Study: Reducing poverty and climate goals aren’t at odds

Enlarge / Eliminating extreme poverty won't necessarily boost emissions as much as people fear. (credit: Soltan Frédéric)

The United Nations’ first Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) aims to eradicate poverty around the world. If implemented, however, it might see people consume more—drive more often, buy more products—and, thus, produce more carbon emissions, fueling climate change. “With more money to spend, and therefore more consumption, there is usually a higher carbon footprint,” Benedikt Bruckner, a master’s student of energy and environmental sciences at the University of Groningen, told Ars.

But it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way, according to a new study put out by Bruckner, other researchers out of Groningen, and colleagues in the United States and China.

Published in Nature, the research makes use of high-level data about consumption patterns to show that reaching SDG 1—which shoots to move every person out of extreme poverty (under $1.90 per day) and half of everyone above the poverty lines of their respective countries—won’t excessively fuel climate change.

Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments