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Harnessing the power of decision-support tools to trigger climate action

Nature Computational Science volume 3, pages 461–463 (2023)Cite this article

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Accelerating climate action requires harnessing the power of decision-support tools in new ways. This vision cannot be realized without interdisciplinary computational scientists that are capable of integrating knowledge from the environmental, social and cognitive sciences.

The way that we are managing natural resources is not sustainable. Our inability to decisively address the global climate crisis comprises the legacy of our generation, and, more importantly, endangers our ability to create a more just and equitable world. To remedy this, we need a profound change in the way we make economic and political decisions. Moreover, to be able to achieve the level of transformations required in our economy, at the speed that these transformations are required, this change in decision-making needs to occur at every level of society. We all need to participate in solving the climate crisis, and we all need better information to make sustainable decisions. Thus, there is an urgent need for versatile decision-support tools that can support this change.

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Fig. 1: GHG mitigation trajectories since the beginning of the century across top emitting nations.

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Acknowledgements

The development of this Comment was supported by the Decision Sciences Initiative of Tecnologico de Monterrey [dcs-2023].

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  1. School of Government and Public Transformation, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Monterrey, Mexico

    Edmundo Molina-Perez

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  1. Edmundo Molina-Perez
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Correspondence to Edmundo Molina-Perez.

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Molina-Perez, E. Harnessing the power of decision-support tools to trigger climate action. Nat Comput Sci 3, 461–463 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43588-023-00460-z

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