Holistic and integrated systemic policies and practices for decarbonization

A bold, visionary, transforming, systemic, holistic, integrated, caring, inclusive, equitable, sustainable, and resilient paradigm for fast transitions toward a clean energy and decarbonized future is imperative and urgently needed. Business as usual and silo approaches are not viable with the changes that are occurring. These changes are linked and interacting systems of physical, natural, health, social, economic, finance, governance, and institution. The effects and impacts are dire, existential, and pervasive. The 2021 IPCC Report Physical Science Basis: Summary for Policymakers, in clear language stated "it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, oceans and land”. The scientific communities in the US, Europe, Asia and other regions all subscribe to this situation. Well documented global empirical evidence is also confirming the profound systems and systemic transformations that are occurring. Business, industry, and the general public, in particular youths, worldwide are all increasingly demanding actions – that transcend words of what needs to be done to deeds of how and now. In the US, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, would allocate US 370 billion for combating climate change and clean energy production. The IRA is the largest climate spending package ever. President Biden has called for 100% clean electricity by 2035 and pledged to cut carbon emissions by 50%–52% below 2005 levels by the end of this decade, doubling the previous target. A decarbonized future was endorsed by Leaders at the 2021 G-7 Carbis, UK Summit. There is growing realization that the global climate change crisis requires strengthened and expanded global cooperation with new, innovative and non-bureaucratic mechanisms for collaboration. The 2021 IPCC Report summarized that global surface temperature will continue to increase until at least the mid- century under all emissions' scenarios considered. "Global warming of 1.5 and 2°C will be exceeded during the 21st century unless deep reductions in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades.” The UNEP and IEA contends reducing anthropogenic methane emissions will help mitigate climate change and is a cost-effective proposition. The release of methane and micro-organisms from melting of permafrost needs to be better studied and understood., The confluence of increased heat, humidity, fine particulates air pollution, water contaminants and the COVID pandemic, will exacerbate health burdens. This will have serious consequences for human wellbeing, and cascading into national and global security. With climate change, therapeutics and vaccines will not work. The article provides a brief overview of the unprecedented climate related hurricanes, storms, floods and wildfires disasters occurring in all regions of the world. It highlights of some of the key effects, impacts and consequences with current policies and practices with regard to the energy-climate conundrum. There is an imperative to change course toward a decarbonized future. A number of systemic expeditious interventions are delineated. These include actions by all on:. The* fundamental need to change behavior;*afforestation, reforestation, rehabilitation of wetlands, mangroves, wastelands and coral reefs to restore ecosystem functions which would also create significant number of employment and livelihoods' opportunities;*retrofitting existing structures to be more energy efficient, incorporate increasing renewable energy, sustainability and resiliency criteria, – to "build back better” and provide jobs;*the life cycle of food and agriculture practices need to be systemically examined to reduce adverse impacts on climate, Energy, environment and health. There are difficulties and challenges. The commensurate opportunities and benefits of a decarbonized paradigm include clean and safe jobs;healthy quality of life;and a sustained and resilient future for current and future generations. © 2023 American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

Turning Traditional Wisdom of Culture around: Making a Possible Transition to a Wiser World Driven by Culture of Wisdom Inquiry Real

In this article I discuss the problem of how we can change our world into a wiser world that is driven by a culture of wisdom inquiry (CWI), i.e., a world that frees humanity from a looming totalitarian catastrophe. How best can we interrogate the traditional wisdom of culture (TWC) that is responsible for the academic institutions of learning, among other kinds of institutions, dogmatically and solely aiming at the acquisition of knowledge and technological prowess (technologisches koennen), instead of the promotion of wisdom and human well-being? What kind of strategic transformations of institutional design, policy and goals within diverse institutions, particularly academic institutions of learning, regionally and globally, are imperative? This article argues from the principle of universal interconnectedness across nature/universe and the fundamental asymmetry of human well-being interests and nature’s well-being interests. From this, the development of a culture of wisdom inquiry as an overarching (allumfassend) methodology of institutional change from within at two levels of analysis is proposed, viz., (1) at the level of the ecological–economic analysis of safeguarding nature’s abundant ecosystems from human greed;and (2) at the level of the transformation of the educational, academic and political–economic institutions, as well as international institutions, that must be dedicated to human well-being.

Uncovering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on energy consumption: New insight from difference between pandemic-free scenario and actual electricity consumption in China.

The existing measurement of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on energy consumption is based on changes between the years, which demonstrates the changes in energy consumption over the years without fully reflecting the impact of the pandemic on energy consumption. To better uncover the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on energy consumption, this research compared pandemic-free scenarios with actual (with COVID-19) energy consumption in 2020, rather than comparing energy consumption between 2020 and 2019 in the existing studies. The simulation approach used for scenario simulation was developed by combing the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) and back propagation neural network (BP). In the proposed ARIMAR-BP approach, BP was used to correct the error of ARMIA simulation, so as to reduce the error of simulation. The results of the model testing indicate that the simulation error of the developed approach is much lower than that of the BP or ARIMA simulation. The proposed simulation approach was run based on China's electricity consumption from 2015 to 2019 to produce the simulated value of China's electricity consumption from January to August of 2020 in the pandemic-free scenario. The actual electricity consumption was on average 29% lower than the electricity consumption in the pandemic-free scenario. which is much larger than the decline rate derived from year-to-year comparison. In addition, the results of the correlation analysis show the simulated decline in electricity consumption is only positively correlated with the number of new cases of COVID-19 in January-March, when the COVID-19 outbreak in China. This research provides a novel research structure for a more comprehensive understanding of the impact of the pandemic on energy consumption.

A New Normal or Business-as-Usual? Lessons for COVID-19 from Financial Crises in East and Southeast Asia.

Crises and dislocations home in on social, economic, and political weaknesses that are often sidestepped or pushed to the backburner in the interests of master plans of growth or development. Recovery from crises, then, provides the opportunity to address these underlying issues that preceded and, likely, contributed to the crises or dislocation; meanwhile, a return to the previous normalcy following such crises generally means exacerbation of these weaknesses that erode and threaten to fracture social, economic and political foundations. This paper documents social and economic policies across two financial crises, the Asian Financial Crisis and the Global Financial Crisis, for South Korea, the Philippines, and Indonesia, to reveal the problems from growth-centric recovery focus on economic fragilities, social cohesion, and political stability. Further, using evidence from the ground and survey data, we also show how recovery to a new normal with a reprioritization of social policies invigorates the social, political, and economic foundations. We round off the study with an examination of social policy changes under COVID-19 to assess how the efforts track against a recovery to business-as-usual economic normalcy or a new normal that reprioritizes social policies and the economy. The scope of change is high; as we show in the paper, it is also necessary.

Les crises et les bouleversements renvoient à des faiblesses sociales, économiques et politiques qui sont souvent évitées ou mises en sourdine afin de suivre les grands plans de croissance ou de développement. Le fait de se relever après une crise offre donc la possibilité de s'attaquer à ces problèmes sous-jacents qui ont précédé et, vraisemblablement, contribué aux crises ou aux bouleversements; en attendant, suite à de telles crises, un retour à la normalité d'avant signifie généralement une exacerbation de ces faiblesses qui érodent et menacent de fracturer les fondations sociales, économiques et politiques. Cet article documente les politiques sociales et économiques à travers deux crises financières, la crise financière asiatique et la crise financière mondiale, pour la Corée du Sud, les Philippines et l'Indonésie, afin de révéler les problèmes d'une reprise axée sur la croissance et de se concentrer sur les fragilités économiques, la cohésion sociale et la stabilité politique. De plus, en utilisant des preuves sur le terrain et des données d'enquête, nous montrons également comment la relance de l'économie sur la base d'une nouvelle norme, avec une redéfinition des priorités des politiques sociales, revigore les fondements sociaux, politiques et économiques. Nous terminons l'étude par un examen des changements de politique sociale dans le cadre de la COVID-19 pour évaluer de quelle façon les efforts s'opposent à une reprise du statu quo de la normalité économique ou à une nouvelle normalité qui redéfinit les priorités des politiques sociales et de l'économie. L'ampleur du changement est élevée; comme nous le montrons dans cet article, elle est également nécessaire.