An update to the classic, 50-year-old computer simulation of environmental stress has indicated that addressing inequality is essential to garnering the public support required to transform the global economy and stop climate change.
The 1972 ‘Limits To Growth’ simulation, based on modelling by MIT scientists of a society destabilised by expanding consumption, has been criticised as inaccurate by some, while being praised by others as foresightful of accelerating planetary stress. View More
The Earth4All model, which built on its predecessor, was created by a multidisciplinary team of academics to examine what it would take to improve human wellbeing for the remainder of this century using data from the years 1980 to 2020.
Its main finding was that, if rising inequality were to continue unchecked, people would lose faith in governments and other institutions over the next 50 years, making cooperation to combat problems like climate change and other ones more challenging.
‘The speed at which public policy is implemented is constrained when social trust declines. In terms of greening the economy and energy system, this translates into how much regulation and subsidies you can implement’ Per Espen Stoknes, a co-author of the report, told in an interview.
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