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By the end of 2019, more than 11,000 world scientists declared Planet Earth is facing a climate emergency, which signals the failure of the global climate agenda (GCA). Since it took off thirty years ago, emissions have continued to increase at the planetary level. We add to the literature focusing on the economic and political dimensions shaping the GCA. In particular, we examine its economic growth roots under the umbrella of sustainable development (SD) or green growth to shed some light on whether the rules driving the world economy are shaping it. Such rules are built on the growth ideology fuelling the current extractivist socioeconomic metabolism, which in turn lies behind the socioecological crisis. We review the main international climate-focused events and document a shift in the guiding principles of climate politics from the 1980s onwards under which growth is no longer viewed as a driver of climate change (CC) but as its solution. We argue that the strategy to promote growth-based SD represents the main cause of policy failure. Indeed, the result is a policy that is highly reliant on technological solutions and market-based instruments and leads to the belief that green growth is both possible and the solution to CC. Such a belief restricts the debate to the economy’s ‘decarbonisation’ and CC adaptation and overlooks other important socio-political aspects involve in climate action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the local effects of global warming-derived impacts is important to island systems due to their fragile environmental conditions. This is especially true when it comes to Mediterranean insular regions as they are climate change (CC) hotspots where adaptation and mitigation policy design is an urgent matter. Looking at 2030 as a time horizon for climate action and focusing on the Balearic Islands, this paper reviews the physical changes projected for the coming decades as a result of CC and analyses their impacts on regional environmental, economic and social variables. Mitigation and adaptation measures are also proposed based on the identified priority impacts. The fact the Balearics are a top world holiday destination allows the analysis to serve as a guide to other Mediterranean islands with tourism-based economies facing similar CC scenarios. Results show the projected rise of temperature and sea level; the reduction of the average precipitation and increase in evapotranspiration, the droughts and the increase in ocean acidification and deoxygenation are the main threats faced by the Balearics, this putting their economy at risk due to the high tourism’s vulnerability to CC. Mitigation and adaptation action on terrestrial and marine ecosystems, water resources, energy, infrastructure and urban planning, human health, economy, law and education is recommended. Sustainable mobility and waste managing are also viewed as important fields for mitigation action. Conclusions show that diversifying the current socioeconomic model is needed to increase the community and territory resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the effect of inherent uncertainty on the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for a policy aimed at reducing expected climate change impacts. To do this, it relates outcome uncertainty to the probability of occurrence of one of these impacts within a given time horizon. Unlike the existing studies, this paper links outcome uncertainty to the uncontrollable component of environmental uncertainty derived from the stochastic nature of an ecosystem's behavior. Results show that the WTP for the policy in the presence of uncertainty does not decrease compared to the scenario where climate change impacts are assumed to occur with certainty. This suggests individuals are adopting a precautionary attitude when stating their WTP. Thus, the paper provides economic justification for preventive measures in highly uncertain contexts. However, findings are not conclusive with respect to the influence of the degree of uncertainty on the support for such measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental cost-benefit analysis has traditionally assumed that the value of benefits is sensitive to their timing and that outcomes are valued higher, the sooner in time they occur following implementation of a project or policy. Though, this assumption might have important implications especially for the social desirability of interventions aiming at counteracting time-persistent environmental problems, whose impacts occur in the long- and very long-term, respectively involving the present and future generations. This study analyzes the time sensitivity of social preferences for preservation policies of adaptation to climate change stresses. Results show that stated preferences are time insensitive, due to sustainability issues: individuals show insignificant differences in benefits they can experience within their own lifetimes compared to those which occur in the longer term, and which will instead be enjoyed by future generations. Whilst these results may be specific to the experimental design employed here, they do raise interesting questions regarding choices over time-persistent environmental problems, particularly in terms of the desirability of interventions which produce longer-term benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]