Abstract
In the presence of a global pandemic (COVID-19), the relentless pressure on global decision-makers is to ensure a balancing of health (reduce mortality impacts), economic goals (income for livelihood sustenance), and environmental sustainability (stabilize GHG emissions long term). The global energy supply system is a dominant contributor to the GHG burden and deeply embedded in the economy with its current share of 85%, use of fossil fuels has remained unchanged over 3 decades. A unique approach is presented to harmonizing the goals of human safety, economic development, and climate risk, respectively, through an operational tool that provides clear guidance to decision-makers in support of policy interventions for decarbonization. Improving climate change performance as an integral part of meeting human development goals allows the achievement of a country’s environmental, social, and economic well-being to be tracked and monitored. A primary contribution of this paper is to allow a transparent accounting of national performance highlighting the goals of enhancing human safety in concert with mitigation of climate risks. A measure of a country’s overall performance, combined as the Development and Climate Change Performance Index (DCI), is derived from two standardized indexes, the development index H and the Climate Change Performance Index CCPI. Data are analyzed for 55 countries comprising 65 percent of the world’s population. Through active management and monitoring, the proposed DCI can illustrate national performance to highlight a country’s current standing, rates of improvement over time, and a historical profile of progress of nations by bringing climate risk mitigation and economic well-being into better alignment.
Highlights
Will the drive for action on climate policy crumble in the face of social, economic, and political stress arising from the COVID-19 pandemic? The global pandemic has put enormous pressures on national budgets and rattled our collective sense of safety, security, and well-being
The risk is real that permanent damage to Earth, with global temperatures rising above 2 ◦ C will deliver misery on a large-scale at the planetary level: famines, floods, fires, tsunamis, mass migrations, violence, and irreparable damage to the ecosystem [1,2]
Historical progress, largely because of the energy sectors of massive use of fossil fuels has contributed, paradoxically, to an unprecedented level of economic and safety but at an increasingly high cost of damage to the environment: deforestation, pollution of air, land, and water, and increasing stress on the health of the ecosystem resulting in extreme weather events, floods, famines, and ice cap melting linked to climate change
Summary
Will the drive for action on climate policy crumble in the face of social, economic, and political stress arising from the COVID-19 pandemic? The global pandemic has put enormous pressures on national budgets and rattled our collective sense of safety, security, and well-being. Historical progress, largely because of the energy sectors of massive use of fossil fuels has contributed, paradoxically, to an unprecedented level of economic and safety but at an increasingly high cost of damage to the environment: deforestation, pollution of air, land, and water, and increasing stress on the health of the ecosystem resulting in extreme weather events, floods, famines, and ice cap melting linked to climate change. This externality is a debt to future generations, shown here to be more than five percent of the World economic product.
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