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Income Inequality and Carbon Emissions in the United States: A State-Level Analysis, 1997-2012
... Meanwhile, Sager (2019) also describes a potential 'equity-pollution dilemma' in the United States during the period from 1996 to 2009 when although income inequality drives more greenhouse gas emissions, progressive income redistribution raises the demand for the primary energy source. This is also supported by Jorgenson, Schor, and Huang (2017) who find that the level of emissions is positively linked to the income share of either the top 10 per cent (richest) or the poorest segment. The reason is that a significant amount of energy and carbon-intensive products would be consumed when the poor move to the middle income class. ...
... However, some scholars argue that the Gini index may not be good enough to analyze the relationship between inequality but the top income inequality indicators, such as the top one per cent income equality and top 10 per cent income inequality may serve as better ones (Hailemariam, Dzhumashev, and Shahbaz 2020;Jorgenson, Schor, and Huang 2017;Kashwan 2017). Thus, besides the Gini index, we rely on The World Inequality Database to obtain the top income share series, including the top one per cent and top 10 per cent shares of income. ...
... Hailemariam et al. (2020) argued that the increase in top-income inequality contributes to carbon emissions, but the rise in the Gini index reduces carbon emissions. Similar results were found by Jorgenson et al. (2017) for the US state-level analysis. In concluding remarks, it is hypothesized that: ...
... The second approach combines the "Veblen effect" and the theory of marginal propensity to emit (MPE) and refers to the economic pattern of a household's level of consumption (Liobikienė, 2020). According to Jorgenson et al. (2017), patterns and levels of consumption are among the factors determining the MPE. The influence of income inequality on pollution (positive or negative) relates to the MPE for the poor and the rich. ...
Although many studies have been conducted on the role of renewable energy in the environment, literature has ignored the potential role of socioeconomic indicators in renewable energy and pollution nexus. Also, critical questions arose with the critical factors, such as income inequality and economic complexity, have not been answered properly. This study explores the nexus between income inequality, economic complexity, renewable energy consumption, GDP per capita, and pollution and thus aims to reach efficient policy strategies by revealing empirical evidence. The study follows an environmental impact model structure and conducts the panel-corrected standard errors and fixed effect regression. BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) are selected to conduct our research. Annual data covering the period 1990-2017 for the sample countries are employed. Consumption-based carbon dioxide emissions as an indicator of environmental pollution are used since income inequality makes more sense in terms of the consumption side of an economy and is more related to consumers rather than the production sector. The obtained results reveal that income inequality has a positive and significant impact on consumption-based carbon dioxide emissions. However, GDP per capita, renewable energy, and economic complexity reduce pollution. It is also observed that the interaction term of inequality and renewable energy decreases emissions. Findings confirm that socioeconomic indicators, such as economic complexity and income inequality with the interaction of renewable energy, are crucial factors in reducing emissions and designing a greener future.
... Over the last decade, there has been an increasing emphasis on economic inequality in the sustainability discourse. The rich's inequitable resource allocation and disproportionate environmental impacts are frequently addressed in the literature [1]. Understanding the links between economic inequality and climate change drivers is necessary for effective mitigation [2]. ...
... The emergence of a global middle class would result in a 0.6˚C increase in global temperature. Similar findings were presented by [1] when studying income inequality and carbon emissions at the state level in the U.S. [20] estimated that the carbon emissions would be 30% lower by 2030 under a scenario that would limit the emissions of the highest billion polluters to the level of the lowest polluters in that group. Both [8,20] scenarios are associated with a reduction in income inequality. ...
Equitable income distribution is desirable for moral, economic, and social reasons. Recent studies, however, indicate that improved income allocation will result in increased environmental impacts due to our socio-economic system’s current settings. Therefore, we explored the key aspects of a system that can more evenly reallocate natural and economic resources while reducing negative environmental impacts. We found that the capital is extremely important as a means of material flows and stocks. Thus, effective policy interventions should target mechanisms at this very market. Based on a comprehensive literature review and statistical analyses at various levels, we proposed a four-step policy framework that includes 1) reducing and targeted savings, 2) reshaping governments’ spatial decisions and 3) role in the housing market, and 4) changing the rates of depreciation in income tax legislation used globally.
... The limitation of cross-country analysis is that countries vary significantly in political institutions, infrastructure, and socio-economic conditions; thus, creating difficulties when establishing a relationship using data from a pool of countries that are not directly comparable. Our second contribution is that we add to only a limited field of studies to investigate the relationship between income inequality and CO2 emissions at the sub-national level (see, e.g., Golley & Meng, 2012;Hao et al., 2016;Jorgenson et al., 2017;Uzar & Eyuboglu, 2019;Wolde-Rufael & Idowu, 2017;Zhang & Zhao, 2014). Within-country analysis greatly reduces the scope of differences between sample observations in policy, institutions, and resource endowments that would otherwise be significant across multiple countries. ...
... The way in which the marginal propensity to emit (MPE) changes with income levels also potentially affects how income inequality is related to pollution (Jorgenson et al., 2017). ...
We examine the time-varying relationship between income inequality and carbon dioxide emissions at the sub-national regional and sectoral levels in Australia from 1990 to 2017. We find the relationship between income inequality and carbon dioxide emissions to be non-linear and either negative or statistically insignificant. We also find significant cross-industry heterogeneity in the income inequality-carbon dioxide emissions nexus, exposing how sector-specific events, such as mining business cycles, are exemplified through the relationship.
... By extension, despite that numerous studies have identified a link between inequality and consumption-based CO 2 emissions, a consensus on the link has yet to be reached. Some have found that greater inequality results in differences in consumption habits which in turn affects energy structure and carbon emissions in the long run [9][10][11]. The empirical regression analysis done by Torras and Boyce in which income inequality is included as an explanatory variable shows that a more equitable distribution of income can positively affect environmental quality, and such influence appears to be specifically strong in low-income countries [12]. ...
... Analysis in Sect. 2 shows that reduced income inequality decreases carbon emissions in China. Such a positive correlation has also been verified by Golley and Meng [9], Zhang and Zhao [10], and Jorgenson et al. [11]. A study by Clarke-Sather et al. on China's inequality in CO 2 emissions further explains the differences between interprovincial GDP inequality and CO 2 inequality based on a sub-national scale by highlighting the critical role of carbon intensity [15]. ...
... Income inequality itself also raises carbon emissions (Hao et al. 2016;Sinha 2016;Uzar and Eyuboglu 2019;Baloch et al. 2020;Oswald et al. 2020;Wiedmann et al. 2020;Vogel et al. 2021). Wide inequality can increase status-based consumption patterns, where individuals spend more to emulate the standards of the high-income group (the Veblen effect); inequality also diminishes environmental efforts by reducing social cohesion and cooperation (Jorgenson et al. 2017) and finally, inequality also operates by inducing an increase in working hours that leads to higher economic growth and, consequently, higher emissions and ecological footprint, so working time reduction is key for policy to both reduce emissions and protect employment (Fitzgerald et al. 2015;Fitzgerald et al. 2018). ...
... Higher income inequality is associated with higher carbon emissions, at least in developed countries (Grunewald et al. 2011;Golley and Meng 2012;Chancel et al. 2015;Grunewald et al. 2017;Jorgenson et al. 2017;Sager 2017;Klasen 2018;Liu et al. 2019); reducing inequality in high-income countries helps to reduce emissions (Klasen 2018). There is high agreement in the literature that alienation or distrust weakens collective governance and fragments political approaches towards climate action (Smit and Pilifosova 2001;Adger et al. 2003;Hammar and Jagers 2007 . ...
Chapter 5 (Demand, services and social aspects of mitigation),
explores how mitigation interacts with meeting human needs and access to services. It explores, inter alia: sustainable production and consumption; patterns of development and indicators of wellbeing; the role of culture, social norms, practices and behaviour changes; the sharing economy and circular economy; and policies facilitating behavioural and lifestyle change.
This chapter is part of the Working Group III contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Electronic copies of this chapter are available from the IPCC website www.ipcc.ch; and https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_Chapter05.pdf
... It also indicates that income inequality rises the working hours which in turn increases the use of energy thus, in turn, increasing carbon emission and degrading environmental quality (A. Jorgenson et al. 2017). Likewise, the MPE (marginal propensity to emit) approach also indicates that an increase in the level of carbon emission depends on income distribution. ...
... Baloch et al. (2020) found that income inequality increases carbon emission in Sub-Saharan African countries while Khan et al. 2022g) found this for the global panel. However, A. Jorgenson et al. (2017) and Barra and Zotti (2018) also indicate that income inequality does not correlate with environmental degradation. ...
This study investigates the nexus between natural resources, renewable energy consumption, economic growth, and carbon emission in 35 belt and road initiative (BRI) countries from 1985 to 2019. By employing OLS, fixed effect, generalized method of moments, and seemingly unrelated regression models, the results show that carbon dioxide and renewable energy are the driver factors of economic growth while natural resources reduce economic growth. The effect of economic growth and natural resources on carbon dioxide is positive; however, renewable energy consumption significantly reduces carbon emission. Economic growth rise renewable energy consumption while carbon dioxide and natural resources reduce it. The findings of this study have considerable policy implications for the belt and road countries that how natural resources and income inequality influence the interlinkage of renewable energy consumption, economic growth, and carbon dioxide emission.
... Low income inequality has been studied to help control emissions (P. Y. Chen et al., 2016;Jorgenson et al., 2017;Zhang & Zhao, 2014). ...
... Table 4 demonstrates that income inequality also has a positive effect on CO2 emissions, which suggests that after the establishment of SDGs, high income inequality increases CO2 emissions. This positive influence is due to several factors, including the political factor and the power of the rich (Jorgenson et al., 2017). It stated that rich people with ownership of environmentally unfriendly companies often gain political power and dominate environmental policies with the influence they have. ...
The debate on economic growth as a trigger or solution to environmental damage is the driving force behind this research. This study examines whether there is an advanced stage of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) that forms a curve resembling the letter N in Java province, Indonesia. This study used a panel data regression model with the main variableof CO2 emissions and GDP per capita. This research demonstrated that, in the short term, per capita income growth caused damage to the environment. However, this relationship was different in the long run and eventually formed an N-shaped curve. The existence of an N-shaped EKC was detected, but not significant. The relationship between population growth rates, income inequality and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with CO2 emissions as well as EKC turning points were also investigated in this study. The study results included N-shaped EKC detected in Java with the first turning point of Rp 154,297,936 and the second turning point of Rp 1,136,629,791. Population growth rate was proven not to affect CO2 emissions, in contrast to income inequality and the SDGs agreement which affected emissions in Java. Raising public awareness, paying attention to energy use, initiating technological innovations, and enforcing pro-environment policies are recommended to be implemented in Java and across Indonesia.JEL Classification: Q01; Q11; R11
... The literature provides intra-country evidence of economic inequality as a driver of carbon emissions for the top two carbon-emitting countries: the US and China. Jorgenson, Schor, and Huang (2017) examined state-level data from the US for 1997-2012 and found that a higher concentration of income among the wealthiest 10 per cent of the population is associated with higher levels of carbon emissions. Using a subnational regional-level panel dataset from China for the period 1995-2010, Zhang and Zhao (2014) found a qualitatively similar result -higher income inequality is associated with higher carbon emissions. ...
... See, for example,Jorgenson, Schor, and Huang (2017);Zhang and Zhao (2014).4 SeeKotwal, Ramaswami, and Wadhwa (2011) for an overview of the impact of economic liberalization on India's economy.https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009171908.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press ...
Climate Justice in India brings together a collective of academics, activists, and artists to paint a collage of action-oriented visions for a climate just India. This unique and agenda setting volume informs researchers and readers interested in topics of just transition, energy democracy, intersectionality of access to drinking water, agroecology and women's land rights, national and state climate plans, urban policy, caste justice, and environmental and climate social movements in India. It synthesizes the historical, social, economic, and political roots of climate vulnerability in India and articulates a research and policy agenda for collective democratic deliberations and action. This crossover volume will be of interest to academics, researchers, social activists, policymakers, politicians, and a general reader looking for a comprehensive introduction to the unprecedented challenge of building a praxis of justice in a climate-changed world. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
... As a result, the impact of income inequality on carbon emissions and green development efficiency could be restricted by the level of regional economic development and show heterogeneity. Jorgenson et al. (2017) argued that income inequality can lead to competition for consumption, which shifts the consumption preferences of groups with below-average incomes toward less protection of the environment, leading to increased demand for highly polluting goods and services, including larger cars and frequent travel. Figure 1 exhibits the trend of the distribution of real GDP per capita (LNPRGDP) for 205 cities in China. ...
... Grunewald et al. (2017) found that income inequality and carbon emissions are negatively correlated in lowand middle-income economies, while the two are positively correlated for middle-and high-income economies. Analogously, Jorgenson et al. (2017) used the Gini coefficient to measure income inequality and found that there was no correlation between income inequality and carbon emissions. In addition, financial development and income can reduce natural resource price volatility (Liu et al. 2022), which in turn affects carbon emissions. ...
Income inequality affects not only social well-being, health, and carbon emissions but also the strategy for green development in China. Based on the panel data of 205 cities in China from 2010 to 2020, a panel model with partial linear functional coefficient is used to analyze and test the relationship between income inequality, carbon emissions, and green development efficiency under different regional economic development levels. The empirical results show that the impact of income inequality on carbon emissions and green development efficiency is significant. The worsening of income inequality could aggravate carbon emissions, but the effect of income inequality on carbon emissions shows an increase–decrease-flattening with the continuous improvement of regional economic development. In terms of affecting the green development efficiency, the effect of income inequality on the efficiency of green development presents an inverted U shape. However, the number of cities where income inequality has an inhibitory effect on carbon emissions and green development efficiency has increased over time, and the impact of income inequality in a few cities on green development efficiency is not significant. These findings provide new insights into the understanding of shared prosperity and the strategy of carbon peaking and carbon neutralization in China.
... Over the last decade, there has been an increasing emphasis on economic inequality in the sustainability discourse. The rich's inequitable resource allocation and disproportionate environmental impacts are frequently addressed in the literature (Jorgenson, Schor, and Huang 2017). (Alcañiz and Hubacek 2021) recently argued that understanding the links between economic inequality and climate change drivers is necessary for effective mitigation. ...
... The emergence of a global middle class would result in a 0.6°C increase in global temperature. Similar ndings were presented by (Jorgenson, Schor, and Huang 2017) when studying income inequality and carbon emissions at the state level in the U.S. (Chakravarty et al. 2009) estimated that the carbon emissions would be 30% lower by 2030 under a scenario that would limit the emissions of the highest billion polluters to the level of the lowest polluters in that group. Both (Hubacek et al. 2017;Chakravarty et al. 2009) scenarios are associated with a reduction in income inequality. ...
Equitable income distribution is desirable for moral, economic, and social reasons. Recent studies, however, indicate that improved income allocation will result in increased environmental impacts due to our socio-economic system's current settings. Therefore, we explored the key aspects of a system that can more evenly reallocate natural and economic resources while reducing negative environmental impacts. We found that the capital is extremely important as a means of material flows and stocks. Thus, effective policy interventions should target mechanisms at this very market. Based on a comprehensive literature review and statistical analyses at various levels, we proposed a four-step policy framework that includes reducing and targeted savings, reshaping governments' spatial decisions and role in the housing market, and changing the rates of depreciation in income tax legislation used globally.
Author summary
Over the last decade, there has been an increasing emphasis on economic inequality in the sustainability discourse. Inequality in wealth and earnings evokes social tensions and keeps holding back the efforts towards a just and sustainable society. However, recent studies show, that we cannot reach an aim of a more equal society and decreased pollution and natural resource use in the same time. We discovered that the capital market is extremely important with regard to the connections between the society and its effect on Nature. As a result, a fundamental intervention should attempt to considerably reshape this laxer of the economy in order to address the various problems of our ecological crisis and the inequality issue that it entails. However, a disruption in the capital market would cause substantial social damage, such as shortage on the housing market or through the discontinuation of innovations. The aim, then, is to identify selective yet market-oriented regulatory instruments. Our findings propose a four-step policy framework which fits the requirements above.
... Employing a novel non-linear autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach, Zhao et al. (2021) propose that rising income inequality in BRICS economies promotes carbon emissions and undermines environmental sustainability. As stated by Jorgenson et al. (2017), the wealthy prefer to pollute more, and there is a positive link between the top 10% income share and state-level emissions. ...
It is crucial for the advancement of political economics and innovation economics to examine the relationship between income inequality and green innovation (GI). Using the panel fixed effect model, this study investigates the influence of income inequality on GI across 97 countries from 1991 to 2018 and demonstrates a significant non-linear association between the two. The empirical data exhibit an inverted U-shape relationship, suggesting that there is an optimal degree of income inequality that optimizes GI output, and the inflection point of our overall sample is at a Gini coefficient of 0.366. Additionally, we choose a set of robustness tests to validate the results by substituting explained variables, adding omitted variables, and employing the difference and system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimations. Moreover, heterogeneity analysis reveals that the non-linear patterns vary among samples, with the U-shape relationship being more significant in countries with lower income, higher corruption, and weaker government effectiveness. Our findings provide government decision-makers with a crucial reference for maximizing the importance of income distribution in fostering GI and achieving sustainable development.
... According to Kasuga and Takaya (2017), the wealth difference has had a detrimental effect on the air quality in Japan's main cities. The 50 states of the US were also examined by Jorgenson et al. (2017) between 1997 and 2012. The research also reveals an increase in carbon emissions in the states with the highest incomes. ...
The rapid pace of financial and societal progress has generated a multitude of environmental challenges. In light of this perspective, this work endeavours to analyze the effect of income inequality (GINI), natural resources (NAT), human development (HC), and quality of institutions (IQ) on EF in N-11 countries from 1990 to 2018. The cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributed lags (CS-ARDL) method is employed to explore the long-term and short-term relationships, which effectively address panel data problems such as slope homogeneity and cross-sectional dependence. The empirical findings indicate that improvements in NAT, HC, URB, and IQ have a positive effect on the environment. Income inequality exacerbates social disparities, thereby exerting a detrimental impact on the ecosystem. Based on these results, the study recommends allocating more financial resources to human development and promoting institutional quality to mitigate the ecological footprint. Additionally, it emphasizes the importance of sustainable utilization of natural resources to ensure their long-term availability and minimize ecological impact. Simultaneously, addressing income inequality is crucial in effectively managing environmental challenges and fostering long-term ecological sustainability.
... From the methodological points of view, various studies have used different methods. Some studies implemented time series data (Baek & Gweisah, 2013;Jorgenson et al., 2017;Knight et al., 2017;Uzar & Eyuboglu, 2019;Kusumawardani & Dewi, 2020). The most of the studies have used panel data for a group of countries (Qu & Zheng, 2011;Hubler, 2017;Ridzuan, 2019;Hailemariam et al., 2019;Haung & Duan, 2020;Uddin et al., 2020;Chen et al., 2020); but there is scarce literature for provincial data of a country (Hao et al., 2017). ...
This paper addresses the relationship between income inequality and environmental quality in the agriculture sector as the most related sector to the environment. In this context, we used a panel data set for 28 provinces of Iran during 2003-2017 and implemented panel quantile regression. To choose the best econometric specification the Taylor diagram is used. To explore whether the effect on income inequality on CO2 emission is different for rich and poor provinces, we consider the GINI × GDP interaction term in the model. Results confirmed that EKC in the agriculture sector of Iran, and a major and significant effect of energy consumption on CO2 emission. Findings indicated a threshold per capita income ($ 17.60 thousand) from which the effect of income inequality on carbon emissions changes. Based on these results, Marginal Properties to Emit (MPE) is more significant for poor people in low-income provinces than rich ones. Therefore, the government should adopt appropriate policies to increase the income of farmers so that the policy of income distribution, along with social justice, also improves the quality of the environment.
... In sport leagues, several systems exist and they usually place limits on the total payroll of a team. and income inequality at the U.S. state level, Jorgenson et al. (2017) showed that these emissions are positively correlated with the income share of the top 10%. Similarly, Knight et al. (2017) found a positive correlation between the share of the last decile of wealth distribution and per capita carbon emissions in 26 high-income countries. ...
Preventing the increase of economic inequality in a non-growing economy is a major challenge. In post-growth research, scholars agree that reducing the income and assets of the wealthy must be part of any strategy for reducing inequality. Nevertheless, caps on wealth and income remain surprisingly under-researched. After discussing the role of these caps in post-growth transformation, this paper aims to fill this gap by exploring the main parameters that policymakers need to consider when designing caps on income or assets. We performed a qualitative content analysis of 14 policy proposals, including four historical cases. We then built an analytical framework with seven key parameters. This framework reveals a broad set of public policies that policymakers and researchers can consider, including new options for wealth caps. We furthermore discuss how such policies should be designed to increase public support, and we highlight recurring patterns about the context in which they were proposed. We also show how these radical solutions reduced economic inequality in the 20th century in western countries and how policymakers can draw on those examples to design post-growth policies that decrease inequality and are also popular.
... Barrett (2013) argues that climate change involves "a double inequality", determined by the opposite distribution of impacts and responsibilities. Empirical research confirms that higher income and wealth inequality are correlated with higher average CO 2 emissions (Jorgenson et al., 2017), with the richest 10% of the world population being responsible for 52% of GHG emitted in the atmosphere between 1990 and 2015 (Gore, 2020). Jorgenson (2015) shows that the Veblen effect on consumption induced by income inequality (Bowles & Park, 2005), according to which households in the lower tails of the distribution emulate consumption of wealthier households, in turn results in increased energy use and emissions. ...
The paper traces the evolution the concept of socioeconomic vulnerability to climate change has followed in the academic and scientific debate and examines its effects on wellbeing. The recent recognition of vulnerability as a social construction has shifted the focus of the analysis to the dimension of adaptive capacity, restoring a political economy significance to the study of vulnerability. The social origin of vulnerability is related to the presence of structural inequalities, rooted in structural economic and political relationships and reinforced by historical cultural values and praxes. Structural inequalities and power relations in place within a society shape access to resources and capabilities that can enable individuals or population groups to prevent and cope with impacts from extreme weather events, ultimately defining vulnerabilities. Widespread vulnerabilities to climate change can compromise wellbeing in several ways, including an increase in food insecurity, health issues, outbreak of armed conflicts and mass migrations. In addition, the same individual or population group can be vulnerable in more than one wellbeing dimension and, once a dimension is affected, their own vulnerability to other threats is likely to increase.
... Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emission, environmental concerns, and climate change threaten sustainable development (Tol, 2009); therefore, it has been the primary focus of different research fields (Jorgenson et al. 2017). The scholarly studies acknowledged that the underlying reason behind climate change is human-induced CO 2 emissions from various energy consumption sources (Cetin et al. 2018). ...
In contemporary times of globalization, tourism and travel are among the fastest-growing economic sectors and are highly related to climate change; however, technological innovations as a powerful tool positively contribute to the environment. The present study examines the tourism receipt and CO2 emission relationship and the triple interaction effect of technological innovation, energy consumption, and tourism receipts on CO2 emissions in the short and long run. To achieve study objectives, we utilized panel data of 64 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) countries over the period of 1995 to 2019. Considering the cross-sectional dependence in the panel data set, we employed a series of econometric panel data estimation techniques—including the panel unit root tests, panel co-integration tests, and the generalized method of moments (GMM). The panel unit root results confirmed the level of stationarity, and the panel co-integration results verified the long-run relationship among study variables. The sys-GMM results indicate that tourism receipts and CO2 emissions have an inverse relationship for 64 BRI countries. In addition, the negative coefficients for joint interaction imply that tourism receipts, technological innovation, and energy consumption reduce CO2 emissions. Considering the theoretical underpinnings of the study outcomes, we discussed significant policy implications to reduce CO2 emissions and achieve sustainable tourism.
... Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emission, environmental concerns, and climate change threaten sustainable development (Tol, 2009); therefore, it has been the primary focus of different research fields (Jorgenson et al. 2017). The scholarly studies acknowledged that the underlying reason behind climate change is human-induced CO 2 emissions from various energy consumption sources (Cetin et al. 2018). ...
In contemporary times of globalization, tourism and travel are among the fastest-growing economic sectors and are highly related to climate change; however, technological innovations as a powerful tool positively contribute to the environment. The present study examines the tourism receipt and CO2 emission relationship and the triple interaction effect of technological innovation, energy consumption, and tourism receipts on CO2 emissions in the short and long run. To achieve study objectives, we utilized panel data of 64 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) countries over the period of 1995 to 2019. Considering the cross-sectional dependence in the panel data set, we employed a series of econometric panel data estimation techniques—including the panel unit root tests, panel co-integration tests, and the generalized method of moments (GMM). The panel unit root results confirmed the level of stationarity, and the panel co-integration results verified the long-run relationship among study variables. The sys-GMM results indicate that tourism receipts and CO2 emissions have an inverse relationship for 64 BRI countries. In addition, the negative coefficients for joint interaction imply that tourism receipts, technological innovation, and energy consumption reduce CO2 emissions. Considering the theoretical underpinnings of the study outcomes, we discussed significant policy implications to reduce CO2 emissions and achieve sustainable tourism.
... Regarding the equality criterion, the Gini coefficient is a standard tool widely used to analyze income inequality. Many studies propose to measure the equality of carbon emissions among countries by the Gini coefficient [15,16]. ...
At present, China implements a quota-based trading mechanism to achieve carbon emission reduction, in which the allocation of carbon emission quotas among different provinces is short of considering the influence of unbalanced provincial development. Heterogeneity among the provincial-level three major industries, namely, agriculture, manufacturing and mining, and service industries, is a case in point. To address this insufficiency, this paper proposes a novel parallel data envelopment analysis (DEA) based method for carbon emission quota allocation. The method models each province as a decision-making unit (DMU) and the provincial-level three major industries as parallel sub-decision-making units (SDMUs). A distinguished feature of the method is that it makes explicit tradeoffs between efficiency and equality considerations for policymakers in allocating the carbon quotas among three heterogeneous provincial-level major industries. The empirical results show that the proposed method effectively improves the overall provincial gross domestic product (GDP) potentials through the reallocation of carbon quotas among industries while the equality level is not worse off. This work is helpful for policymakers to achieve a long-term emission reduction target and provides suggestions for improving the initial allocation mechanism of a national carbon trading market.
... These studies are influenced by two major opposing hypotheses that dominate the theoretical literature studying the environmental effects of income inequality: the marginal propensity to emit hypothesis (MPE) and the political economy hypothesis (PE) (e.g., Baloch et al., 2018;Guo et al., 2020;Hübler, 2017;Khan & Yahong, 2022;Ravallion et al., 2000;Shahbaz, 2010;Torras & Boyce, 1998;Wan et al., 2022). The MPE approach indicates that when income becomes more equally distributed, a large proportion of the poor will move to the middle-income class, leading to more consumption of energy and other carbon-intensive products (Jorgenson et al., 2017). This hypothesis depends on the high marginal propensity to consume among the poor, which implies a high marginal propensity to emit. ...
The relationship between income inequality and environmental degradation is still a global concern of empirical research. In this study, two main hypotheses concerning this relationship are tested using data from a panel of 42 middle-income countries (MICs) over the period 1990–2016. The results adopted from two different methodologies based on panel quantile regression techniques emphasize a trade-off relationship between inequality and environmental degradation, which supports the marginal propensity to emit (MPE) hypothesis rather than the political economy (PE) hypothesis in understanding the impact of inequality on environmental degradation in MICs. This finding leaves policymakers in MICs facing a difficult choice: either reducing inequality or improving the environment because the two goals are not achieved simultaneously according to the results. The results also confirm the existence of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) across all quantiles. The effect of economic growth in MICs turns to improve environmental indicators in the long run. Accordingly, the study recommends that MICs give priority to reducing income inequality to ensure the continuity of achieving economic growth that improves environmental indicators in the long run, according to the EKC.
... This effect means that rich people are using luxurious items to show their rich status which is linked to the degradation of environmental quality. Likewise, Jorgenson et al. (2017) indicate that income inequality increases working hours while an increase in working hours raises the consumption of energy that, in turn, increases carbon emission. Our findings can be attributed to some or all of these reasons; however, energy consumption and economic growth are also related to increased carbon emissions in our study. ...
The concern of environmental degradation, poverty, and income inequality remains a priority in achieving sustainable development goals. Countries are trying to reduce income inequality, alleviate poverty, and reduce environmental degradation which needs special attention. Consequently, this study explores the effect of income inequality, poverty, and energy consumption on carbon dioxide emission in the Belt and Road Initiative countries from 1996 to 2018. By employing the generalized method of moments, the findings show that income inequality, poverty, and energy consumption significantly increase carbon dioxide emission and lead to environmental degradation, while access to electricity significantly raises environmental quality. Economic growth positively affects carbon dioxide emission; however, the environmental Kuznets curve is valid. Income inequality exerts a moderating effect on carbon dioxide emission via per capita economic growth that reduces environmental degradation in the Belt and Road Initiative countries. The results of this study give important policy implications for the Belt and Road Initiative countries.
... This theory assesses the response of household consumption to changes in income and thus affects the inequality-environment association (Heerink et al., 2001;Ravallion et al., 2000). Indeed, the marginal propensity to emit changes with the level of income inequality (Berthe & Elie, 2015;Jorgenson et al., 2017). The low-income groups have a higher marginal propensity to emit; hence, they have little potential to purchase low-emission goods. ...
Air pollution has emerged as a substantial threat to China’s sustainable development. What remains overlooked is the resource dependence on the control of air pollution. At the same time, the resource curse may be broken by the growing digital economy, which will in turn reduce air pollution. To examine this problem, a total of 225 Chinese prefecture-level cities were selected from 2011 to 2018 to investigate the associations among resource dependence, the digital economy, and air pollution, and further, explore the mediating effect of income inequality and industrial upgrading. The primary findings are enumerated as follows: First, resource dependence is positively correlated to air pollution; second, the digital economy negatively regulates the effect of resource dependence on air pollution, that is, as the digital economy grows, air pollution decreases via resource dependence as a whole. However, a noteworthy phenomenon is that the negative moderating effect is evidently heterogeneous and is especially prominent in central China and non-resource-based cities; third, income inequality and industrial upgrading play a mediating role between resource dependence and air pollution; fourth, the digital economy can significantly influence the process where resource dependence affects air pollution via income inequality and industrial upgrading. These findings indicate the direction in the development of new strategies for different regions. Alleviating resource dependence is an important way of air pollution control. In particular, the main focus on mitigating air pollution should be adjusted to the level of income inequality and industrial structure. And the empirical results call for a strong emphasis on the digital economy for higher air quality in resource-based cities.
... For instance, studies on income distribution have claimed that income inequality is detrimental to environmental quality (Bae, 2018;Baloch & Danish 2022;Uzar & Eyuboglu 2019). On contrary, many studies proclaim that income inequality is conducive to the quality of the environment (Demir et al. 2019;Bonnefond et al. 2020;Wu & Xie 2020), while some evidence found in the literature indicates that inequality does not significantly affect CO 2 emissions (Jorgenson et al. 2017). A unified consensus is still lacking among academic circles regarding the inequality-emissions nexus. ...
Despite the growing literature on the inequality-emissions nexus, this area of empirical interest is still inconclusive, particularly in the era of globalization. Hence, this empirical work investigates the effect of income inequality on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions controlling the model for globalization. Considering the unique characteristics of various proxies of inequality, different proxies have been employed to develop an in-depth understanding of the inequality-emission nexus. The Driscoll-Kraay and generalized least square regression approaches are used for 38 sub-Saharan African countries from 1990 to 2016. Empirical results infer that higher income inequality promotes carbon reduction in the sample countries of the study. Further, findings suggest that globalization is beneficial for the environment by contributing to carbon emission mitigation. Several additional variables are used to validate the findings. The study offers some important policy implications in the end.
... Belaïd et al. (2020) explored the dynamic association between income inequalities and carbon dioxide emission in 11 Mediterranean economies and evaluated that a higher income gap leads to more carbon emission, meaning higher income disparities lead to environmental degradation. Jorgenson et al. (2017) explored the association Gini index and carbon emission in the USA and discovered an insignificant relationship. Kasuga and Takaya (2017) analyze the relationship between income disparity and environmental pollution factors in Japan from 1990 to 2012. ...
The present study aims to scrutinize the long- and short-run relationship along with the direction of causality among environmental pollution (CO2), renewable, non-renewable energy, income disparity, exchange rate, and poverty alleviation in E-9 countries of continent Asia, using a panel dataset from 1990 to 2018. The current study used pooled mean group autoregressive distributed lag (PMG ARDL) and Dumitrescu-Hurlin (D-H) causality test after affirming a stable long-run association among environmental pollution and all the explanatory variables. However, ECM (error correction mechanism) was specified to explore short-run dynamics. The study’s outcomes confirmed strong co-integration among environmental pollution (CO2), renewable, non-renewable energy, income disparity, exchange rate, and poverty alleviation. Moreover, uni (bi) directional causality runs from non-renewable energy, exchange rate, and income disparity (poverty alleviation and renewable energy) to environmental pollution (CO2). Results also revealed that poverty alleviation, exchange rate, and renewable energy usage substantially negatively influence environmental pollution (CO2). Contrarily, income disparities and non-renewable energy usage positively influence long- and short-run environmental pollution. Therefore, from the policy perspective, the current study focused on twofold; first, there is a desire to alleviate poverty, the decline in non-renewable energy use and income disparity among upper and lower-income quintiles. Second, boost exchange rate and renewable energy use to control environmental pollution in the described least developed countries (LDCs).
... Reduced consumption of clean energy also could increase carbon emissions. A series of research evidence shows that when income inequality in these countries is high, the growth of GDP significantly increases per capita carbon emissions (Bai et al., 2020;Jorgenson et al., 2017). ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has further increased income inequality. This work is aimed to explore the impact of income inequality on the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis. To this end, income inequality is set as the threshold variable, economic growth is set as the explanatory variable, while carbon emission is set as the explained variable, and the threshold panel model is developed using the data of 56 countries. The empirical results show that income inequality has changed the relationship between economic growth and carbon emissions from an inverted U-shaped to an N-shaped, which means that income inequality redefines the environmental Kuznets curve and increase the complexity of the decoupling of economic growth and carbon emissions. Specifically, economic growth significantly increases carbon emissions during periods of low income inequality, however, as income inequality increases, economic growth in turn suppresses carbon emissions. In the period of high income inequality, economic growth inhibits the increase of carbon emissions. However, with the increase of income inequality, the impact of economic growth on carbon emission changes from inhibiting to promoting. Panel regressions for robustness tests show that this phenomenon is more pronounced in high-income countries. We therefore contend that the excessive income inequality is bad for the win-win goal of economic growth without carbon emission growth, and the income distribution policy should be included in the carbon neutral strategy.
... Second, unsurprisingly, we observe that the households with the highest income level tend to also have the highest overall carbon footprints ( Figure 2) (Chancel & Piketty, 2015;Ivanova & Wood, 2020;Otto et al., 2019). However, in contrast to findings from other countries such as China or the US (Jorgenson et al., 2017;Wiedenhofer et al., 2017), the emissions disparities among Japanese households are not very substantial between income groups. Although the largest emissions disparities are observed between the lowest and the highest income groups, the total per capita emissions of the highest income group are "only" 1.39 times higher compared to the emissions of the lowest income group (Figure 4). ...
Households are responsible for a large fraction of the direct and indirect emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) at the national level. However, emission patterns are not homogeneous within the residential sector, with several factors affecting them. This study explores how income‐related divergences in consumption and time allocation affect the carbon footprint of the Japanese residential sector. To achieve this, we combine data on emission intensities from national input‐output tables with household‐level consumption and time allocation data from two large‐scale nationally representative surveys. Overall, we find that indirect emissions account for approximately 78% of the overall carbon footprint of the residential sector across the studied income groups. The overall carbon footprint and the emissions of several individual consumption categories follow an N‐shaped curve, with some of the lower‐income groups having disproportionately higher emissions compared to middle‐ and higher‐income groups. Conversely, emissions for other individual consumption categories increase almost linearly with income. This points to the fact that different factors can affect emissions across income groups. Specifically, the N‐shaped curves are driven by the propensity of lower‐income households to spend more time at home and rely on inefficient technologies, while the linear trend is driven by the propensity of higher‐income households to consume more. A detailed understanding of how these factors affect emissions patterns can provide useful insights for designing and implementing effective policies to achieve decarbonization the residential sector.
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Gelir eşitsizliği ve çevresel bozulma küresel dünyanın en önemli iki sorunudur. Birleşmiş Milletler’in sürdürülebilir kalkınma hedefleri arasında yer alan bu iki konu ulusların da bireysel olarak mücadele ettikleri kritik öneme sahiptir. Son yıllarda araştırmacılar çevresel kalite sorunlarına etki eden faktörler arasında gelir eşitsizliğine de yer vermektedirler. Ancak uluslararası perspektifte yeterli çalışma olmamakla beraber konuyla ilgili çalışmalar devam etmektedir. Bu bağlamda çalışma, Türkiye’de gelir eşitsizliğinin çevresel bozulmaya etkisini amprik olarak incelemeye odaklanmıştır. Çevresel bozulmayı temsilen kişi başı ekolojik ayak izi değişkeni alınmıştır. Gelir eşitsizliğini ise Gini katsayı temsil etmektedir. Diğer açıklayıcı değişkenler olarak yenilenebilir enerji tüketimi ve kentleşme analize dâhil edilmiştir. Analiz dönemi 1990-2019 arası olup veri seti yıllık verilerden oluşmaktadır. Analizlerde yavaş yapısal değişimleri yakalama kabiyetine sahip Fourier yaklaşımı benimsenmiştir. İlk olarak serilerin durağanlık sınamaları FKPSS birim kök testiyle sınanmış ve ilk fark değerleri durağan olarak bulunmuştur. Uzun dönem ilişki FARDL eşbütünleşme testiyle test edilmiş ve serilerin uzun dönemde kolektif hareket ettikleri gözlenmiştir. Bu ilişkiye ait katsayılar FARDL uzun dönem katsayı tahminleri ile belirlenmiş ve uzun vadede gelir eşitsizliği ve yenilenebilir enerji tüketiminin ekolojik ayak izini anlamlı bir şekilde azalttığı bulgusu elde edilmiştir. Kentleşmenin ekolojik ayak izi üzerinde anlamlı bir etkisi görülmemiştir.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Gelir Eşitsizliği, Ekolojik Ayak İzi, FARDL Eşbütünleşme Testi
Yenilenebilir enerji özellikle çevre üzerindeki olumlu etkileri sebebiyle ön plana çıkmaktadır. Ayrıca artan enerji fiyatları da yenilenebilir enerjiye olan ilgiyi artırmaktadır. Bu nedenle yenilenebilir enerji kullanımını etkileyen faktörlerin belirlenmesi önem taşıyacaktır. Bu çalışmanın amacı, gelir eşitsizliğinin yenilenebilir enerji üzerindeki etkisini G8 ülkeleri için 1992-2015 döneminde araştırmaktır. Bu amaçla, Westerlund ve Edgerton (2007) bootstrap eşbütünleşme testi, DSUR katsayı tahmincisi ile Dumitrescu ve Hurlin (2012) nedensellik testine yer verilmiştir. Elde edilen sonuçlar, G8 ülkelerinde gelir eşitsizliğinin yenilenebilir enerji tüketimini pozitif etkilediğini ve gelir eşitsizliğinden yenilenebilir enerji tüketimine doğru tek yönlü nedenselliğin olduğunu göstermektedir. Böylece, gelir eşitsizliğinin artmasıyla yenilenebilir enerji tüketiminin de artacağı söylenebilir.
Decisions by individuals, organisations, and nations shape the well-being of humans and other species, the environment, and sustainability. Decisions for Sustainability examines how we can make better decisions concerning our future. It incorporates sociological, psychological, and economic perspectives to highlight our strengths and weaknesses in decision-making, and suggest strategies to influence both individual and societal decisions. Sustainability challenges – from local land use and toxic contamination to climate change and biodiversity loss – illustrate how we can improve decision making and what factors lead to conflict. How we use science in the face of uncertainty is also examined, and a range of ethical criteria for good decisions are proposed. Emphasizing the need for diversity in decision making and clarifying the relationship between reform and societal transformation, this book provides a comprehensive view of what we know about decision-making, and how we can do better in the face of sustainability challenges.
Income inequality refers to the uneven distribution of wealth among population, amongst the discussion it has generated, the issue of equality-based efficiency has become a development goal pursued by many countries. In order to better understand the relationship between income inequality and energy efficiency, the static threshold effect approach and the dynamic threshold effect approach were applied in this article based on panel data of 78 countries. In these approaches, income inequality is the explanatory variable, urbanization and industrialization are the threshold variables, while energy efficiency is the explained variable. The results show that there is a positive coefficient between income inequality and energy efficiency, and the coefficient of this positive relationship decreases when urbanization level rises above the two thresholds 42.68% and 93.16% respectively, and so does it when industrialization level rises above 12.76% and 19.12%. In addition, urbanization plays a greater role than industrialization in reducing the correlation between income inequality and energy efficiency. Therefore, accelerating industrialization, especially urbanization, can serve to reduce income inequality without sacrificing energy efficiency.
Dünyada giderek artan iklim değişikliğinin temel nedenlerinden biri “karbon emisyonlarının yükselmesi”dir. Literatürde karbon emisyonlarının geleneksel belirleyicileri yaygın olarak araştırılmasına karşın, finansal gelişme, yenilenebilir enerji ve gelir eşitsizliğinin bu emisyonlarda yaratabileceği olası etkiler daha az tartışılmaktadır. Bu bağlamda çalışmanın temel amacı 1991-2018 döneminde seçilmiş Avrupa Birliği ülkeleri için karbon emisyonlarının belirleyicilerini mekansal panel veri yöntemini kullanarak araştırmaktır. Çalışmada diğer kontrol değişkenlerinin (kentleşme ve büyüme) etkileri kontrol edildikten sonra gelir eşitsizliği ve finansal gelişme arttıkça karbon emisyonları artarken, yenilenebilir enerji tüketimi arttıkça bu emisyonların azaldığı veya çevresel kalitenin iyileştiği sonucuna varılmaktadır. Ayrıca, büyüme oranı arttıkça karbon emisyonlarının belli bir eşik değere kadar artıp daha sonra azalacağı fikrine dayanan “çevresel Kuznets eğrisi” hipotezinin de geçerli olduğu görülmektedir. Bu sonuçlar, seçilmiş Avrupa Birliği ülkeleri için karbon emisyonlarının yanı sıra iklim değişikliklerinin azaltılabilmesinin yenilenebilir enerjiyi destekleyecek politikalara bağlı olduğunu ortaya koymaktadır. Dolayısıyla, “karbon yoğun kömürden düşük karbonlu gaza veya fosil yakıttan nükleer enerji veya yenilenebilir enerji doğru kaymalar, toplam küresel emisyonların düzeyini azaltabilir.
Die vorliegende Studie untersucht die Frage, welche Rolle Ungleichheit bei der Schaffung von Wohlstand für alle innerhalb planetarer Grenzen spielt, und in Verbindung damit, ob es einen Zielkonflikt zwischen Verteilungsgerechtigkeit und ökologischer Nachhaltigkeit gibt. Wir beleuchten drei Ungleichheitsdimensionen
der Klimakrise und deren Wechselwirkungen mit Einkommens- und Vermögensungleichheit:
1. die Ungleichheit hinsichtlich der Emissionshöhe und der Verursachung der Klimakrise
2. die Ungleichheit hinsichtlich der Betroffenheit durch Klimaschäden
3. die Rolle von Ungleichheit bei Klimaschutzmaßnahmen
Die Studie kommt zu drei zentralen Ergebnissen:
1. Ungleichheit ist ein Emissionstreiber.
2. Klimaschutz ist eine vorbeugende Maßnahme gegen die Verstärkung von Ungleichheiten.
3. Eine integrierte Klima- und Verteilungspolitik ist für eine effektive Klimapolitik und
Ungleichheitsreduktion notwendig und möglich. Gefördert werden kann die klimasoziale Transformation durch die Konversion fossiler Betriebe, einen Klimasoli, der eine Finanzierungsbasis für öffentliche Klimainvestitionen schafft, sowie durch eine Klimakreditkarte, die klimaneutrale Lebensbedingungen für alle ermöglicht.
The impact of rising economic activity, which increases with international economic relations and globalization, on environmental degradation has been subjected to many studies in the literature. Consequently, numerous factors that have both positive and negative impacts on the environment are included in a number of research. Using a sample of BRICS nations and controlling factors for income, population, and urbanization, our study examines the impact of economic disparity on the environment. In our study using the STIRPAT model, second-generation unit root, panel cointegration, and long-run coefficient tests were applied in light of the findings from the cross-sectional dependency and homogeneity tests. The variables behave jointly over the long term, which indicates that there is a cointegration link between the variables, according to the findings of the panel cointegration test that was conducted. Long-term coefficient estimate throughout the panel’s data reveals that while CO2 emissions are increased by income disparity and per capita income, they are decreased by population. No significant relationship was found for the whole panelbetween the urbanization variable and the environment. When individual nations are taken into account, it is determined that India's income disparity causes a rise in CO2 emissions.
The mismatch between trade-embodied economic benefits and CO2 emissions causes carbon inequality, which is seldom analyzed from the intracountry level, especially across a long-term period. This study applied an environmentally extended multiregional input-output model to trace this mismatch and measure the carbon inequality quantitatively within China during 2007-2017. The results show that during the past decade, China's national carbon inequality was continuously worsening with carbon Gini coefficients rising regardless of production- (0.21-0.30) or consumption-based (0.12-0.18) accounting. The regional carbon inequality was deteriorating, where less developed provinces with 20% of total value-added emitted 32.9% of total CO2 emissions in 2007, while this figure rose to 42.6% in 2017. The eastern provinces (Jiangsu and Shanghai) had entered into net economic and carbon beneficiaries keeping high trade advantages, by contrast the northwest provinces (Ningxia and Xinjiang) were trapped in a lose-lose situation with trade benefits declining by 68%. The southwest provinces (Yunnan and Guangxi) shifted from being net carbon and value-added exporters to net importers, stepping into the earlier development mode of eastern provinces. This hidden and exacerbated carbon inequality calls for regional-specific measures to avoid the dilemma of economic development and CO2 mitigation, which also gives a good reminder for the rising economies, like India.
Climate change is a major challenge facing the United States today. Recent years have witnessed a surge of extreme weather events that brought devastating impacts on the economy and environment. One major contributor to climate change is CO2 emissions produced from fossil fuel consumption. Promoting renewable energy is one practical pathway to mitigate these emissions while also meeting energy demands. This study investigates the driving forces of U.S. renewable energy consumption. The data are a balanced panel that includes indicators for 50 states and Washington, DC, from 1997 to 2019. The time-series Prais–Winsten regression is adopted for statistical estimation. Results show that states consume more renewable energy when they have less carbon-intensive economies and suffer more climate change impacts. Also, the renewable portfolio standards represent an effective policy instrument to promote renewable consumption. The findings complement existing literature and carry policy implications. Notably, states become supportive of renewable energy when their economies are less intertwined with fossil fuels and relevant policies are in place to provide incentives for renewables.
Toxic chemicals have severe impacts on ecosystem, climate change and human health, and the current toxic releases are inequitably distributed across regions. Investigating the toxic release embodied in final demand by states and income groups can reveal the responsibility transfer of different entities. In this paper, we extended the U.S. multi-regional input-output (MRIO) model with toxic chemical release data in 2017 to conduct the production- and consumption-based accounting of toxic release by each state, and the inter-regional transfer of embodied toxic release between states. In addition, this paper analyzed how the toxic releases and inter-state transfer of embodied toxic release have been driven by income groups across states. The results showed that the toxic release from production was highly concentrated on the central states and the Great Lakes Region, while the consumption-based accounting of toxic release was more equally distributed across regions in the US. The non-metallic and metallic products manufacturing sectors were the most important sectors for most states from both production and consumption-based perspectives and were also the most essential sectors for interregional flows of embodied toxic release from Great Lake Region to Southeast, Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. Our results also showed that the largest portion (41.88%) of embodied toxic releases were triggered by households’ final demand, and that the consumption of the richest 35% of households contributed to more than 50% of the total toxic chemical releases triggered by total final demand of all households.
A well-known phenomenon reflects that society's growing economic and social development has created various ecological issues. Therefore, this research examines the effect of natural resources, social disparity, human development, and institutional quality on the trade-adjusted material footprints in G10 economies from 1990 to 2018. Contemplating the significance of cross-sectional dependence, non-existence of slope homogeneity, stationarity characteristics, and panel cointegration between the variables, the long-run and short-run relationships have been tested through “cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributed lags” (CS-ARDL) model. The empirical results signify a productive environmental impact (i.e., low material footprints) via human capital development and institutional quality both in the long and short run. In contrast, natural resources, social disparity (via income inequality), and urbanization are causing higher material footprints, impeding environmental sustainability. Based on the stated results, it is suggested that human development and institutional quality are imperative for effective natural resources management and ensuring ecological sustainability.
This paper studies the relationship between income inequality and carbon emissions in the United States between 1929 and 2019. We contribute to the literature by studying if and how the relationship has varied over time. To this end we estimate a band spectrum regression model and a smooth-varying coefficients model. Our results show that higher inequality was associated with lower emissions during the early part of the sample and higher emissions towards the end of the sample.
Income inequality and carbon emission efficiency are the primary issues that need to be addressed to achieve UN sustainable development goals. However, research on the relationship between income inequality and carbon emission efficiency has not received enough attention. To more comprehensively understand how income inequality affects carbon emission efficiency, and how aging and economic growth affect the relationship between income inequality and carbon emissions efficiency, fixed effect regression estimation and threshold effect regression estimation approaches are developed based on panel data from 139 countries from 1998 to 2018. The results show that: (i) there is an inhibitory effect of income inequality on the improvement of carbon emission efficiency; (ii) under the influence of aging, there is a U-shaped relationship between income inequality and carbon emission efficiency, that is, income inequality has an inhibitory effect on the improvement of carbon emission efficiency before promoting it; (iii) along with the rapid economic growth, the inhibitory effect of income inequality on carbon emission efficiency increases, that is, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between income inequality and carbon emission efficiency. Finally, we combine the changes in spatial and temporal distributions to propose corresponding policy recommendations.
The complex answer to why the United States does so poorly in health measures has at its base one pervasive issue: The United States has by far the highest levels of inequality of all the rich countries. Inequality Kills Us All details how living in a society with entrenched hierarchies increases the negative effects of illnesses for everyone. The antidote must start, Stephen Bezruchka recognizes, with a broader awareness of the nature of the problem, and out of that understanding policies that eliminate these inequalities: A fair system of taxation, so that the rich are paying their share; support for child well-being, including paid parental leave, continued monthly child support payments, and equitable educational opportunities; universal access to healthcare; and a guaranteed income for all Americans. The aim is to have a society that treats everyone well-and health will follow.
The rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) concentrations has become one of the world’s major environmental concerns nowadays. It has prompted many scholars to investigate the factors that influence CO 2 emissions. Many researchers, but overlook the role of economic freedom and income inequality in analyzing the EKC in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Taking 16 countries based on data availability, this study examines the effect of economic freedom and income disparity on CO2 emissions under the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis, using balanced quarterly data straddling from 2000 to 2015. To undertake pre-estimation tests, we applied the second-generation panel cross-sectional dependence, slope homogeneity, and unit root tests. By applying cointegration and Granger tests that take heterogeneity into account, the study examined the cointegration status and direction of causality between the variables under scrutiny. PMG/ARDL estimation technique was applied to estimate the long-run coefficients. Results from the PMG/ARDL reveal that economic freedom has no statistically significant effect on CO2 emissions. The result supports the EKC hypothesis. Income inequality, industrialization, and non-renewable energy consumption have statistically significant positive effects on CO2 emissions in the long run. Economic freedom does not affect the environmental quality in the panel of countries studied. The results from the Granger causality analysis indicate that economic freedom, income inequality, renewable energy consumption, non-renewable energy consumption, industrialization, urbanization, and economic growth Granger cause CO2 emissions with a feedback effect except for economic freedom and industrialization. Policies intended to lessen income inequality can enhance environmental quality.
This study investigates the nexus of income inequality, economic growth, and CO2 emissions based on the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis for 38 OECD countries during 1990–2015. The indices of income inequality include the Gini coefficient and the top income share. The main objective of this study is to re-examine the effects of income inequality and economic growth on CO2 emissions based on the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. The panel analysis for OECD countries is examined using country fixed effects and Granger causality including pre-tests for unit root, cointegration, and stationarity. The main findings of this study are as follows. First, the effects of economic growth on CO2 emissions have an inverted U-shaped relationship, and the effects of income inequality on CO2 emission also have an inverted U-shaped relationship. Second, the Gini coefficient and the top income share represented by the income inequality index are well-defined tools for analyzing the relationship between income inequality and environmental degradation. Third, the increase in trade dependency and renewable energy consumption has contributed to the decrease in CO2 emissions, but the increase in energy use has led to an increase in CO2 emissions. Finally, economic growth and income inequality have Granger causality for CO2 emissions, and economic growth bi-directionally causes Granger causality for income inequality. Therefore, this study suggests that resolving income inequality is crucial and another important environmental policy that affects CO2 emissions.
The volume is the report of the American Sociological Association's Task Force on Sociology and Global Climate Change, and the 13 chapters provide syntheses of sociological (and related) research on key aspects of climate change.
Significance
Population and affluence have long been seen as major drivers of environmental stress. A substantial empirical literature now substantiates their role in anthropogenic environmental change. Using data on greenhouse gas emission from US states, we show that the effects of population and affluence can be substantially moderated by political factors and in particular support for environmentalism. Our results indicate the potential of politics to ameliorate the effects of the scale of economic activity on the environment and our methods provide a vehicle for testing the influence of diverse hypothesized human drivers of environmental change.
An important question in the literature on climate change and sustainability is the relation between economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions. While the "green growth" paradigm dominates in the policy arena, a growing number of scholars in wealthy countries are questioning the feasibility of achieving required emissions reductions with continued economic growth. This paper explores the relationship between economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions over the period 1991-2008 with a balanced data set of 29 high-income countries. We present a variety of models, with particular attention to the difference between territorial emissions and consumption-based (or carbon footprint) emissions, which include the impact of international trade. The effect of economic growth is greater for consumption-based emissions than territorial emissions. We also find that over this period there is some evidence of decoupling between economic growth and territorial emissions, but no evidence of decoupling for consumption-based emissions.
Social scientists have debated how affluence impacts carbon emissions at the national level. We conduct an exploratory study at the subnational level to expose another dimension of the affluence–emissions debate. Based on the notion of aristocratic conservation, we hypothesize that affluence is positively related to carbon emissions from consumption activities but negatively related to emissions from production activities. We test these hypotheses using county-level data in the United States for the year 2002. A spatial regression analysis demonstrates that median household income is positively associated with consumption-based emissions; nevertheless, we find evidence of an environmental inequality Kuznets curve in the relationship between median household income and production-based emissions. This finding suggests that the wealthiest counties are able to displace certain types of emissions, specifically those related to energy and industrial production. We discuss the theoretical and political implications of these results.
Countries are known to follow diverse pathways of life expectancy and carbon emissions, but little is known about factors driving these dynamics. In this letter we estimate the cross-sectional economic, demographic and geographic drivers of consumption-based carbon emissions. Using clustering techniques, countries are grouped according to their drivers, and analysed with respect to a criteria of one tonne of carbon emissions per capita and a life expectancy over 70 years (Goldemberg's Corner). Five clusters of countries are identified with distinct drivers and highly differentiated outcomes of life expectancy and carbon emissions. Representatives from four clusters intersect within Goldemberg's Corner, suggesting diverse combinations of drivers may still lead to sustainable outcomes, presenting many countries with an opportunity to follow a pathway towards low-carbon human development. By contrast, within Goldemberg's Corner, there are no countries from the core, wealthy consuming nations. These results reaffirm the need to address economic inequalities within international agreements for climate mitigation, but acknowledge plausible and accessible examples of low-carbon human development for countries that share similar underlying drivers of carbon emissions. In addition, we note differences in drivers between models of territorial and consumption-based carbon emissions, and discuss interesting exceptions to the drivers-based cluster analysis.
At the United Nations climate change conference in 2011, parties decided to launch the “Durban Platform” to work towards a new long-term climate agreement. The decision was notable for the absence of any reference to “equity,” a prominent principle in all previous major climate agreements. Wealthy countries resisted the inclusion of equity on the grounds that the term had become too closely yoked to developing countries' favored conception of equity. This conception, according to wealthy countries, exempts developing countries from making commitments that are stringent enough for the collective effort needed to avoid dangerous climate change. In circumstances where even mentioning the term equity has become problematic, a critical question is whether the possibility for a fair agreement is being squeezed out of negotiations. To address this question we set out a conceptual framework for normative theorizing about fairness in international negotiations, accompanied by a set of minimal standards of fairness and plausible feasibility constraints for sharing the global climate change mitigation effort. We argue that a fair and feasible agreement may be reached by (1) reforming the current binary approach to differentiating developed and developing country groups, in tandem with (2) introducing a more principled approach to differentiating the mitigation commitments of individual countries. These two priorities may provide the basis for a principled bargain between developed and developing countries that safeguards the opportunity to avoid dangerous climate change without sacrificing widely acceptable conceptions of equity.
We examine some issues in the estimation of time-series cross-section models, calling into question the conclusions of many published studies, particularly in the field of comparative political economy. We show that the generalized least squares approach of Parks produces standard errors that lead to extreme overconfidence, often underestimating variability by 50% or more. We also provide an alternative estimator of the standard errors that is correct when the error structures show complications found in this type of model. Monte Carlo analysis shows that these “panel-corrected standard errors” perform well. The utility of our approach is demonstrated via a reanalysis of one “social democratic corporatist” model.
Fixed effects regression methods are used to analyze longitudinal data with repeated measures on both independent and dependent variables. They have the attractive feature of controlling for all stable characteristics of the individuals, whether measured or not. This is accomplished by using only within-individual variation to estimate the regression coefficients. This paper surveys the wide variety of fixed effects methods and their implementation in SAS, specifically, linear models with PROC GLM, logistic regression models with PROC LOGISTIC, models for count data with PROC GENMOD, and survival models with PROC PHREG.
There is very little elaboration in literature of the phrase “equitable access to sustainable development” that is referenced in the Cancun Agreement on climate change. We interpret this at a minimum as people’s right to a decent living standard, which gives rise to claims by countries to an exemption from mitigation for the energy and emissions needed to provide a decent life to all. We elaborate a conceptual framework for a comprehensive quantification of such an energy requirement, including the energy required to build out infrastructure to support these living standards. We interpret decent living as the consumption by households of a set of basic goods including adequate nutrition, shelter, health care, education, transport, refrigeration, television and mobile phones. We develop universal indicators for these activities and their infrastructure requirements, and specify a methodology to convert these to energy requirements using energy input-output analysis. Our main recommendations include estimating bottom-up, country-specific energy and emissions requirements, incorporating a minimum for methane emissions, and using international benchmarks at the sector level to encourage the reduction of countries’ energy and emissions intensity.
This paper examines relationships among power distribution, the environment, and public health by means of a cross-sectional analysis of the 50 US states. A measure of inter-state variations in power distribution is derived from data on voter participation, tax fairness, Medicaid access, and educational attainment. We develop and estimate a recursive model linking the distribution of power to environmental policy, environmental stress, and public health. The results support the hypothesis that greater power inequality leads to weaker environmental policies, which in turn lead to greater environmental degradation and to adverse public health outcomes.
This paper advances two hypotheses. First, the extent of an environmentally degrading economic activity is a function of the balance of power between the winners, who derive net benefits from the activity, and the losers, who bear net costs. Second, greater inequalities of power and wealth lead, all else equal, to more environmental degradation.
Emissions of carbon dioxide from the combustion of fossil fuels, which may contribute to long-term climate change, are projected through 2050 using reduced-form models estimated with national-level panel data for the period of 1950-1990. Using the same set of income and population growth assumptions as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we find that the IPCC's widely used emissions growth projections exhibit significant and substantial departures from the implications of historical experience. Our model employs a flexible form for income effects, along with fixed time and country effects, and we handle forecast uncertainty explicitly. We find clear evidence of an "inverse U" relation with a within-sample peak between carbon dioxide emissions (and energy use) per capita and per-capita income. © 2000 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technolog
Microeconometrics Using Stata, by A. Colin Cameron and Pravin K. Trivedi, is an outstanding introduction to microeconometrics and how to do microeconometric research using Stata. Aimed at students and researchers, this book covers topics left out of microeconometrics textbooks and omitted from basic introductions to Stata. Cameron and Trivedi provide the most complete and up-to-date survey of microeconometric methods available in Stata. Early in the book, Cameron and Trivedi introduce simulation methods and then use them to illustrate features of the estimators and tests described in the rest of the book. While simulation methods are important tools for econometricians, they are not covered in standard textbooks. By introducing simulation methods, the authors arm students and researchers with techniques they can use in future work. Cameron and Trivedi address each topic with an in-depth Stata example, and they reference their 2005 textbook, Microeconometrics: Methods and Applications, where appropriate. The authors also show how to use Stata’s programming features to implement methods for which Stata does not have a specific command. Although the book is not specifically about Stata programming, it does show how to solve many programming problems. These techniques are essential in applied microeconometrics because there will always be new, specialized methods beyond what has already been incorporated into a software package. Cameron and Trivedi’s choice of topics perfectly reflects the current practice of modern microeconometrics. After introducing the reader to Stata, the authors introduce linear regression, simulation, and generalized least-squares methods. The section on cross-sectional techniques is thorough, with up-to-date treatments of instrumental-variables methods for linear models and of quantile-regression methods.
Social and economic inequalities can influence both the distribution of the costs and benefits from environmental degradation and the extent of environmental protection. When those who benefit from environmentally degrading economic activities are powerful relative to those who bear the costs, environmental protection is generally weaker than when the reverse is true. This can lead to environmental inequalities along lines of class, race, ethnicity, gender, and age. At the same time, inequalities may affect the overall extent of environmental quality. There are good theoretical reasons to expect inequalities to reduce environmental protection and exacerbate environmental degradation. The available empirical evidence generally is consistent with this expectation.
This essay examines the distributional effects of a “cap-and-dividend" policy for reducing carbon emission in the United States: a policy that auctions carbon permits and distributes the revenue to the public on an equal per capita basis. The aim of the policy is to reduce U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide, the main pollutant causing global warming, while at the same time protecting the real incomes of middle-income and lower-income American families. The number of permits is set by a statutory cap on carbon emissions that gradually diminishes over time.
The sale of carbon permits will generate very large revenues, posing the critical question of who will get the money. The introduction of carbon permits – or, for that matter, any policy to curb emissions – will raise prices of fossil fuels and have a regressive impact on income distribution, since fuel expenditures represent a larger fraction of income for lower-income households than for upper-income households. The net effect of carbon emission-reduction policies depends on who gets the money that households pay in higher prices. We find that a cap-and-dividend policy would have a strongly progressive net effect. Moreover, the majority of U.S. households would be net winners in purely monetary terms: that is, their real incomes, after paying higher fuel prices and receiving their dividends, would rise. From the standpoints of both distributional equity and political feasibility, a cap-and-dividend policy is therefore an attractive way to curb carbon emissions.
Climate change and justice are so closely associated that many people take it for granted that a global climate treaty should--indeed, must--directly address both issues together. But, in fact, this would be a serious mistake, one that, by dooming effective international limits on greenhouse gases, would actually make the world's poor and developing nations far worse off. This is the provocative and original argument of Climate Change Justice. Eric Posner and David Weisbach strongly favor both a climate change agreement and efforts to improve economic justice. But they make a powerful case that the best--and possibly only--way to get an effective climate treaty is to exclude measures designed to redistribute wealth or address historical wrongs against underdeveloped countries. In clear language, Climate Change Justice proposes four basic principles for designing the only kind of climate treaty that will work--a forward-looking agreement that requires every country to make greenhouse--gas reductions but still makes every country better off in its own view. This kind of treaty has the best chance of actually controlling climate change and improving the welfare of people around the world.
What has happened globally on the climate change issue? How have countries' positions differed over time, and why? How are problems and politics developing on an increasingly globalised planet, and can we find a solution? This book explores these questions and more, explaining the key underlying issues of the conflicts between international blocs. The negotiation history is systematically presented in five phases, demonstrating the evolution of decision-making. The book discusses the coalitions, actors and potential role of the judiciary, as well as human rights issues in addressing the climate change problem. It argues for a methodical solution through global law and constitutionalism, which could provide the quantum jump needed in addressing the problem of climate governance. This fascinating and accessible account will be a key resource for policymakers and NGOs, and also for researchers and graduate students in climate policy, geopolitics, climate change, environmental policy and law, and international relations.
Drawing from multiple bodies of literature, the authors investigate the relationship between consumption-based carbon emissions and domestic income inequality for 67 nations from 1991 to 2008. Results of two-way fixed effects longitudinal models indicate that the relationship between national-level emissions and inequality changes through time and varies for nations in different macro-economic contexts. For High Income Nations, the relationship shifts from negative to positive, suggesting that in recent years, income inequality in such nations increases carbon emissions. For Middle Income Nations, the association is negative, and becomes increasingly negative in the later years of the study. For Low Income Nations, the relationship between carbon emissions and domestic income inequality is null for the entire 1991 to 2008 period. These diverse results hold, net of the effects of other well-established human drivers of emissions, including population size, level of economic development, and urbanization. The authors conclude by emphasizing the need for future research on greenhouse gas emissions and domestic inequality, and the central role that sociology should play in this emerging area of inquiry.
The authors investigate the relationship between U.S. state-level residential carbon emissions and income inequality for the 1990–2012 period. Results of the analysis indicate a positive association between emissions and income inequality—measured as the Theil index—and these findings hold across a variety of model estimation techniques and net of the effects of other established human drivers of emissions. The authors conclude by underscoring the need for more research on the effects of income inequality on carbon emissions and other related environmental outcomes.
After nearly a quarter century of international negotiations on climate change, we stand at a crossroads. A new set of agreements is likely to fail to prevent the global climate’s destabilization. Islands and coastlines face inundation, and widespread drought, flooding, and famine are expected to worsen in the poorest and most vulnerable countries. How did we arrive at an entirely inequitable and scientifically inadequate international response to climate change?
In Power in a Warming World, David Ciplet, J. Timmons Roberts, and Mizan Khan, bring decades of combined experience as negotiators, researchers, and activists to bear on this urgent question. Combining rich empirical description with a political economic view of power relations, they document the struggles of states and social groups most vulnerable to a changing climate and describe the emergence of new political coalitions that take climate politics beyond a simple North-South divide. They offer six future scenarios in which power relations continue to shift as the world warms. A focus on incremental market-based reform, they argue, has proven insufficient for challenging the enduring power of fossil fuel interests, and will continue to be inadequate without a bolder, more inclusive and aggressive response.
This study advances sociological research on the environmental impacts of working hours. Proponents of economic degrowth propose that a reduction in working time slows economic growth, which yields both social and environmental benefits. Building on such arguments, the authors conduct longitudinal analyses of the effects of average annual working hours on total energy consumption for samples of both developed and developing nations, and assess the extent to which the effect of working hours on energy consumption changes through time. The results suggest that the effect of working hours on energy consumption has increased through time, and this trend is observed for the samples of both developed and developing nations. The authors conclude by discussing the theoretical and policy implications of the findings.
We find that the distribution of income matters to aggregate carbon dioxide emissions and hence global warming. Higher inequality, both between and within countries is associated with lower carbon emissions at given average incomes. We also confirm that economic growth generally comes with higher emissions. Thus our results suggest that trade-offs exist between climate control (on the one hand) and both social equity and economic growth (on the other). However, economic growth improves the trade off with equity, and lower inequality improves the trade off with growth. By combining growth with equity, more pro-poor growth processes yield better longer-term trajectories of carbon emissions. Copyright 2000 by Oxford University Press.
There is a growing dissatisfaction with using standard measures of affluence, such as gross domestic product, as the sole conceptualization of human well-being. Experiments are underway with alternative metrics of well-being as ways of informing both research and policy. It is thus important to develop a theory of the production of human well-being to parallel theories of economic development and growth. The traditions of work in growth theory, sustainability theory, and household production functions provide the basis for an emerging structural human ecology of human well-being. Structural human ecology emphasizes the use of manufactured, natural, and human resources in producing well-being but is also attentive to the ways social structure shapes the production of well-being. While this approach is promising, several conceptual issues need to be addressed for it to realize its potential. In particular, we need greater clarity regarding measures of well-being and the ethical theory that underpins them and clearer thinking about the relationship between resources and capital.
One potential pathway towards sustainability involves reducing the level of anthropogenic carbon emissions per unit of human well-being, also known as the carbon intensity of human well-being (CIWB). I estimate longitudinal models, which indicate that for OECD and Non-OECD nations, income inequality began increasing CIWB in the 1990s, and the effect of inequality on CIWB continued to increase in magnitude through time. This suggests that reducing inequality in nations throughout the world could enhance both climate change mitigation efforts and human quality of life.
We investigate the potentially changing effect of urbanization on per capita and per unit of GDP carbon dioxide emissions for 69 nations from 1960 to 2010. We examine the effect of urbanization, measured as the percent of nation’s population residing in urban areas, for the overall sample as well as for smaller regionally-defined samples of nations. The results of two-way fixed effects longitudinal models for both outcomes highlight that the changing effects of urbanization on national carbon emissions throughout the world regions are far from monolithic, and these differences are hidden by the analyses of emissions for the overall sample. We provide tentative explanations for our regionally-specific findings, and conclude by emphasizing the need for more nuanced urban data and future research to increase our collective understanding of the carbon emissions / urbanization relationship.
Humans use fossil fuels in various activities tied to economic development, leading to increases in carbon emissions, and economic development is widely recognized as a pathway to improving human well-being. Strategies for effective sustainability efforts require reducing the carbon intensity of human well-being (CIWB): the level of anthropogenic carbon emissions per unit of human well-being. Here I examine how the effect of economic development on CIWB has changed since 1970 for 106 countries in multiple regional samples throughout the world. I find that early in this time period, increased development led to a reduction in CIWB for nations in Africa, but in recent decades the relationship has changed, becoming less sustainable. For nations in Asia and South and Central America, I find that development increases CIWB, and increasingly so throughout the 40-year period of study. The effect of development on CIWB for nations in the combined regions of North America, Europe and Oceania has remained positive, relatively larger than in other regions, and stable through time. Although future economic growth will probably improve human well-being throughout the world, this research suggests that it will also cost an increasing amount of carbon emissions.
This article traces the evolution of international environmental law and dialogue in the four decades from Stockholm, 1972, to Rio+20, 2012, with a focus on the changing dynamics of the discourse between developed and developing countries, and the corresponding interpretational shifts in the application of differential treatment in international environmental law—climate change law in particular. This article argues that in the first three decades of environmental diplomacy, from 1972 to 2002, the international community witnessed an exponential growth in the number and range of multilateral environmental agreements, an array of tools, techniques and practices, and a rapid expansion of differential treatment in favour of developing countries. Differential treatment in central obligations, albeit disputed from its inception, found pride of place in the Kyoto Protocol negotiated in 1997. The decade that followed, 2002 to 2012, witnessed heightened popular and political mobilization around the climate change issue. But, in response to seemingly intractable difficulties across the North—South and North—North spectrum, it was accompanied by a retreat from differential treatment in central obligations. The battle over the future (or lack thereof) of the Kyoto Protocol, and the recent developments in the climate regime—in particular the 2011 Durban Platform Decision—testify to this retreat from certain variants of differential treatment, and interpretations of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities. An analysis of these developments and the politics that gave rise to them, reveal that while the international regime can survive the erosion of certain limited forms of differential treatment, a wholesale rejection of differential treatment, and of the 'equity' concerns that animate it, would destabilize the normative core of the regime as well as render the climate regime unattractive to key players like India.
Centuries of speculation about the causes of human stress on the
environment is now being disciplined with empirical evidence, including
analyses of differences in greenhouse-gas emissions across contemporary
nation states. The cumulative results can provide useful guidance for
both climate projections and for policy design. Growing human population
and affluence clearly contribute to enhanced environmental stress.
Evidence does not support the argument for amelioration of
greenhouse-gas emissions at the highest levels of affluence. However,
the role of other factors, such as urbanization, trade, culture and
institutions remains ambiguous.
Many scholars and activists are now advocating a program of economic degrowth for developed countries in order to mitigate demands on the global environment. An increasingly prominent idea is that developed countries could achieve slower or zero economic growth in a socially sustainable way by reducing working hours. Research suggests that reduced working hours could contribute to sustainability by decreasing the scale of economic output and the environmental intensity of consumption patterns. Here, we investigate the effect of working hours on three environmental indicators: ecological footprint, carbon footprint, and carbon dioxide emissions. Using data for 1970–2007, our panel analysis of 29 high-income OECD countries indicates that working hours are significantly associated with greater environmental pressures and thus may be an attractive target for policies promoting environmental sustainability.
We document a U-shaped relationship between income inequality and carbon dioxide emissions per capita, using a newly available panel data set on income inequality (GINI) with observations for 138 countries over the period 1960–2008. Our findings suggest that, for high-income countries with high income inequality, pro-poor growth and reduced per capita emissions levels go hand in hand.
Ecological modernization theory posits that even though economic development harms the environment, the magnitude of the harmful link decreases over the course of development. In contrast, the treadmill of production theory argues that the strong relationship between environmental harms and economic development will remain constant or possibly increase through time. To evaluate these competing propositions, interactions between economic development and time are used in cross-national panel analyses of three measures of carbon dioxide emissions. The results vary across the three outcomes as well as between developed and less developed countries, providing mixed support for both theoretical perspectives. The authors conclude by discussing how both theories could benefit from engaging contemporary research concerning changes within the transnational organization of production and the structure of international trade and how these global shifts influence environment/economic development relationships.
We investigate the manner in which a desire to emulate the rich influences individuals’ allocation of time between labour and leisure, greater inequality inducing longer work hours as a result. Data on work hours in ten countries over the period 1963–98 show that greater inequality is indeed associated longer work hours. These ‘Veblen effects’ are large and the estimates are robust using country fixed effects and other specifications. Because consumption inequality is a public bad, a social welfare optimum cannot be implemented by a flat tax on consumption but may be accomplished by more complicated (progressive) consumption taxes.
Cities are often blamed for high levels of greenhouse gas emissions. However, an analysis of emissions inventories shows that — in most cases — per capita emissions from cities are lower than the average for the countries in which they are located. The paper assesses these patterns of emissions by city and by sector, discusses the implications of different methodological approaches to producing inventories, identifies the main drivers for high levels of greenhouse gas production, and examines the role and potential for cities to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.
This article sets forth a new theoretical model that holds that local, regional, and global environmental crises are to a significant degree the product of organizational, institutional, and network-based inequality, which provide economic, political, military, and ideological elites with the means to create and control organizational and network-based mechanisms through which they (a) monopolize decision-making power; (b) shift environmental and nonenvironmental costs onto others; (c) shape individuals' knowledge, attitudes, values, beliefs, and behavior; and (d) frame what is and is not considered to be good for the environment. These undemocratic mechanisms produce severe environmental harm because they provide elites with the means to achieve goals that are often environmentally destructive and because they are sometimes environmentally destructive in and of themselves, as is the case with military power. After situating their study in the broader literature, the authors describe their theoretical model in detail and present three case studies that identify some of the most important mechanisms through which elites exert power and harm the environment.
Science assessments indicate that human activities are moving several of Earth's sub-systems outside the range of natural variability typical for the previous 500,000 years (1, 2). Human societies must now change course and steer away from critical tipping points in the Earth system that might lead to rapid and irreversible change (3). This requires fundamental reorientation and restructuring of national and international institutions toward more effective Earth system governance and planetary stewardship
The difficulties in negotiating a post-2012 regime of binding targets and timetables and the decisions of the US, Canada, and Russia on the Kyoto Protocol regime have led to pessimism about the future of the climate regime. Negotiation issues for different coalitions and actors are placed in a wider historical context by examining the key challenge facing the evolving long-term climate change negotiation process: the principled basis for the allocation of resources, responsibilities, rights, and risks between actors. Four theoretical approaches (problem structuring; negotiation theory; collective action and social practice models; legal theory) are applied to the climate regime. A principled approach is only a distributive approach from a narrow short-term perspective. It becomes an integrative approach from a longer-term perspective when it increases the pie, enhances the win-win opportunities and creates space for sustainable solutions to emerge. It is especially integrative when undertaken within the context of global rule of law, which is able to create predictable rules that apply to future global problems with different country interests. Will this happen? Climate justice movements and climate litigation have begun; statesmanship is still needed.
We examine some issues in the estimation of time-series cross-section models, calling into
question the conclusions of many published studies, particularly in the field of comparative
political economy. We show that the generalized least squares approach of Parks produces
standard errors that lead to extreme overconfidence, often underestimating variability by 50% or
more. We also provide an alternative estimator of the standard errors that is correct when the error
structures show complications found in this type of model. Monte Carlo analysis shows that these
"panel-corrected standard errors" perform well. The utility of our approach is demonstrated via a
reanalysis of one "social democratic corporatist" model.
The present study will examine energy consumption from two competing perspectives within environmental social science: political economy and ecological modernization. These frameworks will be evaluated with a fixed-effects panel analysis of state-level energy use between the years 1960 and 1990, based on data for 50 states plus Washington, DC, from the Energy Information Administration’s State Energy Data System. The results from the panel analysis show that the increase in total energy use between 1960 and 1990 depended on both increasing economic growth and urbanization, even after controlling for population size, industrialization, and inflation-adjusted energy prices. The results challenge the claims of ecological modernization theory and support a political economic approach to the study of changes in energy use. In the conclusion, the study’s findings will be framed within the context of the early twenty-first-century economic and ecological crises. In light of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, this study can also further advance the renewable energy debate by reminding us of the social drivers of energy use.
This paper aims at analysing the congruence between the well-established environmental law principles of precaution, prevention, polluter pays and sustainable development and environmental justice. While much can be said (and much has been said) about the principles, the aim of this paper is not to provide a full-fledged analysis of the principles. Instead, this paper aims to start a debate on the role of environmental justice as a concept and its compatibility with the more well-established norms of environmental policy and law. The reason for this is two-fold. Firstly, in light of the emergence of environmental justice as a concept in the UK and Europe, it is important to attempt to define the boundaries and meaning of the concept. Secondly, while environmental justice and its emphasis on fair distribution and processes on the face of it seems benign, it is important to subject the concept to critical scrutiny, given the possible implications of its claims of injustices. Equally, given the pervasiveness of the well-established environmental principles it becomes relevant to question these principles in the name of justice in an attempt to further debate about their longevity. The paper argues that for all three of the principles a comparison with environmental justice gives rise to conflicts as well as conformity. The main reason for this is the inherent ambiguity and inconsistency of environmental justice and the three principles.
An important concept in discussions of carbon management policies is cap and dividend, where some fraction of the revenues of an auction on emission allowances is returned to citizens on an equal per capita basis. This policy tool has some important features; it emphasizes the fact that the atmosphere is a common property resource, and it is a highly transparent measure that can be effectively used to protect the income of low-income individuals. In this paper we examine this policy in the California context, and focus on the costs and impacts of a cap and dividend scheme when applied to carbon emissions associated with electricity, natural gas and transportation services. We find that cap and dividend can effectively be used to address the economic impacts of carbon management policies, making them progressive for the lowest-income members of society. We find that the majority of households receive positive net benefits from the policy even with the government retaining half of the auction revenue. If auction revenues are instead dedicated only to low-income households, the majority of low-income households can be fully compensated even with the state government retaining upwards of 90% of auction revenues for other purposes.