Abstract
Background
With the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic surging and new mutations evolving, trust in vaccines is essential.
Methods
We explored correlates of vaccine hesitancy, ...considering political believes and psychosocial concepts, conducting a non-probability quota-sampled online survey with 1007 Austrians.
Results
We identified several important correlates of vaccine hesitancy, ranging from demographics to complex factors such as voting behavior or trust in the government. Among those with hesitancy towards a COVID-19 vaccine, having voted for opposition parties (opp) or not voted (novote) were (95% Confidence Intervall (CI)opp, 1.44–2.95) to 2.25-times (95%CInovote, 1.53–3.30) that of having voted for governing parties. Only 46.2% trusted the Austrian government to provide safe vaccines, and 80.7% requested independent scientific evaluations regarding vaccine safety to increase willingness to vaccine.
Conclusions
Contrary to expected, psychosocial dimensions were only weakly correlated with vaccine hesitancy. However, the strong correlation between distrust in the vaccine and distrust in authorities suggests a common cause of disengagement from public discourse.
The global financial crisis of 2008 has shown that the present financial system involves global systemic risks. The dimension of these risks is hard to grasp with the conceptual tools that have been ...developed to tackle conventional risks like fire or car accidents. While modern societies know quite well how to deal with conventional risks, we have not yet been equally successful at dealing with global systemic risks. For managing this kind of risks, one needs to understand critical features of specific global systems where many human agents interact in ever changing complex networks. Here we apply two specific dimensions of complexity theory for dealing with global systemic risk in an integrated fashion: normal accidents and extended evolution. Both of them have successfully been applied to the analysis of systemic risks. As a paradigmatic example of global systemic risks, we focus on the global financial crisis that began in 2008, and suggest that the future evolution of the financial system could either see a further increase in complexity, or a reversal to a less complex system. We explore and contrast the implications of normal accident theory and extended evolution perspectives and suggest a four‐point research strategy informed by complexity theory for better understanding global systemic risks in financial systems.
Klaus Hasselmann and Economics Jaeger, Carlo C
Journal of physic, complexity,
12/2022, Letnik:
3, Številka:
4
Journal Article
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Abstract
Klaus Hasselmann has earned the 2021 Nobel Prize in physics for his breakthroughs in analysing the climate system as a complex physical system. Since decades, as a leading climate scientist ...he is aware of the need for creative cooperation between climate scientists and researchers from other fields, especially economics. To facilitate such cooperation, he has designed a productive research program for economic analysis in view of climate change. Without blurring the differences between economics and physics, the Hasselmann program stresses the complexities of today’s economy. This includes the importance of heterogeneous actors and different time scales, of making major uncertainties explicit and bringing researchers and practitioners in close interaction. The program has triggered decades of collaborative research, especially in the network of the Global Climate Forum, that he has founded for this purpose. Research inspired by Hasselmann’s innovative ideas has led to a farewell to outdated economic approaches: single-equilibrium models, a single constant discount rate, framing the climate challenge as a kind of prisoner’s dilemma and framing it as a problem of scarcity requiring sacrifices from the majority of today’s population. Instead of presenting the climate problem as the ultimate apocalyptic narrative, he sees it as a challenge to be mastered. To meet this challenge requires careful research in order to identify underutilisation of human, technical and social capacities that offer the keys to a climate friendly world economy. Climate neutrality may then be achieved by activating these capacities through investment-oriented climate strategies, designed and implemented by different actors both in industrialised and developing countries. The difficulties to bring global greenhouse gas emissions down to net zero are enormous; the Hasselmann program holds promise of significant advances in this endeavour.
This book discusses how citizens can participate more effectively in sustainability science and environmental policy debates. It discusses designs for participatory procedures, and experiences of ...their application to issues of global change. While the focus is on citizen participation, the involvement of specific stakeholders - including water managers and venture capitalists - is also addressed. The book describes how focus group methods were combined with the interactive use of computer models into new forms of participation, tested with six hundred citizens. The results are discussed in relation to other important topics, including greenhouse gas and water management. By combining this with an examination of issues of interactive governance and developing country participation, the book provides state-of-the-art, practical insights for students, researchers and policy makers alike.
Various studies of public opinion regarding the causes and consequences of climate change reveal both a deep reservoir of concern, yet also a muddle over causes, consequences and appropriate policy ...measures for mitigation. The technique adopted here, namely integrated assessment (IA) focus groups, in which groups of randomly selected individuals in Switzerland looked at models of possible consequences of climate change and questioned specialists as to their accuracy and meaning, revealed a rich assembly of reactions. Respondents were alarmed about the consequences of high-energy futures, and mollified by images of low-energy futures. Yet they also erected a series of psychological barriers to justify why they should not act either individually or through collective institutions to mitigate climate change. From the viewpoint of changing their lifestyles of material comfort and high-energy dependence, they regarded the consequences of possible behavioural shift arising from the need to meet mitigation measures as more daunting. To overcome the dissonance created in their minds they created a number of socio-psychological denial mechanisms. Such mechanisms heightened the costs of shifting away from comfortable lifestyles, set blame on the inaction of others, including governments, and emphasised doubts regarding the immediacy of personal action when the effects of climate change seemed uncertain and far away. These findings suggest that more attention needs to be given to the social and psychological motivations as to why individuals erect barriers to their personal commitment to climate change mitigation, even when professing anxiety over climate futures. Prolonged and progressive packages of information tailored to cultural models or organised belief patterns, coupled to greater community based policy incentives may help to widen the basis of personal and moral responsibility.
Science-based stakeholder dialogues are structured communication processes linking scientists with societal actors, such as representatives of companies, NGOs, governments, and the wider public. ...Stakeholders possess knowledge needed by scientists to better comprehend, represent and analyse global change problems as well as decision-makers’, managers’ and other stakeholders’ mental models. We will examine the relevance of three theoretical frameworks for science-based stakeholder dialogues in the context of sustainability science. These are Rational Actor Paradigm, Bayesian Learning and Organisational Learning. All three contribute to a better theoretical framework for dialogue practice and the understanding of stakeholders as actors in society and in research in particular. Furthermore, these theories are important for tool development. A combination of analytical and communication tools is recommended to facilitate stakeholder dialogues. The paper refers to examples of dialogue practice gained in the European Climate Forum (ECF).
Three views of two degrees Jaeger, Carlo C.; Jaeger, Julia
Regional environmental change,
03/2011, Letnik:
11, Številka:
Suppl 1
Journal Article
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Limiting global warming to 2°C above pre-industrial global mean temperature has become a widely endorsed goal for climate policy. It has also been severely criticized. We show how the limit emerged ...out of a marginal remark in an early paper about climate policy and distinguish three possible views of it. The catastrophe view sees it as the threshold separating a domain of safety from a domain of catastrophe. The cost-benefit view sees it as a strategy to optimize the relation between the costs and benefits of climate policy. The focal point view sees it as a solution to a complex coordination problem. We argue that the focal point view is the most appropriate. It leads to an emphasis on implementing effective steps toward a near-zero emissions economy, without panicking in the face of a possible temporary overshooting. After several decades of practical experiences, the focal point may or may not be redefined on the basis of knowledge gathered thanks to these experiences.
Reaching the Sustainable Development Goals requires a fundamental socio-economic transformation accompanied by substantial investment in low-carbon infrastructure. Such a sustainability transition ...represents a non-marginal change, driven by behavioral factors and systemic interactions. However, typical economic models used to assess a sustainability transition focus on marginal changes around a local optimum, which—by construction—lead to negative effects. Thus, these models do not allow evaluating a sustainability transition that might have substantial positive effects. This paper examines which mechanisms need to be included in a standard computable general equilibrium model to overcome these limitations and to give a more comprehensive view of the effects of climate change mitigation. Simulation results show that, given an ambitious greenhouse gas emission constraint and a price of carbon, positive economic effects are possible if (1) technical progress results (partly) endogenously from the model and (2) a policy intervention triggering an increase of investment is introduced. Additionally, if (3) the investment behavior of firms is influenced by their sales expectations, the effects are amplified. The results provide suggestions for policy-makers, because the outcome indicates that investment-oriented climate policies can lead to more desirable outcomes in economic, social and environmental terms.
Defining and operationalizing Article 2 of the UNFCCC remains a challenge. The question of what is dangerous climate change is not a purely scientific one, as danger necessarily has a subjective ...dimension and its definition requires judgment and precaution. The papers in this special issue of Regional Environmental Change attempt to navigate this problem, by offering an overview of the latest scientific findings in the context of risks and uncertainties, and assess some key vulnerabilities that might lead to dangerous climate change. This synthesis provides an overview of the papers in this issue and looks at four areas of possible dangerous climate change—adverse declines in regional food and water security, loss of arctic sea ice with projected extinction of species, large-scale sea-level rise and loss of coral reef systems. These issues affect a number of different regions including Africa, South Asia, and Small Island Developing States. Significant risks to vulnerable regions and systems at warming levels of 1.5–2°C above pre-industrial are identified. The direct effects of CO
2
concentration increases in terms of ocean acidification are identified as relevant to Article 2 because of the risks posed to coral reefs. Ultimate CO
2
stabilization levels that allow for the long-term viability of coral reefs likely are below 350 ppm. The paper concludes by arguing that the emission reduction pledges made by countries under the Copenhagen Accord will not suffice to prevent dangerous climate change.
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