It’s a message no one wants to hear:
To slow down global warming, we’ll either have to put the brakes on economic growth or transform the way the world’s economies work. That’s the implication of an innovative University of Michigan study examining the most likely causes of global warming.
The study, conducted by José Tapia Granados and Edward Ionides of U-M and Óscar Carpintero of the University of Valladolid in Spain, was published online in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Policy. It is the first analysis to use measurable levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide to assess fluctuations in the gas, rather than estimates of CO2 emissions, which are less accurate.
“If ‘business as usual’ conditions continue, economic contractions the size of the Great Recession or even bigger will be needed to reduce atmospheric levels of CO2,” said Tapia Granados, who is a researcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research.
For the study, the researchers assessed the impact of four factors on short-run, year-to-year changes in atmospheric concentrations of CO2, widely considered the most important greenhouse gas. Those factors included two natural phenomena believed to affect CO2 levels — volcanic eruptions and the El Niño Southern oscillation — and also world population and the world economy, as measured by worldwide gross domestic product.
Tapia Granados and colleagues found no observable relation between short-term growth of world population and CO2 concentrations, and they show that incidents of volcanic activity coincide with global recessions, which may confound any slight volcanic effects on CO2.
With El Niño outside of human control, economic activity is the sole modifiable factor. In years of above-trend world GDP, from 1958 to 2010, the researchers found greater increases in CO2 concentrations. For every $10 trillion in U.S. dollars that the world GDP deviates from trend, CO2 levels deviate from trend about half a part per million, they found. Preindustrial concentrations are estimated to be 200-300 parts per million.
To break the economic habits contributing to a rise in atmospheric CO2 levels and global warming, Tapia Granados says that societies around the world would need to make enormous changes.