An international team of scientists led by Oregon State University researchers has used a novel 500-year dataset to frame a “restorative” pathway through which humanity can avoid the worst ecological and social outcomes of climate change.
In addition to charting a possible new course for society, the researchers say their “paradigm shifting” plan can support climate modeling and discussion by providing a set of actions that strongly emphasize social and economic justice as well as environmental sustainability.
Oregon State’s William Ripple, former OSU postdoctoral researcher Christopher Wolf, and collaborators argue their scenario should be included in climate models along with the five “shared socioeconomic pathways,” or SSPs, that are used by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Ripple and co-authors from the United States, the Netherlands, and Australia present their restorative pathway in a paper published in Environmental Research Letters. They say the pathway is inspired by a unique compilation of Earth system variables that vividly illustrate how humanity’s resource demands have exploded since 1850, indicating ecological overshoot.
The authors note that current climate change modeling relies on multiple assumptions and factors related to policy options and societal developments. An international team of climate scientists, economists, and energy systems modelers developed the SSPs, which are used to derive greenhouse gas emissions scenarios under different sets of policies that assume continued and significant GDP growth through 2100.
Unlike some of the current shared socioeconomic pathways, the restorative pathway does not rely on the development of carbon capture technologies, nor does it assume continued economic growth as the SSPs do.
“By prioritizing large-scale societal change, our proposed pathway could limit warming much more effectively than pathways that support rising resource consumption by wealthy nations,” Ripple said. “We aim to bend the curves on a wide range of planetary vital signs with a holistic vision for addressing climate change, biodiversity loss, and socioeconomic injustice. Our work presents a case for how humanity can embark on the journey of saving the world from these environmental and social crises.”