The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[santafe2]

It appears the global middle class is growing more quickly than we can manage. The pandemic surely slowed this rate of growth but I've not found post-pandemic research to help me understand how the 2019 trajectory represented in the bottom chart has been affected. Last year Pew Research estimated a decrease in global middle class of 54MM during 2020. This chart from 2019 is largely based on research from Brookings in 2018, (link below).

The bottom chart suggests that there will be ~5B middle class humans in 2030. While the pandemic may have set the timeline back I don't see how we'll begin to moderate atmospheric CO2 before we reach 440-450PPM in 2030. See the upper chart which shows a 5-year average of CO2 growth from 1963-2021. We reached 350PPM in 1988.

In my opinion, the growth of affluence will outstrip our ability to solve the climate problem technologically. Looking at only one of the issues, there is a tipping point where ice melts orders-of-magnitude more quickly. Non-linear systems like climate are difficult to model properly but we know that at some point we'll measure sea level rise in meters, not centimeters.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2018/09/27/a-global-tipping-point-half-the-world-is-now-middle-class-or-wealthier/