Abstract
Humans use fossil fuels in various activities tied to economic development, leading to increases in carbon emissions1,2,3, 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-being4,5,6,7. 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 world8, this research suggests that it will also cost an increasing amount of carbon emissions.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$209.00 per year
only $17.42 per issue
Rent or buy this article
Prices vary by article type
from$1.95
to$39.95
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
References
Podobnik, B. Global Energy Shifts: Fostering Sustainability in a Turbulent Age (Temple Univ. Press, (2006).
IPCC Climate Change 2007: Mitigation of Climate Change Metz, B., Davidson, O. R., Bosch, P. R., Dave, R. & Meyer, L. A. (eds) (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007).
United States National Research Council, Advancing the Science on Climate Change (National Academies Press, (2010).
Dietz, T., Rosa, E. & York, R. Environmentally efficient well-being: Is there a Kuznets curve?. Appl. Geogr. 32, 21–28 (2012).
Dietz, T., Rosa, E. & York, R. Efficient well-being: Rethinking sustainability as the relationship between human well-being and environmental impacts. Human Ecol. Rev. 16, 114–123 (2009).
Knight, K. & Rosa, E. The environmental efficiency of well-being: A cross national analysis. Soc. Sci. Res. 40, 931–949 (2011).
Steinberger, J. & Roberts, J. T. From constraint to sufficiency: The decoupling of energy and carbon from human needs, 1975–2005. Ecol. Econom. 70, 425–433 (2010).
Brady, D., Kaya, Y. & Beckfield, J. Reassessing the effect of economic growth on well-being in less-developed countries, 1980–2003. Stud. Comparative Int. Dev. 42, 1–35 (2007).
Rosa, E. & Dietz, T. Human drivers of national greenhouse-gas emissions. Nature Clim. Change 2, 581–586 (2012).
Jorgenson, A. K. & Clark, B. Are the economy and the environment decoupling? A comparative international study, 1960–2005. Am. J. Soc. 118, 1–44 (2012).
York, R. Asymmetric effects of economic growth and decline on CO2 emissions. Nature Clim. Change 2, 762–764 (2012).
McMichael, P. Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective (Sage, 2012).
Mazur, A. & Rosa, E. Energy and life-style: Massive energy consumption may not be necessary to maintain current living standards in America. Science 186, 207–610 (1974).
Rudel, T. Tropical Forests: Regional Paths of Destruction and Regeneration in the Late Twentieth Century (Columbia Univ. Press, 2005).
Jorgenson, A. K., Rice, J. & Clark, B. Assessing temporal and regional differences in the relationships between infant and child mortality and urban slum prevalence in less-developed countries, 1990–2005. Urban Stud. 49, 3495–3512 (2012).
Jorgenson, A. K. & Clark, B. The relationship between national-level carbon dioxide emissions and population size: An assessment of regional and temporal variation, 1960–2005. PLoS ONE 8, e57107 (2013).
Allison, P. Fixed Effects Regression Models (Sage, 2009).
Roberts, J. T. & Parks, B. A Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North-South Politics, and Climate Policy (MIT Press, 2007).
Steinberger, J., Roberts, T., Peters, G. & Baiocchi, G. Pathways of human development and carbon emissions embodied in trade. Nature Clim. Change 2, 81–85 (2012).
Peters, G. et al. Rapid growth in CO2 emissions after the 2008–2009 financial crisis. Nature Clim. Change 2, 2–4 (2012).
World Development Indicators. Accessed 2 June (World Bank, 2013);http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators
Jorgenson, A. K., Alekseyko, A. & Giedraitis, V. Energy consumption, human well-being and economic development in central and eastern Europe: A cautionary tale of sustainability. Energy Policy 66, 419–427 (2014).
Rudel, T. K. et al. Forest transitions: Towards a global understanding of land use change. Glob. Environ. Change 15, 23–31 (2005).
Beck, N. & Katz, J. What to do (and not do) with time-series cross-section data. Am. Polit. Sci. Rev. 89, 634–647 (1995).
Acknowledgements
The author thanks B. Clark, J. Givens, D. Grant, W. Longhofer, M. Mahutga and T. Rotolo for helpful comments.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
A.K.J. designed the research, analysed the data, and wrote the manuscript.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The author declares no competing financial interests.
Supplementary information
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Jorgenson, A. Economic development and the carbon intensity of human well-being. Nature Clim Change 4, 186–189 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2110
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2110
This article is cited by
-
Research on the impact of economic development and environmental security on human well-being in typical cities on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau
Environment, Development and Sustainability (2024)
-
Heterogeneous effect of GHG emissions and fossil energy on well-being and income in emerging economies: a critical appraisal of the role of environmental stringency and green energy
Environmental Science and Pollution Research (2022)
-
How can Quality of Life be Achieved in a Sustainable Way? Perceptions of Swiss Rural Inhabitants
Discover Sustainability (2022)
-
Measuring economic, social and environmental wellbeing of Asian economies
Environmental Science and Pollution Research (2022)
-
Is the “pollution haven hypothesis” valid for China’s carbon trading system? A re-examination based on inter-provincial carbon emission transfer
Environmental Science and Pollution Research (2022)