In recent years, there has been growing interest in defining what exactly constitutes “decent living standards” (DLS)—the material underpinnings of human well-being. We assess the gaps in providing decent health, shelter, nutrition, socialization, and mobility within countries, across the world. Our results show that more people are deprived of DLS than are income-poor, even when numbers are measured against medium income poverty thresholds. We estimate the cumulative energy needs for building out new infrastructure to support DLS provision for all by 2040 to be about 290 EJ, which amounts to less than three-quarters of current annual global energy demand, at the final energy level. The annual energy requirements to support decent living for the global population after 2040 is estimated to be 156 EJ yr−1. Present average energy demand levels in most countries exceed hypothetical DLS energy needs. Nevertheless, the required rate of increase in energy to provide decent living for all in the coming two decades would be unprecedented for many countries. Greater attention to equity would significantly reduce the need for growth. The per capita energy requirement of different countries to meet the same DLS levels varies by up to a factor of four due to differences in climate, urbanization, diets, and transport infrastructure. Transport energy dominates energy for decent living worldwide, while housing requirements dominate upfront energy investment needs. This study supports the claim that the increase in energy provision poverty eradication does not, in itself, pose a threat to mitigating climate change at a global scale. Distinguishing energy for affluence from energy for decent living could provide a basis for defining equitable access to sustainable development in energy terms.
A key statistic describing climate change impacts is the ‘social cost of carbon dioxide’ (SCCO2), the projected cost to society of releasing an additional tonne of CO2. Cost-benefit integrated assessment models that estimate the SCCO2 lack robust representations of climate feedbacks, economy feedbacks, and climate extremes. We compare the PAGE-ICE model with the decade older PAGE09 and find that PAGE-ICE yields SCCO2 values about two times higher, because of its climate and economic updates. Climate feedbacks only account for a relatively minor increase compared to other updates. Extending PAGE-ICE with economy feedbacks demonstrates a manifold increase in the SCCO2 resulting from an empirically derived estimate of partially persistent economic damages. Both the economy feedbacks and other increases since PAGE09 are almost entirely due to higher damages in the Global South. Including an estimate of interannual temperature variability increases the width of the SCCO2 distribution, with particularly strong effects in the tails and a slight increase in the mean SCCO2. Our results highlight the large impacts of climate change if future adaptation does not exceed historical trends. Robust quantification of climate-economy feedbacks and climate extremes are demonstrated to be essential for estimating the SCCO2 and its uncertainty.
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