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Feasible climate mitigation

Nature Climate Change volume 13, pages 6–8 (2023)Cite this article

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Efforts to achieve emissions targets often fall short. Science can help meet the targets by assessing the feasibility of initiatives proposed to reach them, focusing on issues of adoption and implementation and the behavioural plasticity of intended responders.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in the United States illustrates the importance of a focus on adoption. After decades of failed efforts to enact carbon taxes and cap-and-trade programmes, it has proved feasible to adopt a law based on financial incentives. This might have happened sooner if the scientific community had provided policymakers with feasibility assessments of different climate policy designs and laws. Given its adoption, several modelling analyses suggest the IRA may reduce US carbon emissions by about 40% relative to 2005 levels by 2030. But achieving this potential will depend on the steps that follow adoption. Details of implementation and the behavioural plasticity of households, communities and governmental and private sector organizations will shape the actual impact of the IRA.

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Fig. 1: Steps from proposed initiatives to actual mitigation.

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Acknowledgements

K.S.N. gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Carlsberg Foundation (grant no. CF20-0285). T.D was supported by Michigan AgBio Research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Social and Environmental Research Institute, Shelburne Falls, MA, USA

    Paul C. Stern

  2. Department of Sociology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Thomas Dietz

  3. Gund Institute for Environment, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA

    Thomas Dietz

  4. Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Kristian S. Nielsen

  5. School of International Affairs and Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Wei Peng

  6. Vanderbilt Law School, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA

    Michael P. Vandenbergh

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  1. Paul C. Stern
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  2. Thomas Dietz
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  3. Kristian S. Nielsen
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  4. Wei Peng
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  5. Michael P. Vandenbergh
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Correspondence to Paul C. Stern.

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Stern, P.C., Dietz, T., Nielsen, K.S. et al. Feasible climate mitigation. Nat. Clim. Chang. 13, 6–8 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01563-7

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