Global warming: New research emphasizes the role of economic growth

Terra Daily via SPX: 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 evolution of atmospheric CO2, the most likely cause of global climate change.

The study, conducted by Jose Tapia Granados and Edward Ionides of U-M and Oscar 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 (ISR).

...In years of above-trend world GDP, from 1958 to 2010, the researchers found greater increases in CO2 concentrations. For each trillion in U.S. dollars that the world GDP deviates from trend, CO2 levels deviate from trend about half a part per million (ppm), they found. ...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....

Chart from the University of Michigan website