Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A chilling study which potentially opens the door to questioning the benefits of the ubiquitous drive to raise global education levels.
Education May Increase Emissions but Mitigate Human Cost of Climate Change
Increasing education in the developing world could lead to a modest increase in carbon emissions due to economic growth, but education could also reduce the negative impact of climate change on vulnerable populations.
…
What They Found
The study found that in the slow to stalled educational attainment scenarios, net emissions through 2100 actually decreased.
More rapid growth in educational attainment, on the other hand, is likely to produce increased economic activity and an eventual net increase in emissions of around 5% to 25% by 2100, depending on the region. That’s despite the counterbalancing impact of education and economic growth on the fertility rate (lowering it), which slows population growth and emissions.
Researchers note, however, that higher levels of education also correlated with much better scores on the Human Development Index, indicating that better educated people are more resilient in the face of the negative impacts of climate change.
…
Read more: https://eos.org/articles/education-may-increase-emissions-but-mitigate-human-cost-of-climate-change
The abstract of the study;
The effect of education on determinants of climate change risks
Brian C. O’Neill, Leiwen Jiang, Samir KC, Regina Fuchs, Shonali Pachauri, Emily K. Laidlaw, Tiantian Zhang, Wei Zhou & Xiaolin Ren
Increased educational attainment is a sustainable development priority and has been posited to have benefits for other social and environmental issues, including climate change. However, links between education and climate change risks can involve both synergies and trade-offs, and the balance of these effects remains ambiguous. Increases in educational attainment could lead to faster economic growth and therefore higher emissions, more climate change and higher risks. At the same time, improved attainment would be associated with faster fertility decline in many countries, slower population growth and therefore lower emissions, and would also be likely to reduce vulnerability to climate impacts. We employ a multiregion, multisector model of the world economy, driven with country-specific projections of future population by level of education, to test the net effect of education on emissions and on the Human Development Index (HDI), an indicator that correlates with adaptive capacity to climate impacts. We find that improved educational attainment is associated with a modest net increase in emissions but substantial improvement in the HDI values in developing country regions. Avoiding stalled progress in educational attainment and achieving gains at least consistent with historical trends is especially important in reducing future vulnerability.
Read more (paywalled): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-0512-y
One of the authors, Shonali Pachauri, is the daughter of the late Rajendra Pachauri, former head of the IPCC, who resigned in 2015.
The study authors are keen to emphasise the benefits of education to those who receive a better education. They obviously don’t want their work to be used to justify cutbacks in international education aid programmes.
But that frightening alternative policy prescription of denying education to those who need it most still lingers. The idea that education is a net global harm in terms of overall CO2 emissions may yet have consequences, so long as policy makers believe reducing total global CO2 emissions is a priority.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“Education May Increase Emissions”
But then again, may not. No need to read any further.
It’s amazing how proto-fascists, posing as «free democrats», «republicans» and «libertarians» have the gall to attribute to the Left and Progressives their own agenda of indoctrination… Their «free-market» economists are incapable of explaining a major economic crisis, and yet they continue to recite their Von Mises, Haeykian and Friedmaninan gospell of «free enterpreneurship»… We truly live in an Orwellian world where «Up« is «Down» and «Left» is «Right»… On Education, look at China… There is this joke I once heard from an American professor: «An Americam University is a place where Russian Professors teach Mathematics to Chinese students». I advise all those «proto-fascists» to read the American magazine «TIME», special issue dedicated to «Inside the USSR», dated June 23, 1980.
It’s amazing how proto-fascists, posing as «pro democracy», «republicans» and «libertarians» have the gall to attribute to the Left and Progressives their own agenda of indoctrination… Their «free-market» economists are incapable of explaining a major economic crisis, and yet they continue to recite their Von Mises, Haeykian and Friedmaninan gospell of «free enterpreneurship»… We truly live in an Orwellian world where «Up« is «Down» and «Left» is «Right»… On Education, look at China… There is this joke I once heard from an American professor: «An Americam University is a place where Russian Professors teach Mathematics to Chinese students». I advise all those «proto-fascists» to read the American magazine «TIME», special issue dedicated to «Inside the USSR», dated June 23, 1980.
“Their «free-market» economists are incapable of explaining a major economic crisis”
OMG! Shutting down the economy for several months isn’t an explanation of a major economic crisis?
Did I miss the /sarc in your message?
So you want us to educate ourselves to the beauties of Communism by recommending a 40-year old magazine article by useful-idiot journalists suckered into believing what they saw on a KGB-led tour of the USSR? Your suggestion, like your intellect, is beneath contempt.
…and better a “proto-fascist” than a fully developed f*ckwit.
1) Fascists are a form of socialist, in the first sentence you already display an amazing lack of basic knowledge.
2) Free market economists have explained every “market crisis”. Just because you reject the explanation doesn’t prove they have none.
3) You are right, we do live in an Orwellian world, it’s because you socialists can’t deal with reality.
Guilherme obviously never read the book, or he’d know it’s a cautionary tale about socialism. And yes, Fascism and its offshoot Nazism were and are entirely socialist constructs. How many times do we have say “National SOCIALIST German WORKERS Party” before these cretins get it?
And here’s another thing none of these halfwits understands:
The ONLY reason Fascism and Communism were ever considered “opposites” (i.e. “far right” and “far left”) is because the Nazis and Communists fought pitches battles in the street. And the ONLY reason for that is that both wanted power. Period, full stop, end of story, mic drop.
Sorry Guilherme, but you’re just another member of the 5-minute attention span generation.
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.
“When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science.”
Orwell saw that coming too.
Here’s a good idea – why don’t these characters offer to stop educating their own children so that more children in underdeveloped countries can take their place? No? Thought not.
They already did. That’s why they are rioting in the streets and believe in man-made global warming.
(Karl) Marx saw tradition as a tool of the bourgeoisie. Adherence to the past served as a mere distraction in proletariat’s quest for emancipation and supremacy.
“In bourgeois society,” Marx wrote, “the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past.” Ref: https://fee.org/articles/5-things-marx-wanted-to-abolish-besides-private-property/
Many WUWT posters have noted that the Left does not like to dwell on paleoclimatology (“It’s different this time!”) in line with the tendency to educate people in only what they believe. My numerous grand kids have been saturated in leftist teaching such that I have a great fear for the years ahead. Educating people has a tendency to reduce population growth since development of commercial farming has reduced the need for farm workers–Greatly.
However, for all the horror of imperialism in Africa, India, Mongolia, Polynesia, the Western tendency to keep tribes from wife-hunting and trying to annihilate each other has caused unconscionable growth in family size. It can thereby be argued that education increases standards of living but slows population growth, resulting in a net increase in civilization.
(Note: most of my Gran-kids are involved in heath-related areas, crisis management, fire and rescue, agriculture and political justice. Doing much better than me!)
So CO2 also causes bad intergenerational research.