Atmospheric temperature and public support for climate policy in a coupled ecological-economic-social model
M.A. van den Berghe (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)
Y.M. Dijkstra – Mentor (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)
G. Marangoni – Mentor (TU Delft - Technology, Policy and Management)
A. Poujon – Mentor (TU Delft - Technology, Policy and Management)
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
Current climate policy is not sufficient to reach the Paris Agreement, in which nations agreed that global temperature increase should remain below 2 °C. In this thesis, an ecological-economic model (Dynamically Integrated model for Climate and Economy) is coupled to a social model to investigate the effect of this coupling on global warming. In particular, atmospheric temperature is coupled to public support for climate policy.
In all model simulations, the level of public support eventually rises to full support. The way in which public support evolves towards full support appears to be determinative for high or low global warming in the model. In cases where public support rises quickly, global warming remains within the desired limit of 2 °C. However, in cases where public support levels initially fall and eventually tip to full support, the model shows high global warming. In these cases, bifurcation-induced and rate-induced tipping were identified.
Multiple factors can delay achieving full support for climate policy or climate policy implementation in general. These are a low value of the perceived weight for the costs of climate change ν2, a low social learning rate κ, and a low maximum bound for the change in climate policy Δμmax. A change in one factor can also affect the influence of another factor. An important example is the strength of social norms δ; changes in this variable influence the sensitivity of ν2 and x0.