Tackling inequality key to climate fight

Tackling inequality is key to securing the public support needed to overhaul the global economy and reverse climate change, an update to the landmark 50-year-old computer simulation of environmental stress has found.

Its central conclusion was that, if left unchecked, rising inequality in the next 50 years would leave people less trusting of governments and other institutions, making co-operation to deal with climate change and other threats more difficult.

"When social trust goes down, this limits the speed of public policy action. This translates into how much regulation and subsidies you can do in terms of greening the economy and energy system," study co-author Per Espen Stoknes told Reuters.

To track wellbeing, the researchers created an 'Average Wellbeing Index' using data including disposable income, income inequality, government services, the climate crisis, perceived progress, and their relationship to measures of social trust.

Using two scenarios - labelled 'Too Little Too Late', with no change to human behaviour, and 'The Giant Leap', where the world's economic and social systems are transformed - the model seeks to show how differing policies would impact the world.

Under the business as usual scenario, the wellbeing of the average worker - taken to mean those who spend most of what they earn in a year - peaks around the year 2000, before declining out to 2050 and then levelling to 2100, despite continued growth in the global economy over the same period.

By making changes such as phasing out fossil fuel use, putting adequate pensions in place, taxing the richest 10% more and cancelling the debt of low-income countries, the Giant Leap pathway allowed wellbeing to continue to rise.

The model estimated the pathway leading to a stabilisation of global temperatures below 2°C above the industrial era and eradicating to poverty by 2050 would cost 2-4% of global output, or between $2 trillion-4 trillion annually.