Do Climate Change Policies Actually Work?

Do Climate Change Policies Work?

To figure out what really works when nations try to fight climate change, researchers looked at 1,500 ways countries have tried to curb heat-trapping gases. In only 63 cases since 1998, did researchers find policies that resulted in significant cuts of carbon pollution. The study found that subsidies and regulations alone or in a mix with each other do not typically result in emission reductions. But when price instruments come in the mix, such as a carbon energy tax, you’ll see a more substantial reduction in emissions. Of the 63 success stories, the biggest reduction was seen in South Africa’s building sector, where a combination of regulation, subsidies, and labeling of appliances cut emissions by nearly 54%. The only success story in the United States was in transportation, where emissions dropped 8% from 2005 to 2011 thanks to a mix of fuel standards. Overall, the 63 succcessful instances of climate policies trimmed 600 million to 1.8 billion metric tons of heat-trapping gases. That seems like a lot, but not when you see that the world spewed 36.8 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide while burning fossil fuels and making cement just last year.

Seth Borenstein, Associated Press

Carbon Emissions from Canadian Wildfires

In 2023, Canada saw some of its warmest and driest conditions in decades. Those conditions led to extreme forest fires that released about 640 million metric tons of carbon according to NASA. NASA’s research team used satellite observations and advanced computing to quantify the carbon emissions of the fires, which burned an area roughly the size of North Dakota between May and September of 2023. In those 5 months, the Canadian fires released more carbon into the atmosphere than Russia or Japan emitted from fossil fuels in all of 2022. Although the CO2 emitted from wildfires causes extra warming in the near term, scientists note that as the forest regrows, the amount of carbon emitted from wildfires will be reabsorbed by Earth’s ecosystems.

Sally Younger, NASA

New Method to Recycle Clothing

A chemical engineering PhD student, Erha, at the University of Delaware has a solution to recycle clothing, which could help mitigate climate change. Less than 1% of clothing worldwide gets recycled currently. That is largely due to the fact that modern garments consist of multiple types of fibers all interlaced together, making them difficult to separate into their pure components to be recycled. The global demand for clothing fiber is expected to jump to 149 million tons by 2030, and in turn, the waste stream will likely grow exponentially. Erha said that 90 million tons of textiles are tossed in landfills each year, and textiles are a significant source of microplastic pollution. Fossil fuels are the building blocks for synthetic fibers, and demand for those clothes and their disposal contributes to global carbon emissions. Her solution is to add ethylene glycol to a shirt, along with zinc oxide, into a test tube. The tube is then microwaved for 15 minutes. The process breaks down the shirt into its component parts which can then be recycled.

Susan Phillips, WHYY PBS