The storm and the day after: quantifying climate impacts of State enforcement emissions in CICERO-SCM towards an ecoanarchist climate model

Abstract

Climate modeling scenarios, despite covering a wide range of biogeophysical possibilities for future climate change, remain sociopolitically narrow. This is particularly the case in climate mitigation, where green-growth driven negative emissions technologies are considered key to achieving climate mitigation goals like the Paris Agreement warming target. Building on the degrowth and postgrowth climate modeling literature, this thesis investigates the climate mitigation potential of a rapid reduction in military, police, and prison emissions, via an exploratory ecoanarchist climate scenario within a postgrowth emissions trajectory. State enforcement emissions were estimated using the 3 scopes system of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, based on the methodology of papers estimating the global military carbon footprint and the yearly emissions of the United States prison system. The scenario was then run with the simple climate model CICERO-SCM, calibrated according to the constraining targets and periods used by the Reduced Complexity Model Intercomparison Project Phase 3, with an 81-member ensemble. The results find an end-of-century warming of 1.58 °C for the ecoanarchist scenario, representing a reduction of 0.10 °C from the postgrowth scenario, suggesting that drastic reductions in state enforcement emissions can, alongside ambitious mitigation measures elsewhere, bring end-of-century warming close to the Paris Agreement target. An analysis of the climate risks through the IPCC Reasons for Concern framework reveals significant uncertainty in the difference of risks between the postgrowth and ecoanarchist scenarios, highlighting the need for further modeling research to a) refine estimates of climate outcomes and b) understand the particular hazards of certain societal trajectories. Three features are proposed as essential for the physical science component of ecoanarchist climate modeling: 1) a GHG emissions framework based on sociopolitical sectors; 2) a model with heterogeneous actors and the climate impacts of their interactions; 3) a scenario narrative with ambitious mitigation action grounded in systemic transformation instead of negative-emissions technology.

Popular Abstract

How can a climate model represent a particular type of society? Though they are typically associated with numerical predictions of global warming, climate models are also able to investigate the environmental impacts of specific policies or societal changes. Even the simplest climate model does this to a certain extent by modeling greenhouse gas emissions. However, answering more in-depth questions—such as what the impact of reforming or abolishing certain institutions would have on climate change—requires more precise methods.
This thesis thus explores the climate impacts of abolishing three major enforcement institutions of the State: the military, the police, and prisons, alongside their respective carbon dioxide emissions. This is done through an exploratory ecoanarchist approach to climate modeling, which consists of three elements. The first is a theoretical framework that groups the CO2 emissions of these organizations into “State enforcement emissions.” The second is an ecoanarchist climate scenario that provides key assumptions for human society in the future, where these State enforcement emissions are removed in the context of a societal paradigm shift. Finally, this climate scenario is used to generate an input for the simple climate model CICERO-SCM, used to produce predictions of global warming by the end of the 21st century. This was done by modifying an existing post-economic growth climate scenario by incorporating a reduction of State enforcement emissions. Such simple climate models are ideal for exploring unconventional societal scenarios such as the one considered in this thesis, as they are simple to use and require much less computational power than conventional climate models. This thesis is, in part, also about developing and testing this ecoanarchist approach to climate modeling, such that it can be applied elsewhere to expand the horizon of climate modeling with alternative economics.
The results, though expected, illuminate the many avenues of research necessary to refine this method. The ecoanarchist scenario saw 0.10 °C less end-of-century global warming than a comparable post-economic growth scenario, which was expected given that the former was created by reducing the emissions of the latter. With a relatively low difference in warming, the differences in climate risks between the postgrowth and ecoanarchist scenarios were similarly minor, and within the uncertainty margins provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Despite high uncertainty in the input data and in the analysis, this study demonstrates that the emissions of State enforcement institutions are significant, and that their reduction can be combined with ambitious climate action across society to accelerate the sustainable transition and minimize the hazards associated with anthropogenic climate change. Towards this end, this study tests the methodology for the physical science component of an ecoanarchist climate model, and provides suggestions for its characteristics for future researchers based on the abovementioned results.

• author: Rocha Novella, Santiago
• supervisor: Paul Miller
• organization: Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences (MGeo)
• course: NGEM21 20261
• year: 2026
• type: H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
• subject: Earth and Environmental Sciences
• keywords: physical geography, climate modeling, Simple Climate Model (SCM), CO2 emissions, climate change mitigation, climate change, postgrowth, degrowth, ecoanarchism, CICERO-SCM, military emissions, police emissions, prison emissions
• publication/series: Student thesis series INES
• report number: 778
• language: English
• id: 9240196
• date added to LUP: 2026-06-18 09:16:02
• date last changed: 2026-06-18 09:16:02