Your money or your life? The carbon-development paradox

Abstract

The relationship between human health and well-being, energy use and carbon emissions is a foremost concern in sustainable development. If past advances in well-being have been accomplished only through increases in energy use, there may be significant trade-offs between achieving universal human development and mitigating climate change. We test the explanatory power of economic, dietary and modern energy factors in accounting for past improvements in life expectancy, using a simple novel method, functional dynamic decomposition. We elucidate the paradox that a strong correlation between emissions and human development at one point in time does not imply that their dynamics are coupled in the long term. Increases in primary energy and carbon emissions can account for only a quarter of improvements in life expectancy, but are closely tied to growth in income. Facing this carbon-development paradox requires prioritizing human well-being over economic growth.

Towards a Comprehensive Framework of the Relationships between Resource Footprints, Quality of Life, and Economic Development

“…Although GDP/cap is a constituent of QL, this difference is important, even more so due to the different shapes of the curves, which results from the declining marginal utility of higher income, and in particular from the non-GDP factors of QL. From that perspective, not degrowth in economic terms must be avoided, but decreasing QL [34,35]. Figure 5b additionally introduces an abstracted planetary boundary per capita (PB/cap), assuming that a transformation into consumption-triggered per capita numbers is possible [62].…”

“…This result strongly supports the argument of economists advocating a-growth and post-growth approaches. It does not primarily matter whether GDP/cap grows (net development) since QL can increase due to non-GDP factors as well as through GDP-related rebound effects, particularly beyond a certain level of development (wellbeing-consumption paradox [34,35]. However, rebound effects on GDP/cap must be considered [69], which can be expected in two ways: (1) Increasing the slope by reducing the resource elasticity; (2) shifting the GDP/cap line upward.…”

“…This result strongly supports the argument of economists advocating a-growth and post-growth approaches. It does not primarily matter whether GDP/cap grows (net development) since QL can increase due to non-GDP factors as well as through GDP-related rebound effects, particularly beyond a certain level of development (wellbeing-consumption paradox [34,35].…”

“…Ambrey and Daniels [33] even found marginally lower levels of well-being with increasing carbon footprints for the average Australian case. Regarding economic development, recent studies have repeatedly reaffirmed the existence of the Easterlin paradox, indicating that life satisfaction does not increase with economic growth beyond a certain point in the long run [34][35][36][37], questioning the validity of GDP as the main measure of economic welfare.…”

Just energy transitions? Social inequities, vulnerabilities and unintended consequences

“…The findings from this study demonstrate that they are unfamiliar with smart technologies and are unable to account for what is, and is not, energy wastage within their lifestyle practices. Indeed, proponents of this argument further exacerbate social inequities given that carbon footprints for low-income communities are substantially lower than middle-and high-income bracket groups (Oswald, Owen, & Steinberger 2020;Steinberger, Lamb, & Sakai 2020;Wiedmann et al 2020), placing the burden of addressing sustainability challenges on those most vulnerable. Consequently, any changes in usage patterns are immediately viewed as related to financial aspects.…”