How Incumbent Cultural and Cognitive Path Dependencies Constrain the ‘Scenario Cone’: Reliance on Carbon Dioxide Removal due to Techno-bias

Abstract

The necessity to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to zero within the next decades to mitigate anthropogenic climate change is generally acknowledged. Yet, how to achieve this reduction remains an open debate. In this context, the use of scenarios has become common practice in order to study long-term developments necessary to reach climate targets. The scenario results enable an informed debate about climate change policy (e.g., costs, impacts, prerequisites). However, there are legitimate methodological and substantive criticisms and uncertainties with regard to scenarios.