IIASA researcher Charlie Wilson has been awarded a European Research Council (ERC) grant to study how the digitalization of our everyday lives impacts climate change and to explore how it can be steered to help, rather than hinder climate action.
Tackling climate change requires changes across all areas of our daily lives, from how we use transport and consume food, to our homes and how we use energy. Meanwhile, the digitalization of everyday life is happening rapidly around us – from video conferencing to smartphone apps that assist almost every type of human activity. The iDODDLE (Impacts of Digitalized Daily Life on Climate Change) project, funded by an ERC Consolidator Grant, will systematically investigate how these changes could help reduce carbon emissions to support policymakers in addressing climate change.
“As the recent ‘The World in 2050’ study makes clear, the digitalization of daily life is a double-edged sword for climate change. Digitalization can help us understand, manage, and reduce carbon emissions… or it could lead to runaway growth in emissions if energy-hungry practices become deeply embedded in our everyday lives,” says Wilson, who is jointly associated with IIASA and the University of East Anglia’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.
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