Grant: Discovery Horizons

Despite the severe threat that accelerated warming poses to different aspects of our lives, a general buy-in at the global or even national level for more aggressive climate action is missing. While the science of climate change, and the technological landscape of possible mitigation options have become clearer with time, issues related to individual and societal perceptions have remained blurred, context-driven, political, fluid, and above all, divisive. This is most likely related to the cost of action. Tackling the challenge of climate change is likely to have a global prince tag in tens of trillions of dollars, constituting the largest coordinated transnational investment in the history of humankind. Further complicating the picture, while climate benefits of national mitigation policies are global, the costs appear squarely local or national. We have heard the argument: why should Canada shoulder the enormous cost of climate action, while other countries continue to pollute the atmosphere with greenhouse gases? This simple argument resonates with many; however, it is fallacious, or at least limited in its depiction of the actual societal landscape. Climate mitigation investment is costly, but it can be transformational and bring a sea change to our way of life. However, to reach beyond our immediate climate objectives, we need to account for the range of ancillary benefits that various climate policies entail. These ancillary benefits are often referred to as cobenefits, and chief among them are those associated with improved air quality in a decarbonized future. We propose to develop and use state-of-the-science atmospheric and economic modelling tools to quantify the Social Cost of Atmospheric Release (SCAR) that spans over a range of climate and air quality impacts such as warming, population health, and environmental justice. We propose to develop a high-resolution (1 km) dataset of sectoral and location-specific SCARs for three major cities in Canada, and to further extend the dataset to all major urban areas in the nation. Location-specific SCARs allow decision makers at various levels of government to harvest optimal societal benefits from climate mitigation investments. Furthermore, we investigate how inclusion of air quality benefits, which unlike climate benefits, mostly materialize in the short-term and locally, may provide a more convincing narrative in pursuit of societal and political buy-in for more aggressive climate policies.