Faculty Expert
When it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, enhancing carbon sinks, and promoting adaptation to a changing climate, solutions abound. Implementing these solutions through policy, however, is anything but simple. Taxes and regulations are often part of the discussion, but they are difficult to implement and face a great deal of resistance. As a leader of the Public Deliberation on Climate Transitions and Wellbeing Environmental Innovations Initiative (EII) research community, Penn GSE's Associate Professor Rand Quinn is working with Steven Kimbrough, professor at the Department of Operations and Information Management at the Wharton School to find an alternative. Their focus lies in exploring the ways that addressing climate change through policy can improve people’s quality of life through “co-benefits,” the outcomes that can accrue alongside the primary aim of climate action.
For the past two years, with the support of EII, Kimbrough, Quinn, and a team of undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral students have developed a protocol to uncover the connections between climate transition policies and co-benefits at municipal level.
Identifying co-benefits can be elusive, so "we are capturing people’s perception of co-benefits, no matter how subtle," explains Kimbrough.
Addressing climate challenges effectively requires understanding the complexity of how people make decisions about their well-being. For this reason, effective climate policies require not only a robust scientific foundation, but also “community input, learning about the neighbors’ quality of life issues, and understanding how they will play out before implementation,” says Quinn. In a time where public support for climate action is needed more than ever, evaluating co-benefits is a powerful alternative to strengthening the climate policymaking process, revealing how measures aimed at reducing emissions can simultaneously address climate change and broadly enhance quality of life.
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