Why it’s so hard to tell which climate policies actually work
Better tools are needed to analyse their effects
NATIONAL CLIMATE policies are a relatively recent invention. In 1997, according to the Grantham Institute, a think-tank at the London School of Economics, there were 60; by 2022 the number had risen to almost 3,000. Their effectiveness has proved almost impossible to measure. In August, an international research group published the first global evaluation of climate policies in Science, a journal. The study, which looked at around 1,500 policies implemented in 41 countries between 1998 and 2022, found that just 63 could be linked to sizeable reductions in emissions.
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This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “So much hot air”
From the October 5th 2024 edition
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AI researchers receive the Nobel prize for physics
The award, to Geoffrey Hinton and John Hopfield, stretches the definition of the field
A Nobel prize for the discovery of micro-RNA
These tiny molecules regulate genes and control how cells develop and behave
AI offers an intriguing new way to diagnose mental-health conditions
Models look for sound patterns undetectable by the human ear
Isolated communities are more at risk of rare genetic diseases
The isolation can be geographic or cultural
An adult fruit fly brain has been mapped—human brains could follow
For now, it is the most sophisticated connectome ever made
Immune therapy shows promise for asthma, heart disease—and even ageing
Making treatment quick and affordable will be the challenge