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USA
Vol. 94, pp. 175179, January 1997
Ecology
AND
EUGENE A. ROSA
*Department of Sociology and Anthropology, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030; and Department of Sociology, Washington State University,
Pullman, WA 99164
Communicated by Paul R. Ehrlich, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, November 4, 1996 (received for review May 1, 1996)
ABSTRACT
We developed a stochastic version of the Impact 5 PopulationzAffluencezTechnology (IPAT) model to estimate the effects of population, affluence, and technology on
national CO2 emissions. Our results suggest that, for population,
there are diseconomies of scale for the largest nations that are not
consistent with the assumption of direct proportionality (log
linear effects) common to most previous research. In contrast,
the effects of affluence on CO2 emissions appear to reach a
maximum at about $10,000 in per- capita gross domestic product
and to decline at higher levels of affluence. These results confirm
the general value of the IPAT model as a starting point for
understanding the anthropogenic driving forces of global change
and suggest that population and economic growth anticipated
over the next decade will exacerbate greenhouse gas emissions.
It is certain that the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse
gases (GHGs) are increasing (1, 2). These growing concentrations threaten to produce disruptive changes in global
climate. There is widespread scientific agreement that the
increased concentrations are the consequence of human activities around the globe. Among these anthropogenic factors,
the principal ones (often called driving forces) are (i)
population, (ii) economic activity, (iii) technology, (iv) political
and economic institutions, and (v) attitudes and beliefs (3).
These forces usually are assumed to drive not just GHG
emissions but all anthropogenic environmental change.
Despite agreement about the list of forces that affect anthropogenic GHG emissions, we have little understanding of the
relative importance of each driving force. Thus, our basic knowledge of the biosphere and our ability to choose appropriate policy
responses will remain significantly incomplete until we better
understand the human dimensions of the system (35). Our goals
here are to suggest an approach for analyzing anthropogenic
environmental changes and to apply that approach to anthropogenic emissions of the principal GHG: CO2.
To organize our analysis, we adopted the Impact 5
PopulationzAff luencezTechnology (IPAT) framework first
proposed in the early 1970s (6) as part of an ongoing debate
on the driving forces of environmental change (711). It still
finds wide use as an orienting perspective (1220). The framework incorporates key features of human dimensions of environmental change into a model as follows:
I 5 PzAzT
I i 5 aP ibA ice i
[2]
[1]
OF THE
USA
175
176
Table 1.
Identifier
Nation
Technology
multiplier*
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
Algeria
Angola
Argentina
Australia
Austria
Bangladesh
Belgium
Benin
Bhutan
Bolivia
Botswana
Brazil
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cameroon
Canada
Central African Republic
Chad
Chile
China
Colombia
Congo
Costa Rica
Cote dIvoire
Czechoslovakia
Denmark
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Ethiopia
Finland
France
Gabon
Germany
Ghana
Greece
Guatemala
Guinea
Haiti
Honduras
Hungary
India
Indonesia
Iran
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Jamaica
Japan
Jordan
Kenya
Korea, South
Kuwait
Lao Peoples Republic
0.87
0.81
1.54
1.60
0.77
0.84
1.07
0.90
0.47
1.62
0.46
0.24
5.75
0.56
0.58
0.59
1.75
0.41
0.56
0.97
1.74
1.09
0.85
0.37
1.55
2.94
1.07
1.16
1.59
2.62
0.40
0.68
1.33
0.50
1.40
0.85
1.33
1.22
0.56
0.63
0.59
0.58
1.56
1.14
1.05
0.56
0.86
0.76
0.50
1.08
0.62
2.74
1.36
0.56
1.57
1.22
Identifier
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
66
65
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
Nation
Libya
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia
Mali
Mauritania
Mauritius
Mexico
Mozambique
Morocco
Nepal
Netherland
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Niger
Nigeria
Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Panama
Papua New Guinea
Paraguay
Peru
Phillippines
Poland
Portugal
Rwanda
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Somalia
South Africa
Spain
Sri Lanka
Sweden
Switzerland
Syrian Arab Republic
Tanzania
Thailand
Togo
Trinidad
Tunisia
Turkey
Uganda
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
United States
Uruguay
Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics
Venezuela
Yugoslavia
Zaire
Zambia
Zimbabwe
Technology
multiplier*
1.22
0.84
1.06
0.93
0.37
5.36
0.47
0.70
2.07
1.02
0.62
0.85
0.81
0.76
1.24
3.78
1.55
0.93
1.78
0.48
0.76
0.47
0.62
0.81
4.11
0.63
0.27
1.58
0.99
2.01
1.36
2.19
2.11
0.41
1.05
0.86
0.98
2.75
1.47
0.78
0.92
2.96
1.66
1.19
0.32
3.72
0.70
0.95
0.51
0.62
1.49
1.14
0.70
0.83
4.87
*The technology multiplier is the antilog of the residual from the logpolynomial regression reported in Table 2.
Data from 1989.
effects (8, 9, 11, 29, 30). Our stochastic formulation accommodates such effects if we substitute more complex functions
for the coefficients b and c . Estimating such functions allows
us to identify levels of affluence or population that produce
threshold, accelerating, or other complex effects. Thus, the
stochastic version of the IPAT model can be used to identify
diminishing or increasing impacts due to increases in popula-
177
Loglinear model
SE
Coefficient
SE
1.123
0.063
0.058
0.026
1.149
0.060
1.484
20.152
20.070
16.854
0.931
0.105
0.026
0.020
0.101
1.084
0.047
16.545
0.891
0.073
178
FIG. 1. Effects of population on CO2 emissions. Solid line indicates the effect of population size relative to the geometric mean of population
across nations (12.3 million). Population effects calculated at the geometric mean of gross domestic product ($1476). Data points are plotted using
identification numbers from Table 1. Countries are plotted at the point corresponding to the expected population effect multiplied by the residual
displayed in Table 1.
FIG. 2. Effects of affluence on CO2 emissions. Solid line indicates the effect of gross domestic product per capita relative to the geometric mean
of gdp across nations ($1476). Affluence effects calculated at the geometric mean of population (12.3 million). Data points are plotted using
identification numbers from Table 1. Countries are plotted at the point corresponding to the expected gdp effect multiplied by the residual displayed
in Table 1.
and for gdp it is 1.084 (normal theory SE 5 0.050). The intercept for
this model is 16.545 (normal theory SE 5 0.077), and the coefficient
of determination is 0.891. For consistency, we used centered values
of population and gdp.
1.
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31.
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179