Abstract
Climate dynamics are inextricably linked to processes in social systems that are highly unequal. This suggests a need for coupled social-climate models that capture pervasive real-world asymmetries in the population distribution of the consequences of anthropogenic climate change and climate (in)action. Here, we use evolutionary game theory to develop a social-climate model with group structure to investigate how anthropogenic climate change and population heterogeneity coevolve. We find that greater homophily and resource inequality cause an increase in the global peak temperature anomaly by as much as 0.7°C. Also, climate change can structure human populations by driving opinion polarization. Finally, climate mitigation achieved by reducing the cost of mitigation measures paid by individuals tends to be contingent upon socio-economic conditions, whereas policies that achieve communication between different strata of society show climate mitigation benefits across a broad socio-economic regime. We conclude that advancing climate change mitigation efforts can benefit from a social-climate systems perspective.
Highlights
The Yellow Vest movement, protests during the Greek economic crisis, and players of the ultimatum game each reveal how asymmetrical costs and benefits fuel resistance to decision-making outcomes
We developed a coupled social-climate model to focus on the asymmetry of impact in the form of resource inequality and how austerity-induced dissatisfaction interacts with both climate mitigation efforts and climate system dynamics [32]
Warming due to the greenhouse effect impacts the social dynamics through perceived dangers of climate change, and through impacting each group’s resources
Summary
The Yellow Vest movement, protests during the Greek economic crisis, and players of the ultimatum game each reveal how asymmetrical costs and benefits fuel resistance to decision-making outcomes. In the Yellow Vest movement, protesters clearly stated their desire to mitigate climate change but would not support measures that unfairly impacted the working class [1,2], while realworld players of the ultimatum game will not accept offers deemed unfair, even when the Nash equilibrium predicts they should do so [3,4,5,6]. Models increasingly help us understand the interactions between the carbon cycle, the climate system, human processes, and the impact of policies [8,9] To ensure those policy decisions are robust to uncertainties, multiple scenarios are often laid out, ranging from carbon emission trajectories (RCPs) [8,10] to socioeconomic systems pathways (SSPs) [11]. Our objectives are (1) to investigate how population heterogeneity, homophily, and dissatisfaction affect the global average temperature anomaly predicted by an Earth system model, (2) to show how social-climate modelling may provide insights into climate change mitigation against a backdrop of powerful social forces, and (3) to introduce a method of modelling coupled social-climate systems with a heterogeneous social structure
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