[MCN] Investing into climate change mitigation despite the risk of failure

[Lance Olsen]

Climatic Change <https://link.springer.com/journal/10584> June 2019, Volume 154, Issue 3–4 <https://link.springer.com/journal/10584/154/3/page/1>, pp 453–460| 
Investing into climate change mitigation despite the risk of failure

Mike Farjam Olexandr Nikolaychuk  Giangiacomo Bravo

Abstract [ Open Access ]
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-019-02454-1 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-019-02454-1>

In order to convince both policy makers and the general public to engage in climate change mitigation activities, it is crucial to communicate the inherent risks in an effective way. Due to the complexity of the system, mitigation activities cannot completely rule out the possibility of the climate reaching a dangerous tipping point but can only reduce it to some unavoidable residual risk level. We present an online experiment based on a sample of US citizens and designed to improve our understanding of how the presence of such residual risk affects the willingness to invest into climate change mitigation. We found that, far from reducing them, the presence of residual risk actually increases investments into mitigation activities. This result suggests that scientists and policy makers should consider being more transparent about communicating the residual risks entailed by such initiatives.

Introduction
Public support and design of climate policies is strongly affected by how individuals and organizations perceive the associated costs and risks (IPCC 2014 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-019-02454-1#CR14>; Sterman 2008 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-019-02454-1#CR28>). Due to the complexity of the system, current mitigation activities cannot completely rule out the possibility of the climate reaching a dangerous tipping point but can only reduce it to some unavoidable residual risk level (Holden et al. 2018 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-019-02454-1#CR10>; Steffen et al. 2018 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-019-02454-1#CR27>; Lenton 2011 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-019-02454-1#CR18>). Effective communication of both mitigation initiatives and of risks linked to various degrees of the temperature increase above the pre-industrial level therefore presents a crucial challenge for scientists and policy makers (Morgan et al. 2002 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-019-02454-1#CR21>), as recently highlighted by the IPCC report of the consequences of a “limited” global warming of 1.5 ∘C above the pre-industrial level (IPCC 2018 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-019-02454-1#CR15>). In addition, mitigation behaviour is affected by the information available as well as by the framing of the problem channelled trough traditional and social media (Boykoff 2011 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-019-02454-1#CR2>; Morton et al. 2011 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-019-02454-1#CR22>).

Several experimental papers studied how risk and ambiguity affect the willingness to contribute in games modelling collective action as a means to solve climate dilemmas, generally reporting higher contributions when the risk of disastrous losses increased (Milinski et al. 2008 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-019-02454-1#CR20>; Barrett and Dannenberg 2014 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-019-02454-1#CR1>; Tavoni et al. 2011 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-019-02454-1#CR30>). However, those works only considered the risk linked to the failure of preventing further climate change, without considering that humanity would suffer certain consequences of climate change even in the best-case scenario of the international collaboration succeeding in limiting global warming to around 1.5 ∘C (IPCC 2018 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-019-02454-1#CR15>). Farjam et al. (2018 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-019-02454-1#CR7>) distinguished between an a priori and a residual risk, the former referring to the consequences of an unsuccessful collective action (e.g., not limiting the increase of the temperature to 1.5–2 ∘C above pre-industrial levels, as stated by the 2009 Paris Agreement), the latter referring to the risk that cannot be ruled out even in case of a successful collective action (e.g., due to the climate inertia). It is also important to note that the residual risk discussed here is different from what is sometimes referred to as threshold ambiguity, i.e., what level of greenhouse gases concentration is going to trigger positive feedback loops leading to a self-sustaining climate change (Holden et al. 2018 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-019-02454-1#CR10>; Stocker 2013 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-019-02454-1#CR29>). Under threshold ambiguity, it is possible for an optimistic decision-maker to expect the required level of effort to be lower than under certainty. Indeed, previous experimental research found that threshold ambiguity reduced contributions to climate change mitigation relative to the certainty condition (Barrett and Dannenberg 2014 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-019-02454-1#CR1>; Dannenberg et al. 2015 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-019-02454-1#CR6>). On the other hand, a scenario with residual risk compared with one without does not allow for such optimism, which makes it rational to perceive the former as more threatening. In line with this logic, Farjam et al. (2018 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-019-02454-1#CR7>) showed that residual risk in the context of climate change mitigation activities could actually increase contributions in a collective-risk social dilemma (CRSD) game (Milinski et al. 2008 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-019-02454-1#CR20>) where the participants had the choice either to keep their endowment for themselves or to contribute part of it to a common “climate account.” If after 10 rounds the total group contribution was lower than a predefined (and known) threshold, the group faced the (a priori) risk of a large monetary loss, emulating the consequences of climate change. The surprising, albeit preliminary result of their study was that, everything else being equal, the participants generally invested more and reached the threshold more frequently when a low but positive level of residual risk was present in the game (Farjam et al. 2018 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-019-02454-1#CR7>).

In other words, we found evidence that a moderate level of residual does not reduce the willingness to invest in climate change mitigation but actually may increase it. The main goal of the current work was to validate and extend this result to a broader range of levels of residual risk, all using a larger and more representative pool of participants. This also enabled us to investigate if the relationship between the level of residual risk and individual contributions to the climate account is actually linear. Taking into account both the findings in Farjam et al. (2018 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-019-02454-1#CR7>) and the relation between the various levels of a priori and residual risk, we expected an inverted U-shaped relationship between the level of residual risk and contributions, i.e., the highest level of contributions would be attained at intermediate levels of residual risk. If residual risk was negligible, the participants would essentially be in a situation where only a priori risk mattered whereas if residual risk was too high, the improvement over the a priori risk scenario would become insufficient to motivate the contributions.

Access to pdf of full article here
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-019-02454-1 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-019-02454-1>

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“We don’t need to guard [ i.e., defend/protect ourselves ]  against depression, against anger, against despair when it comes to climate change.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2017/07/we_are_not_alarmed_enough_about_climate_change.html <http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2017/07/we_are_not_alarmed_enough_about_climate_change.html>


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Excerpt:  "Environmental psychologist Susi Moser, also talks about the importance of acknowledging our underlying fears and distress about climate change as an important coping strategy. Moser (2012) calls it ‘the bravest thing’ – getting real, accepting reality without illusions, and accepting that better tomorrows may not come.”

https://www.isthishowyoufeel.com/blog/how-do-people-cope-with-feelings-about-climate-change-so-that-they-stay-engaged-and-take-action <https://www.isthishowyoufeel.com/blog/how-do-people-cope-with-feelings-about-climate-change-so-that-they-stay-engaged-and-take-action>

 




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