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How social scientists can help to shape climate policy

Developing strategies to ensure that the ‘needs of the few’ do not outweigh those of the rest.
  1. Michael Eisenstein

    1. Michael Eisenstein is a freelance science writer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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The identities of the world’s primary carbon culprits seem obvious. Wealthy nations such as the United States and European Union member states owe the biggest historical debt, having produced nearly half of all carbon emissions since the Industrial Revolution. Meanwhile, rapidly growing industrial economies such as Russia, India and China are making up for lost time; China accounted for 29% of emissions in 2015. But such simplified national-level bookkeeping masks a much more complicated pattern of emissions. In each country, differences in individual wealth and consumption lead to vastly different impacts on the environment (see ‘Unequal emissions’).

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Nature 551, S142-S144 (2017)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-017-07418-y

This article is part of Nature Outlook: Energy transitions, an editorially independent supplement produced with the financial support of third parties. About this content.

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