In a recently published article in the special issue series of the Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability O´Brien holds that climate change must be seen as an adaptive challenge with practical, political and personal dimensions.
By drawing on research from the social sciences and humanities, O´Brien discusses what it would really take to bend CO2 emission curves. She argues that current roadmaps and pathways for decarbonization are far from having the potential to meet the Paris Agreement on climate change, rather they are likely to lead to a dead end, as they primarily focus on technical, managerial and behavioral changes.
By using the Three Spheres of Transformation framework, O´Brien suggests that there are other far more effective leverage points for system change, highlighting the critical role that people have in driving change.
The article is part of the special issue series of the Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability (COSUST, Volume 31, April 2018) featuring contributions from different perspectives on 1.5°C climate change research and social transformation. Linda Sygna (AdaptationCONNECTS, University of Oslo) and Bronwyn Hayward (University of Canterbury) were guest editors to this issue.
Down load article here.
Full reference of article:
Karen O´Brien, 2018. Is the 1.5°C Target Possible? Exploring the Three Spheres of Transformation. Current Opinion in Sustainability, 31: 153-160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2018.04.010