Coupled Evolution of the Economy and the Atmosphere

* Article: T. J. Garrett: No way out? The double-bind in seeking global prosperity alongside mitigated climate change. T. J. Garrett. Earth Syst. Dynam., 3, 1–17, 2012.

URL = https://www.earth-syst-dynam.net/3/1/2012/esd-3-1-2012.pdf

"Effectively, it appears that civilization may be in a double-bind. If civilization does not collapse quickly this century, then CO2 levels will likely end up exceeding 1000 ppmv; but, if CO2 levels rise by this much, then the risk is that civilization will gradually tend towards collapse."

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"IPCC SRES scenarios substantially underestimate how much CO2 levels will rise for a given level of future economic prosperity. For one, global CO2 emission rates cannot be decoupled from wealth through efficiency gains. For another, like a long-term natural disaster, future greenhouse warming can be expected to act as an inflationary drag on the real growth of global wealth. For atmospheric CO2 concentrations to remain below a “dangerous” level of 450 ppmv (Hansen et al., 2007), model forecasts suggest that there will have to be some combination of an unrealistically rapid rate of energy decarbonization and nearly immediate reductions in global civilization wealth." (https://www.earth-syst-dynam.net/3/1/2012/esd-3-1-2012.pdf)