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Immediate action is the best strategy when facing uncertain climate change.

ABSTRACT: Mitigating the detrimental effects of climate change is a collective problem that requires global cooperation. However, achieving cooperation is difficult since benefits are obtained in the future. The so-called collective-risk game, devised to capture dangerous climate change, showed that catastrophic economic losses promote cooperation when individuals know the timing of a single climatic event. In reality, the impact and timing of climate change is not certain; moreover, recurrent events are possible. Thus, we devise a game where the risk of a collective loss can recur across multiple rounds. We find that wait and see behavior is successful only if players know when they need to contribute to avoid danger and if contributions can eliminate the risks. In all other cases, act quickly is more successful, especially under uncertainty and the possibility of repeated losses. Furthermore, we incorporate influential factors such as wealth inequality and heterogeneity in risks. Even under inequality individuals should contribute early, as long as contributions have the potential to decrease risk. Most importantly, we find that catastrophic scenarios are not necessary to induce such immediate collective action.

SUBMITTER: Abou Chakra M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6028488 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Immediate action is the best strategy when facing uncertain climate change.

Abou Chakra Maria M Bumann Silke S Schenk Hanna H Oschlies Andreas A Traulsen Arne A

Nature communications 20180702 1

Mitigating the detrimental effects of climate change is a collective problem that requires global cooperation. However, achieving cooperation is difficult since benefits are obtained in the future. The so-called collective-risk game, devised to capture dangerous climate change, showed that catastrophic economic losses promote cooperation when individuals know the timing of a single climatic event. In reality, the impact and timing of climate change is not certain; moreover, recurrent events are ...[more]

PMID: 29967461

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Project description:BackgroundClimate change poses a risk of health catastrophes and must be expeditiously addressed across the health care sector. Physicians are considered trustworthy and are well positioned to discuss climate change with patients. A unified strategy by all U.S. medical societies is essential to effectively mitigate their carbon footprint and address health concerns.MethodsWe conducted a review of the public facing websites of member organizations of the AMA House of Delegates and the AMA, which were scored based on inclusion of content related to climate change in position statements or policies, task forces or committees, patient education materials, practice recommendations and any official society publications. Membership in the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health or participation in the organization My Green Doctor were recorded as indicators of a commitment to providing educational resources about mitigation and adaptation to climate change. The availability of a virtual option for annual meetings, as a potential means to reduce the carbon footprint of attendees, was trended from 2021 to 2022.ResultsFifty out of 111 U.S. medical organizations (45%) had at least one metric with a reference to climate change and sixty-one organizations (55%) had no evidence of such website content. Out of 111 websites, only 20% (N = 22) had position statements or policies pertaining to climate change, 11% (N = 12) had committees or task forces dealing with climate change, 8% (N = 9) provided patient education resources on climate change, 21% (N = 23) included green practice recommendations and 45% (N = 50) had an article in an official society publication addressing climate change. Only 14% (N = 15) were listed as member societies of the Medical Consortium on Climate Change and 2% (N = 2) were participating organizations with My Green Doctor.ConclusionsViewed through the lens of medical society websites, there was a wide variation in efforts to address climate change. The high performing organizations can serve as a guide for other societies to help mitigate and adapt to the climate emergency.

Project description:Despite the scientific consensus, some people still remain skeptical about climate change. In fact, there is a growing partisan divide over the last decade within the United States in the support for climate policies. Given the same climate evidence, why do some people become concerned while others remain unconvinced? Here we propose a motivated attention framework where socio-political motivations shape visual attention to climate evidence, altering perceptions of the evidence and subsequent actions to mitigate climate change. To seek support for this framework, we conducted three experiments. Participants viewed a graph of annual global temperature change while they were eyetracked and estimated the average change. We found that political orientation may bias attention to climate change evidence, altering the perception of the same evidence (Experiment 1). We further examined how attentional biases influence subsequent actions to mitigate climate change. We found that liberals were more likely to sign a climate petition or more willing to donate to an environmental organization than conservatives, and attention guides climate actions in different ways for liberals and conservatives (Experiment 2). To seek causal evidence, we biased attention to different parts of the temperature curve by coloring stronger climate evidence in red or weak climate evidence in red. We found that liberals were more likely to sign the petition or more willing to donate when stronger evidence was in red, but conservatives were less likely to act when stronger evidence was in red (Experiment 3). This suggests that drawing attention to motivationally consistent information increases actions in liberals, but discouraged conservatives. The findings provide initial preliminary evidence for the motivated attention framework, suggesting an attentional divide between liberals and conservatives in the perception of climate evidence. This divide might further reinforce prior beliefs about climate change, creating further polarization. The current study raises a possible attentional mechanism for ideologically motivated reasoning and its impact on basic perceptual processes. It also provides implications for the communication of climate science to different socio-political groups with the goal of mobilizing actions on climate change.

Project description:Under the ongoing climate change, understanding the mechanisms structuring the spatial distribution of aquatic species in glacial stream networks is of critical importance to predict the response of aquatic biodiversity in the face of glacier melting. In this study, we propose to use metacommunity theory as a conceptual framework to better understand how river network structure influences the spatial organization of aquatic communities in glacierized catchments. At 51 stream sites in an Andean glacierized catchment (Ecuador), we sampled benthic macroinvertebrates, measured physico-chemical and food resource conditions, and calculated geographical, altitudinal and glaciality distances among all sites. Using partial redundancy analysis, we partitioned community variation to evaluate the relative strength of environmental conditions (e.g., glaciality, food resource) vs. spatial processes (e.g., overland, watercourse, and downstream directional dispersal) in organizing the aquatic metacommunity. Results revealed that both environmental and spatial variables significantly explained community variation among sites. Among all environmental variables, the glacial influence component best explained community variation. Overland spatial variables based on geographical and altitudinal distances significantly affected community variation. Watercourse spatial variables based on glaciality distances had a unique significant effect on community variation. Within alpine catchment, glacial meltwater affects macroinvertebrate metacommunity structure in many ways. Indeed, the harsh environmental conditions characterizing glacial influence not only constitute the primary environmental filter but also, limit water-borne macroinvertebrate dispersal. Therefore, glacier runoff acts as an aquatic dispersal barrier, isolating species in headwater streams, and preventing non-adapted species to colonize throughout the entire stream network. Under a scenario of glacier runoff decrease, we expect a reduction in both environmental filtering and dispersal limitation, inducing a taxonomic homogenization of the aquatic fauna in glacierized catchments as well as the extinction of specialized species in headwater groundwater and glacier-fed streams, and consequently an irreversible reduction in regional diversity.

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Immediate action is the best strategy when facing uncertain climate change.

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Immediate action is the best strategy when facing uncertain climate change.

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