Each year, the United Nation’s Development Program (UNDP) publishes the Human Development Index (HDI), which is a composite index that offers a method of evaluating international human development not only by economic advances but also in terms of the capabilities of individuals within a country. This study investigates the origin of the diminishing returns to HDI, given its important implications for climate policy and development. Specifically, we examine the current HDI calculation procedure to determine if the observed relationship is a factor of dimension normalization and/or aggregation within the HDI calculation.

Resilient infrastructure research has produced a myriad of conflicting definitions and analytic frameworks, highlighting the difficulty of creating a foundational theory that informs disciplines as diverse as business, engineering, ecology, and disaster risk reduction. Nevertheless, there is growing agreement that resilience is a desirable property for infrastructure systems – i.e., that more resilience is always better. Unfortunately, this view ignore that the fact that a single concept of resilience is insufficient to ensure effective performance under diverse and volatile stresses. Scholarship in resilience engineering has identified at least four irreducible resilience concepts, including: rebound, robustness, graceful extensibility, and sustained adaptability.

In this paper, we clarify the meaning of the word resilience and its use, explain the advantages of the pluralistic approach to advancing resilience theory, and clarify two of the four conceptual understandings: robustness and graceful extensibility. Furthermore, we draw upon examples in electric power, transportation, and water systems that illustrate positive and negative cases of resilience in infrastructure management and crisis response. The following conclusions result:

1. Robustness and graceful extensibility are different strategies for resilience that draw upon different system characteristics.
2. Neither robustness nor extensibility can prevent all hazards.
3. While systems can perform both strategies simultaneously, their drawbacks are different.

Robust infrastructure systems fail when policies and procedures become stale, or when faced with overwhelming surprise. Extensible systems fail when a lack of coordination or exhaustion of resources results from decompensation. Consequently, resilience is found neither only in robustness, nor only in extensibility, but in the capacity apply both and switch between them at will.

This project is developing and testing a new approach to teaching engineering and science students that leverages their interest in experiment and experience. Unlike a traditional liberal arts pedagogy involving reading about ethics, discussing the readings, and writing new analyses, this pedagogy uses games to position students in a series of potentially adversarial relationships that force them to confront some of the salient problems of sustainability, including environmental externalities, the Tragedy of the Commons, weak vs. strong sustainability and intra-generational equity. Recent tests allow students at different universities to play the games simultaneously using information communication technologies (ICT). In each game, students must ask themselves the questions related to moral cognition , "What are my obligations to my fellow students?” and moral conation, “What am I willing to risk in my own sense of well-being to meet these obligations?" We hypothesize that this approach will result in students that are actively engaged in learning exercises, and result in an improved ability to identify ethical problems, pose potential solutions, and participate in group deliberations with regard to moral problems.

Climate Change policy proposals are complicated by the dilemma of fossil fuels, which are both the primary cause of global warming and a necessity for human development. An empirical comparison of the United Nation’s Human Development Index (HDI) and per capita CO2 emissions by country confirms that nations with higher HDI values produce more CO2 as a result of greater energy consumption. The comparison also exposes the diminishing returns in human development that accrue as greenhouse gas emissions increase. Taking this relationship into consideration begs the moral question of what responsibility developed countries have to improve conditions in underdeveloped nations. That is, given that climate policy demands management of global CO2 emissions, cuts in the emissions of developed countries could enable emissions increases in underdeveloped countries that result in major improvements in human development.

Nevertheless, the dominant cap and trade climate policy proposals are myopic at addressing these development inequities. While the cap is necessary to curb global CO2 emissions, a market-based approach to trade will result in allocating CO2 emissions to the most profitable countries. Consequently, the relatively inefficient and underdeveloped countries will use the revenue from permit sales to purchase goods from more technologically sophisticated countries, rather than foster domestic production. The capabilities approach stresses that gains in financial resources alone are insufficient to improve the human condition without the supportive services that channel investment toward effective development.

We assert that for developing nations CO2 is a fundamental necessity, given that current technology constraints make CO2 emissions at least a co-requisite to achieving minimally acceptable levels of human development. To this end, we advocate prohibiting CO2 emissions trading between countries of different development stages. Without permit sales, developed countries will have incentives to locate production in underdeveloped countries to comply with carbon caps. Local production in the underdeveloped countries will lead to improvements in the human condition rather than merely fueling consumption from carbon sales revenue.