Risk–risk governance in a low-carbon future: Exploring institutional,technological, and behavioral tradeoffs in climate geoengineering pathways

Deliberations are underway to utilize increasingly radical technological options to help address climate change and stabilize the climatic system. Collectively, these options are often referred to as “climate geoengineering.” Deployment of such options, however, can create wicked tradeoffs in governance and require adaptive forms of risk management. In this study, we utilize a large and novel set of qualitative expert interview data to more deeply and systematically explore the types of risk–risk tradeoffs that may emerge from the use of 20 different climate geoengineering options, 10 that focus on carbon dioxide or greenhouse gas removal, and 10 that focus on solar radiation management and reflecting sunlight. We specifically consider: What risks does the deployment of these options entail? What types of tradeoffs may emerge through their deployment? We apply a framework that clusters risk–risk tradeoffs into institutional and governance, technological and environmental, and behavioral and temporal dimensions. In doing so, we offer a more complete inventory of risk–risk tradeoffs than those currently available within the respective risk-assessment, energy-systems, and climate-change literatures, and we also point the way toward future research gaps concerning policy, deployment, and risk management.     

Characterizing Emotional Support Development: From Adolescent Best Friendships to Young Adult Romantic Relationships

This study examined development of emotional support competence within close friendships across adolescence. A sample of 184 adolescents (53% girls, 47% boys; 58% White, 29% Black, 14% other identity groups) participated in seven waves of multimethod assessments with their best friends and romantic partners from age 13 to 24. Latent change score models identified coupled predictions over time from emotional support competence to increasing friendship quality and decreasing support received from friends. Friend-rated emotional support competence in adolescence predicted supportiveness in adult romantic relationships, over and above supportiveness in adolescent romantic relationships. Teen friendships may set the stage for developing emotional support capacities that progress across time and relationships into adulthood.     

Sexual orientation and self-employment: New evidence

Early studies and theory suggest sexual minorities are drawn towards the relative independence of self-employment to avoid discrimination in paid employment. However, recent evidence is mixed, suggesting that a higher propensity for self-employment (relative to heterosexual people) is found only among lesbian women relative to heterosexual women. This study overcomes the data limitations of prior research by using data pooled from 2007–2017 cycles of the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) and multivariate logistic regression to provide new evidence on LGB self-employment. The results show that self-employment is particularly high for bisexual people, especially bisexual women—but not for gay men or lesbian women. Overall, this study examines the enduring but nuanced relationship between self-employment and sexual orientation and discusses countervailing factors related to socio-economic resources, gender, and family structure.     

‘Meeting them where they are at’: A practice note on implementation of the Child and Family Traumatic Stress Intervention in an emergency family homeless shelter

Families experiencing homelessness report higher rates of traumatic exposure than the general population, and traumatic experiences can often be precipitating factors for entrance into a homeless shelter. Emergency shelter is meant to be a brief, temporary housing intervention to support families toward more stable and permanent living arrangements. Beyond this ecological intervention, there is a frequently unmet need for trauma-specific mental health services. Further still, psychosocial interventions to support sheltered families should be sensitive to both the trauma-specific needs of this population and the constraints of the shelter setting. The Child and Family Traumatic Stress Intervention (CFTSI) is a brief, secondary prevention protocol that aims to prevent PTSD after exposure to a traumatic event, with research demonstrating its effectiveness in acute care settings such as child advocacy centres and emergency departments. This case study illustrates the implementation of CFTSI in an emergency family shelter in a large urban area, highlighting the appropriateness of the intervention for the setting, its adaptability to client needs and its generalizability to other non-traditional intervention settings.     

Greenhouse gases and green roofs: carbon dioxide and methane fluxes in relation to substrate characteristics

Green roof systems have been increasingly implemented to enhance vegetation cover and associated ecosystem services in urban spaces, with primary goals being the reduction of peak surface runoff, enhanced water quality, and mitigation of urban heat island effects. Recently, green roofs have also received attention as a means to enhance carbon sequestration, but direct measurements of greenhouse gas fluxes from established green roof systems are largely lacking. Here we present observations of CO₂ and CH₄ fluxes from substrates of experimental extensive green roof units that varied in vegetation type (Sedum spp., and a native meadow species mix), substrate depth, substrate type (high vs. low organic matter content), and irrigation. We predicted that substrate CO₂ effluxes would be higher in high-organic-matter substrates and that systems with high organic matter would potentially act as CH₄ sources. Substrate fluxes were low compared to natural soils, with seasonal means ranging from an efflux of 0.1–0.4 µmol CO₂ m^-2.s^-1 and uptake of ~0.00–0.04 nmol CH₄ m^-2.s^-1, with higher fluxes late in the growing season. CO₂ fluxes showed large increases in response to irrigation and were higher from the high-organic-matter substrate and with increased substrate depth. The strength of the CH₄ sink increased in response to prior irrigation treatments, and CH₄ emissions were detected only on low-organic-matter substrates early in the growing season. No effects of vegetation type were detected for either CO₂ or CH₄ flux. Our results indicate that high levels of organic matter in green roof substrates may enhance aerobic soil respiration but are not associated with CH₄ emissions, which instead were only detected in low-organic-matter substrates.