Documents York, Richard 3 results

"We assess how renewable electricity production interacts with GDP per capita to influence CO2 emissions per capita, analyzing cross-national data from 1960 to 2012. We find an interaction effect between the quantity of renewables and GDP per capita, where, counterintuitively, economic growth is more closely tied to emissions in nations with a large share of their electricity from renewable sources and growth of renewable electricity has a smaller suppressive effect on emissions in more affluent nations. Additional analyses suggest that this relationship emerges because renewable energy sources tend to suppress nuclear energy in affluent nations, thereby unintentionally perpetuating reliance on fossil fuels."

"The climate crisis requires nations to achieve human well-being with low national levels of carbon emissions. Countries vary from one another dramatically in how effectively they convert resources into well-being, and some nations with low levels of emissions have relatively high objective and subjective well-being. We identify urgent research and policy agendas for four groups of countries with either low or high emissions and well-being indicators. Least studied are those with low well-being and high emissions. Understanding social and political barriers to switching from high-carbon to lower-carbon modes of production and consumption, and ways to overcome them, will be fundamental."

"This article provides a review of recent anthropological, archeological, geographical, and sociological research on anthropogenic drivers of climate change, with a particular focus on drivers of carbon emissions, mitigation and adaptation. The four disciplines emphasize cultural, economic, geographic, historical, political, and social‐structural factors to be important drivers of and responses to climate change. Each of these disciplines has unique perspectives and makes noteworthy contributions to our shared understanding of anthropogenic drivers, but they also complement one another and contribute to integrated, multidisciplinary frameworks. The article begins with discussions of research on temporal dimensions of human drivers of carbon emissions, highlighting interactions between long‐term and near‐term drivers. Next, descriptions of the disciplines' contributions to the understanding of mitigation and and adaptation are provided. It concludes with a summary of key lessons offered by the four disciplines as well as suggestions for future research."