computational Modelling. An Instrument for Analysing Complex Adaptive Systems in Demography, Economics and Environment" at the Vienna Institute of Demography, December 4-6, 2003

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Environmental impacts and causes of conflict in the Horn of Africa : a review

The Horn of Africa region stands out amongst the planet's territories that are most volatile and vulnerable to armed violence. Conflicts have greatly affected the region over the past 50 years. The conflicts have disrupted the lives of people as well as the environment in ways that are not fully understood. Although armed conflict has generally had a negative impact on the environment, the environmental impact of conflict within the Horn of Africa has barely been evaluated. Similarly, our understanding that climate variability as well as change could have played a role in increasing or decreasing the impacts of conflicts within the Horn of Africa is insufficient. Therefore, this paper looks at the environmental impacts of conflict in the Horn of Africa since 1970 and also the role of climate variability in increasing or decreasing the impacts of conflict. Scientific publications as well as grey literature were reviewed with the aim to understand the status of past and present conflicts in the Horn of Africa, environmental impacts of conflict and the role of climate variability in decreasing or increasing impacts of conflict. The review demonstrates that conflict has extensive negative impacts on the environment in the Horn of Africa with main causes like grievances, government behaviour and interests, resource scarcity and trans border conflict as well as internal migration and climate variability. Similarly, climate variability plays a great role in exacerbating the impacts of conflict in the region. However, further research is needed to clearly show the impact of conflict and climate variability on the environment in the Horn of Africa

Climate change and weather extremes as risk multipliers: Tipping points, cascading events, and societal instability

The role of global warming as a risk multiplier is discussed in an integrative framework connecting climate and societal stability, acting through complex and destabilizing impact chains beyond thresholds. These include complex social interactions and self-enforcing collective dynamics such as breakdown of vulnerable infrastructures and networks; tradeoffs in the water-food-energy nexus; economic and financial crashes; social protest and turmoil; mass migration and violent conflict. Adressing the challenges through adaptive and anticipative governance can induce societal transformation processes to protect human security, develop social livelihood, strengthen societal resilience and solve problems along cooperative and sustainable pathways. In this context, key questions considered are conditions when climate stress exceeds the adaptive capacity of natural and social systems; tolerance ranges of stability and instability; impacts of climate stress on critical infrastructures and human-environment-interaction; thresholds of negative and positive tipping points triggering cascading events; and conditions for sustainability transition and societal transformation processes

Evaluating climate geoengineering proposals in the context of the Paris Agreement temperature goals

Current mitigation efforts and existing future commitments are inadequate to accomplish the Paris Agreement temperature goals. In light of this, research and debate are intensifying on the possibilities of additionally employing proposed climate geoengineering technologies, either through atmospheric carbon dioxide removal or farther-reaching interventions altering the Earth’s radiative energy budget. Although research indicates that several techniques may eventually have the physical potential to contribute to limiting climate change, all are in early stages of development, involve substantial uncertainties and risks, and raise ethical and governance dilemmas. Based on present knowledge, climate geoengineering techniques cannot be relied on to significantly contribute to meeting the Paris Agreement temperature goals