The Case Against Climate Doom

Unabated climate change would pose serious threats for human well-being. The Paris Agreement concluded in 2015 aims to stabilize the global mean temperature at “well below 2°C” and to aim for stabilization at 1.5 °C by the year 2100. Reaching these climate targets requires swift decarbonization of the global economy to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 and removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere in the second half of the century. Due to the fact that greenhouse gas emissions keep rising, some commentators have argued that efforts to address climate change have failed and that it is now too late to prevent catastrophic climate impacts. The aim of this book is to demonstrate that the narrative of climate doom is misleading. It presents 30 examples of social, political, and technological change where encouraging progress has been made in the past years.

Successfully addressing climate change requires collective action. People need to adjust their behaviors, for example, by changing mobility patterns and dietary habits. These decisions are taken within a broader social context in which social norms and attitudes toward climate change play an important role. Social values also crucially shape the design of climate policies, in particular with regard to the distribution of their costs and benefits. Social change tends to occur gradually through discursive processes that are reflected in the media as well as culture and the arts. Manifestations of social change include rising awareness of climate issues around the globe and a growing willingness of people to actively address it, for example, by changing their lifestyle or getting involved in political action. In addition, citizens are increasingly adopting more climate-friendly investment behaviors and civil society organizations are resorting to climate litigation to push for more ambitious climate policies and to hold companies attempting to delay climate action accountable.

Climate change affects people all over the globe, regardless of who emits greenhouse gases and where. Since climate damages do not just affect those who generated the emissions, the social costs of greenhouse gas emissions are not fully reflected in market prices. As a consequence, the market on its own does not provide sufficient incentives for reducing emissions, for example by changing behavior or switching to cleaner technologies. Dedicated climate policies are therefore required to align the self-interest of individual actors with what is socially desirable. Likewise, since the full benefits of technological progress often do not accrue to those who deploy an innovation, policies to support emerging mitigation and adaptation technologies are also needed. The option space to implement climate policies crucially depends on how costs and benefits are distributed between different actors. The availability of mitigation and adaptation technologies is a key determinant of political feasibility. Effective climate policies also require public support, including the willingness of the public to pay for climate-change mitigation and adaptation.

Technological change is a prerequisite for a successful transition to net-zero. Shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy is necessary for the decarbonization of electricity production. The electrification of sectors that to date predominantly use fossil fuels, such as industry, transport, and buildings, offers the possibility for even greater decarbonization. To do this, however, it will be necessary to develop better ways to store electricity. The central role that the clean energy transition plays in getting us to net-zero does not mean that reducing greenhouse gas emissions can be purely a ‘technology fix’. Rather, well-designed policies need to guide technological change in the right direction. Policies are also needed to prevent ‘rebound effects’, so that new renewable energy doesn’t just end up being additional to fossil fuels instead of replacing them. Behavioral change can also make an important contribution by reducing emissions that are hard to mitigate with technology alone, for instance those from agriculture and aviation. Nevertheless, we will not be able to reach ambitious climate targets if we continue to meet energy needs predominantly with fossil fuels, even if we drastically reduce total energy use.

Social, political, and technological aspects relevant for a transition to a net-zero economy influence each other, generating a lock-in of emission-intensive modes of production and consumption. Such feedback loops, however, also mean that once a critical inflection point is reached, rapid progress toward successfully addressing climate change is feasible. This outlook chapter puts the progress discussed in the previous chapters in the context of recent political developments. It concludes by discussing feasible ways forward to advance meaningful climate action.